Episode 0: What is a Secret Sauce for a Restaurant?

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Intro Episode:  How do you find the Secret Sauce for your Restaurant and a little bit about the team from Marketing4Restaurants.com.  Who we are and why we do what we do for Restaurants.  Together let’s find the ingredients for your Secret Sauce.

 

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Podcast Transcript

Hey it’s James from Marketing4Restaurants! And welcome to Episode 0 – What is the Recipe for your Secret Sauce?

Some restaurants are quiet, lose money and the owner works 70 hours a week. Other restaurants are busy, comfortable and the owner works a few hours a day.  What’s the difference?

They have a secret sauce. Join James from Marketing4Restaurants as he helps you come up with your recipe for restaurant success. Your Secret Sauce!

So, welcome to our introductory podcast. Today we going to talk about “What is a Secret Sauce?” “What is the recipe for your Secret Sauce?” And we’re going to talk about little bit about Marketing4Restaurants. What we do and why we do it.

 

 

So, what is a Secret Sauce? One of the things that we learned very early on when we started working with restaurants and helping them find new customers and turn them into repeat customers was that some restaurants are busy and some are quiet. Regardless of the quality of the food, the price of the meal, or the fun of house experience. Some restaurants are very profitable. And some are continually running at a  loss, regardless of the quality of the food, the price of the meal, or the fun of house experience. And some restaurant owners work more than 70 hours a week. And some work less than 20, regardless of the quality of the food, the price of the meal, or the fun of house experience.

Now I’m not saying for a moment that you shouldn’t focus on the quality of your food. What I’m saying is though that these are very successful restaurants that don’t have the best food out there. One of the interesting correlations though is that the really busy restaurants – tend to be the really profitable ones not always but tend to be. And even more interestingly though, is that the really busy restaurants tend to have restaurant owners who aren’t working as many hours. Why is that? It’s because one of these restaurants have got a secret sauce. It’s not enough to just have great food, great value and a great experience. You need to have a Secret Sauce! You need to have the marketing to help you get the customers in. And that’s what we are trying to help you do. To help you find new customers and turn them into repeat customers!

 

 

So a couple of our customers who have been working with us for over 12 months now – one of them is Bugzies on the Gold Coast, a seafood restaurant. And I went up there about 6months ago, to have a meal, I wanted to try one of their seafood platters. And I rang the owner, Cory and I said “mate is there any chance that you can squeeze us in for a table for two, tonight?” And he said “ohhh what time?” And I said, “it’s alright, anytime” and he goes, “ahhh can you do 5:30?” And we’re actually in the conference and the conference finishes at five oçlock so that actually works well for us but I thought that was a little bit unusual and I said “yeah 5:30 is fine you guys have a good week which we got a busy night. Now, it was not the middle of winter but still wintery. Although winter is not too bad in the Gold Coast. But not a big tourist time either and it’s a Wednesday night and I thought that was a little bit weird. But literally we went in there 5:30, and by 6:30 the place was full. And turning people away. That’s an amazing result on a Wednesday night. The restaurant next door which looks really nice and had a great menu – there was very few people there. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that menu. It’s just that Bugzies have got that Secret Sauce sorted out!

 

 

Another great restaurant – Paymasters in New Castle, in an old historic building, no walk by traffic to speak of at all. You need to know that you’re going there. And we’ve been traveling all day we we’re hitting up to Northern New South Wales and we weren’t sure if we are getting in this so we didn’t make a booking. But I thought we should be alright. Once again it was a Wednesday night, they have a 120 seats.

But they’ve got a great menu as well and we always came to wait there because it looks like – it is a – well it is a really successful restaurant. And I wanted to try some things out on the menu. As we walked up I though “ohhh this might, a little bit…we might be in trouble here”. And when we spoke to the waitress at the front she said, “look, do you have a booking?” and I said “ohhh no”. And she goes, “am so sorry, we’re completely full”.  At 6 o’clock on a Wednesday night.

 

 

Most of these restaurants worked pretty hard at their marketing to make sure that they don’t have the best restaurant that no one has ever heard of. So, they’ve got great food, they provide great value to their customers, great fun of house experience, and they have also been working on the marketing to make sure that they got the best restaurant that no one has ever heard of. That’s their Secret Sauce!

And so, they have been using the tools that we provide restaurant owners for twelve months and I’m not saying that you know that we’ve made them really busy because I’m pretty sure that both of them were really successful before they started with us. But you know, it definitely helped them.

 

 

Every month we help thousands of restaurant owners just like you to find new customers and turn them into repeat customers. Whether it’s reading our blogs, whether it’s listening to our podcast or our free tools.

So, we’ve got a lot of free tools that restaurants choose, our free online restaurant booking system is the largest booking system in Australia that’s free for you as well as being free for your customers or with using our website. So, that’s our flagship products, we provide restaurants with websites that have got a whole heap of restaurant marketing tools built into them. So, they create with Twitter, Facebook, they optimize from mobile, they help build your data base for you, they’ll take online bookings for them. And one of the things that we do is, we take all of the data we get from all our customers and we actually benchmark your marketing efforts against others so you’ll know whether you’re doing industry best practice or if this some work that you need to do. And we’ve got a whole heap of tools built in to help you understand how you can improve in various areas of your business.

