[00:00:00] Hey there, Chip Close here, host of the Restaurant Strategy podcast. In addition to hosting these episodes, every single week, I travel the country and I give talks. I wrote a book. It's called the Restaurant Marketing Mindset. I host a mastermind group called the P3 mastermind, geared towards independent operators struggling with profitability. But I also host two live events every single year. In the summer, we usually host the P3 profitability summit. And then in the winter, we host a Picture P3 marketing summit. Last week, 100 restaurant owners descended upon Salt Lake City. We, we move the city every single time we do it. This time was in Salt Lake City. A hundred restaurant owners descended upon Salt Lake City to learn exactly what they needed to do to better market their restaurant. We literally gave them a series of playbooks over two and a half days. And I want to share my six biggest takeaways from that event with you. All of that on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
[00:00:55] There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:01:26] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast dedicated to helping you build a more profitable restaurant. Each week I leverage my 25 years in the industry to help you build that more profitable and sustainable business. I work with owners and operators all over the world as well through my P3 mastermind program. This is a group coaching format geared towards restaurant owners with less than 10 locations. Right. So half of our members are multi unit operators. So you got to have less than 10, less than 10 locations. You got to be doing at least 1 million doll or more per location. We find that's the sweet spot. That's where our work can have the biggest impact. If you have a great business, a lot of people love it, you're driving a lot of revenue, but you are not making the money you want to make. Specifically, we're Talking about a 20% profit margin every single month. If that's not happening, then you need to get in touch. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule, grab time on the calendar, absolutely no pressure. 30 minute call where we get to just ask each other a bunch of questions, right? It'll be a call with me or someone from my team where you'll get to learn more about the program we run and we'll get to learn more about you and your business. Again, restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule and as always, that link is in the Show Notes.
[00:02:42] Now, what's the food cost of your third bestselling entree with Margin Edge, you could know instantly. Margin Edge is a complete restaurant management software that I recommend to all of my clients looking to improve their profitability. With Margin Edge, you just get to snap pictures of your invoices and get real time data for all areas of your business. You can see plate costs in real time. You get a daily P and L. Your inventory count sheets are automatically updated. It saves you a ton of time and lets you make really informed decisions. My client, Gather Brewing started using Margin edge and within one month their food cost went from 38 to 28. That is serious savings. There's a reason I recommend Margin Edge to so many of the P3 mastermind members. It's because I know it works. If you're interested in learning more or want to see how Gather brewing went from 38% food cost to 28%, head over to margin edge.com chip again. Margin edge.com chip that link is also in the Show Notes.
[00:03:45] Okay, now I told you we were going to go over my six biggest takeaways from the event we just ran, but a couple of, A little bit of background, right? So I said this during the opening, but I, I put out two new podcast episodes every single week. I'm online on social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok almost every day putting out little tip ideas, tactics, right? I speak to the camera every single day. So there's, there's tons of free content out there. I also take the stage at tons of shows all over the country all throughout the year. You can just, if you're attending one of those trade shows, you get to hear me speak on stage. I've got my book, the Restaurant Marketing Mindset. We are still giving away the last couple of copies from the first printing. You can find that link in the Show Notes. But I also host a paid Mastermind. Right? The P3 mastermind is geared towards independent operators who are looking to improve the profitability of their restaurants. And an extension of that are these two live events that I do every single year. Last year we hosted the very first P3 Marketing Summit. It was down in South Carolina. Like I said, we move the party every single time we do it. So this time just last week we were in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is beautiful out there. A really, really great food town. We had a blast. 