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Some businesses are absolutely self promoting because they have a position to die for. Unfortunately that is rarely the case, so be prepared to put in a little time on outside promotions in order to
- remind your customers just how great your food is.
- get some new customers to cross your threshhold and get to know you and your bar or restaurant
It’s pretty easy to get to know someone through your bar or restaurant who is a member of a local club or society and once you’ve done that you can ask them to give you the contact details for their functions or entertainments secretary.
All clubs and societies have charity days or some sort of open day and they’ll only be too happy to give you some advertising space in their programme in exchange for you putting up a prize.
The prize we normally offer is a sit down meal for one person, so you can be pretty sure that when the winner comes to claim their meal, they’ll bring another one or two people along with them, so you won’t actually loose money, in fact you’ll probably break out even or make a bit of a profit.
The main tip here is that you must be as open and friendly as possible and give off a really upbeat vibe, so that your guests will go back to their club/society and really recommend your bar restaurant.
Remember the more you promote, the quicker your business will grow.
Local schools are simply fantastic organizations to promote through. The basic rule being: you give something and you stand to get a lot back.We have already talked about doing a pizza cooking lesson in school, followed up by inviting children to come to your local and try their hand a cooking their own pizza.
I want to add to my last post by stating that rather than asking children to phone you to make an appointment to come and cook their own pizza at your bar, thus leaving the onus on the children to keep the ball rolling, it’s much better if you take bookings whilst you are in the school for groups of 3 and 4 friends to come together and cook their own pizzas.
By doing this type of promotion you are aiming at the children and the parents at the same time and the promotion is not costing you anything.
The great thing about children and pizzas is; that when a child really wants to come and eat pizza, it invariably involves parents coming along or perhaps a small group of children, (we do occasionally get groups of between 8-18 children come to celebrate a birthday or simple just enjoy a pizza together).
- Make sure that they book beforehand.
- Explain about the unavoidable wait involved in catering for large groups.
- Make sure that you establish control from the minute they arrive. (It’s simple to do; just remind them that they are not in school, but in an adult restaurant and that they must keep their voices down or risk not being served at all or even made to sit on their own on a separate room).
Remember! You can’t expect a customer to become a return customer (a regular) until you have got them to cross your threshold for the first time and that should be your main objective when you co-operate with local schools.
(NB: In the 6-7 busy months you probably won’t need to do any promotion, but if you intend to run your business for 11 months a year, then it’s good to know about ways of promoting your business.)