 

 

One of the ways that we do that is we provide a – we put a world map that shows where all of the customers are coming from for the customers in our network and literally there’s thousands and thousands and thousands of people go to finding our customers every day using online marketing tools. Such a very powerful advantage!

 

 

There’s an old saying in marketing, 50% of your marketing works and 50% of it doesn’t – the trick is knowing which is which. We know that because we consider data for all of our customers in all of their marketing efforts we can actually help you understand what part of your marketing is working and where you can be doing a lot better.

 

 

All day long we’re talking to restaurant owners and many of the features that we build have been based on suggestions from restaurant owners “it would be really great if you could do that”. I’ve got this problem “is there any way that we can solve it?” I was talking to a restaurant owner once, I say “is there anything that we can do to help you?” And he said “oh I’d love to be able to take bookings on line” and I said “oh but there’s heaps of companies that do that. You know you can just use Dimmi” “And the guy’s “yeah but they charge us when they take a booking”. And I said “even on your own website?” And he said “yeah”.  And I said “oh okay.” And like I felt really bad because I did not believe him. I couldn’t believe that someone would charge a restaurant to take a booking on their own website. I actually went to a Marketing Manager and said “you know I just had a weak conversation with a customer. He said that Dimmi would charge him to take bookings online. And she said “that’s madness, no one would actually do that.” And a couple of weeks later she came to me and said “you know what I had a similar conversation with someone and they said that they’re being charged one dollar for every seat that was booked through their own website. And I thought “wow there’s got to be something to this.” So, I rang up a customer and in fact I think that was Cory at Bugzies and I said “mate, how much does Dimmi charge you for taking online bookings?” and he said “oh if it comes through our website it’s a dollar per seat”.  I said “are you serious?” And he goes, “yeah”. And I said “would you be interested if we create a system for you to take bookings online?” And he goes “mate I’d love that, because we’re spending a thousand dollars a month.” But they’re literally getting a thousand seats booked per month.

 

 

Wow! So we quoted that up looked into the six weeks, it’s not a difficult feature to build. And we were listed free to all of our customers because you know – hey it’s a great way to build your database and that’s one of the things that we’re really passionate about is helping you build your database. And then we had this weird thing where people who didn’t want a website with this – website wasn’t part of their marketing or they’ve already just spent a lot of money on their website. They wanted to use our online booking system and I was like “oh that’s a bit strange. I tell you what.. we’ll charge $50 a month for it?” And most of the customers said “wow that’s cheap!” and I was like “yeah yeah that’s okay”. And so customers were really happy with that.

 

So, we paid for all of the development time once, twice, ten times over and then we decided that we will give it away for free. Because one of the things we learned is that Dimmi and a lot of the other online booking companies and online ordering companies as well, they are all about building their database not yours. So, when someone makes a booking on your website for your restaurant, using their booking system, they keep the customers’ contact email, and they’ll send their office to them. And that’s – I mean we think that’s madness! And that’s why we gave it away for free because we’d like you to use our marketing services. If you don’t, we definitely don’t want you to be helping to build someone else’s database because we think that’s going to make it really hard for you to have a long term sustainable business. So literally, that’s Marketing4Restaurants in a nut shell.

 

That’s Secret Sauce in a nut shell. What we want to do through all of the podcast that we release is help you come up with a secret sauce so that you can work less hours in your restaurant. So that you can be more profitable – you know and one thing that we find with restaurant owners –

How do you earn hundred thousand dollars a year, it’s easy – you take 250,000 dollar jobs and you work 80hours a week. Now, that’s not sustainable and so many restaurant owners just get burned out because they’re working incredibly long hours. We want to help you work less hours, have a profitable business, and build up a big strong database. So, that you know, you’re able to be busy during the traditionally quiet times.

So, a couple of things, one – please share our podcast, help other restaurant owners. We’re all in this together you know. There’s a lot of competition out there and it’s the good restaurants they just want to stick together, work on best practices. And that’s what we are going to be doing, we’re going to be sharing best practice marketing tools and tips to help you grow your business. Let’s help get the word out!

If you’ve got any questions, please do on the podcast. You’ll be able to ask questions there or you can email at [email protected] and check out the world map. Just to give you an idea about this you might have a restaurant in a little regional town you can see that the great thing about the internet is it allows you to market worldwide 24hours a day. And take bookings from worldwide 24hours a day. So literally that’s it. Thank you and we’ll catch you on the next podcast!

Want more customers for your restaurant, café or take out? Every month, our marketing tools and information are used by thousands of restaurant owners just like you. To help them find more customers and turn them into repeat customers. All of our tools and information are designed specifically for restaurant owners. We know you don’t have all the time to spend marketing or learning complicated procedures so our tools are quick and easy to use. If you’re looking to increase your revenue and profit, or want to work less hours, check out marketing4restaurants.com!

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