100 restaurant owners all descended upon the city for two and a half days, right. So we start with a welcome party on Sunday night and then an education all day Monday, all day Tuesday. We do a big on Monday night, like a big party, open bar, food, everything you could want on Monday night. And then Tuesday we always finish off the event with a food crawl. Right. So we go from place to place to place to place. It's anywhere, three, four, five different locations. People come from 1, 2, 3, 4 or sometimes all of the locations. Last week we hosted this event in Salt Lake City. It was a massive, massive success. I thought it was really great last year. We learned from some of the things that we did wrong last year. Made it much better this time. It was awesome. Absolutely, absolutely amazing to see the impact that it made. But what I want to do is I want to share six takeaways. I certainly can't share with you everything that we taught on stage because it was. We were on stage for the better part of 14 hours between Monday and Tuesday. We had a ton of guest speakers. I co hosted this event with Rev Ciancio, who is another restaurant marketer. Somebody that I have a great deal of respect for. He's become a good friend over the last couple of years. I certainly can't get into all the nuts and bolts, but I will say that we are going to sell a virtual, virtual access to this event because we filmed the entire thing that will be available in the next two to three weeks. So tune in. Perk up. If you're on my email list, I will send. You'll be the first to know about it. If you're not on the email list, I would say go to our website, restaurantstrategypodcast.com make sure to get signed up for the list or tune into this podcast every single week for the next couple of weeks. When it is available I will let you know. It will only be available for a 90 day window. We don't keep this up there forever and ever and ever. So if you want to get access of it, if you want access to it, you're gonna have to jump right on it. So that that is coming. But what I did want to share was my six biggest takeaways. Things that, that I knew but I saw really resonated with the people in the audience. Things that I learned from my co host and from the other speakers and things that I kept hearing people say to me over and over. Right. So these six takeaways are in that realm. Certainly can't share with you all the information at that event, but that will be coming. If you Want to get the all access pass to the summit. You'll get all the recordings and you the entire slide deck, which I think was in the end, 624 slides long. So it had tactics, scripts, playbooks, everything in there. You needed to properly market your restaurant. Let me back up here and say that the event is always split up into three main areas.
[00:07:32] Because there's a specific way that I think we have to focus on marketing, right. Rather than marketing. Be a. Rather than looking at marketing as a series of crap that we need to do, right? A whole. We got to do this and this and this and this and this and this. We just, we compartmentalize it. And I say it really comes down to customer acquisition. I call that attraction customer retention. Right? That's retention. And then finally word of mouth, which for me is evangelism. I wrote about this in my book the Restaurant Marketing Mindset. But it's acquisition, retention and evangelism, right? What do we do to get people in the front door? What do we do to get people back? And what do we do to make sure that they go talk about us? Right? What do we do to spark word of mouth? That's it. This is the only three things that we need to do. And so that's how we break up this two day event. So we, we funnel all the. In those specific areas. And of course there's overlap. One thing leads to the next. Of course, I get it. If we get more word of mouth, that's going to help us acquire new customers. Because a customer that you had last night, had a great time, goes and tells somebody they come in next week, right? That naturally happens. So it acts as a bit of a flywheel, which is why when we've got a plan for all three of those areas, it ends up being so profound. Okay, Here, that's how, that's how we arrange the event. Because that's how I believe we should be thinking about how we market our restaurants. The first takeaway though, right, Number one, was that you need to have a fundamental understanding of marketing, right? The definitions and sort of the frameworks for how we have to think about it. And so this is how we started off the entire event. We spent the first two hours of Monday, right, the two hours of our education portion, just making sure people were clear on this. And I gave and I knew that this was important. Obviously I made this part of the curriculum of the event. But watching people's eyes light up, watching them, watching things click as we talk about it, right? Number one is what Is marketing, right? So when I ask people what is marketing there, they start telling me all the stuff they do. Well, you know, it's about social media. We do social media, and it's about email. We send emails and it's about, you know, the table tents that we have in the restaurant. No, all of that's not exactly wrong. Those are tools available to the marketer. But that is not marketing. Marketing is something much more foundational. It's about figuring out who needs something that you're uniquely qualified to provide. For me, marketing comes down to three questions. What's your product? Who is that product for? And how can you reach those people? Right? What's the product? Who's it for? How do you reach them? And that becomes a mantra. You repeat those three questions. It's one of the first things we said when we got up on Stage at the P3 Marketing Summit, and it was like, oh, the beauty of it is that we just simplify down. So marketing is complicated. Can be complicated, certainly can be sophisticated, nuanced, but it also should be foundational, right? We're trying to figure out what people need, and we're trying to provide them with that and trying to provide a more compelling solution to anything they have, right? That's certainly true of anything else. That's why we have UPS and DHL and FedEx. Right? One company decided to provide shipping. Somebody else says, I think we could do shipping better, I think we could do shipping cheaper, I think we could do shipping. Whatever it is, when you look at any market that exists, whether that's shoes, doctors, shipping, restaurants, whatever, a market exists, a solution exists, right? And if you find something that nobody is providing for people, good for you. You'll be what's called a first mover. But for me, making sure the entire room understood. Before we got into a budget, tactics, right? Before we got into the how to, we have to understand the why, the what, right? So starting with that definition for marketing, which, by the way, was the very first episode of this podcast, literally, we answered the question, what is marketing? Right? But understanding those three questions, what's the product? Who's it for? How do we reach. Put another way, and this is the second thing we talked about, right? Which is understanding that for me, marketing is really just about two things. Everything we're trying to do is, number one, get people to raise their hands and get people to change their behavior. And the easiest example I give, and I've given this before on the show, that we walk into a crowded room of people and we say, hey, let me see a show of hands. Who likes, who likes barbecue? And maybe half the room raises their hands. They said, great. Everybody who raised their hands, everybody who loves barbecue, you gotta follow me.
[00:11:49] Everything we do is trying to figure out who might want what we have, who likes the kind of food we have, who's willing to pay for the thing that we have. And then getting them to do that to pay for your thing instead of the other thing that they're used to, to cross the street and go to your place rather than go to the more convenient one closer to their home. That's what it is, right? So you're answering those three questions. What's your product? Who's it for? How do we reach them? And then you're getting people to raise their hands and change their behavior to do something different than what they're used to doing. That, in a nutshell, is all marketing is. And now what we do, right? That last thing, how do we reach them? There's a million different tactics, and tactics are changing all the time. The channels are changing all the time.
[00:12:32] But what matters most is that we understand that we have to solve a problem and then ultimately convince people that we have the best solution to their problem. That's my first big takeaway, which I knew, but I watched it land on so many faces in the crowd that I just have to tell you how, how foundational that is to your success marketing your restaurant number two. And this is from my co host. My co host is a guy named Rev Cncio. He is a marketing consultant for restaurants. He also helps a lot of tech companies. And he basically says this. He says, there is no silver bullet. If you showed up to this event looking for the one thing you can do that none of your people are doing, that none of the other restaurants in your market are doing, if you're looking for that silver bullet, you're in the wrong room. Get up and leave. Marketing is a series of little moves. Little moves that when done together and improved over time, can improve the business. That it is not about. It's about filling the leaky bucket, right? It's about plugging all the holes rather than getting the perfect bucket. It's saying, this bucket's fine as long as we plug all the holes. There is no silver bullet. It's a series of little moves. That was the second takeaway, my third takeaway, and I can't impress this upon you enough, and this was, and this did surprise me because we got a lot of this over the course of the couple of days Is that we would talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. And we'd say, great, what questions you have about that. And people would ask questions about totally other things.
[00:13:58] And finally we looked at each other and we said, guys, I know it feels like there should be, there should be more to it, but there isn't. This is it. This is how you market a restaurant. There's no other secret sauce. Again, no silver bullet it. And we would teach more and teach more and say, you just have to do this. And they say, okay, but can I just ask a question? What about that or what about that? We said, no, it's not that or that or that. It's this.
[00:14:24] It's this. It's a series of little moves which we'll get to. I will share some of the, some, some of the. The tactical blocking and tackling of this, but if it feels like you should be doing more, you're totally, totally wrong. It is a series of little moves. And each little thing doesn't feel like it matters that much, doesn't feel like it will have that big of an impact, but when done together, it absolutely will. Convincing someone to come in and try you is hard. Convincing them to come back after they've had a great meal is relatively easy. Asking them to go rave about you just get. Let other people know about the good experience is much easier than you think.
[00:15:07] What we have to do is we have to say, okay, we have to get new people in the front door, great. But then we have to make a really concerted effort. And in the event. I always talk about trip wires, right. Is that if we're going to spend the time and the resources and the money to get someone in the front door, which, you know, keeping a customer is always cheaper than finding a new one. But if we're going to go find new customers, then we need to make sure that they're going to trip on our trip wires. The trip wires are the booby traps we lay. Meaning the tripwire is that we're going to make sure that they have such a great experience and that they are invited back. So we make sure that every person who comes in will come back. We make sure that every person who comes in that has a great experience also will go rave about it. Meaning we'll take a photo, take a video, post that video, text it to friends, leave an online review. Right? Those are the two tripwires that we know every first time Diana who comes in, we'll come back and we'll spread the word about us and Then that becomes a flywheel. Then we can put all our resources into getting new people in the front door and we've got the systems in place to make sure that they come back and make sure they go rave about us. So we can put all our resources to getting people in the front door and on and on and on. It's self perpetuating. If it feels like you should be doing more, like you should put out the perfect video to go viral or you should be using AI or you should be geotargeting or whatever. No, no you don't. And certainly not before you do some of these fundamental pieces, the blocking and tackling. And we'll talk a little bit more about the blocking tackling in just a few minutes. That's that third takeaway. I know sometimes it feels like there should be more to it, but there isn't. There's a lot to it already. There's a lot to it, but there isn't anything more than that. There's no something special. You don't have to have the, the perfect recipe, the perfect video, the perfect website, whatever. It just needs to be functional, it needs to be consistent and it needs to be, and it needs to be, you know, optimized all the time. All the time, all the time that we're hitting all these channels with consistency. That's it. Those are the first three takeaways. Next three in just a minute.
[00:17:14] In Kind is the largest and only dual sided app based marketplace offering low cost capital investment for restaurants paired with exclusive dining rewards for restaurant goers. To date, In Kind has provided over $200 million in capital, giving restaurant operators alternative funding anywhere from $10,000 to $10 million to its over 1 million users. In kind is a free app where you get to pay your restaurant tab and earn rewards while dining out to the over 1800 US restaurant owners who have been funded by InKind. It's the source of capital that takes a lot of the pain out of starting and running a restaurant, ultimately helping their dreams come true.
[00:17:55] That accessing capital for your restaurant does not have to require paying back lenders, splitting profits with investors, or pledging your assets. Enjoy 15% back at thousands of restaurants and access exclusive dining perks and offers by downloading the in kind app at www.app.inkind.com or visit in kind.com to see how In Kind can benefit you as a restaurant owner and operator. Now, important restaurant strategy listeners can redeem a special offer by visiting in kind.vip/restaurantstrategy again in kind VIP restaurantstrategy. And yes, that link is in the show notes.
[00:18:40] Now we're talking all about the P3 Marketing Summit which we hosted just last week in Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm sharing my six biggest takeaways. Number one was that we need a fundamental understanding of what marketing is, right? Understanding the definition. Basically it's just getting people to raise their hand and then change their behavior. Number two, it's a series of little moves. There is no silver bullet. It's all the little things you do that add up to something massive. And the third one is that sometimes it feels like there should be more to it, but there isn't. You don't need to go viral. You don't need a celebrity. You don't need the coolest, the coolest looking website or the funniest commercial. You don't. You just need to do the little things right and you need to do them with consistency. Number four, and this was crucial. Purchase intent is everything. Organic social media. I feel really strongly about this. It's not all that important to me. I think it's, I think it's worth maintaining a presence there for sure because I think it's part of the customer journey for a lot of different consumers or potential diners. But there's no purchase intent on Facebook, on Instagram. Nobody's scrolling through to figure out where they're going to go eat. They scroll through when they're bored. There is purchase intent on sites like OpenTable, on Resi. People are looking for where to dine. There is purchase intent on even sites like Yelp. There is massive purchase intent on Google. When somebody says, best burgers near me, best tacos near me, best restaurant near me, all of that, they're hungry, they want to figure out where to go, what options they have around them, right? Purchase intent is everything. And therefore, because Google, right, Google is where people go to look for things. It's a search engine. So people go there to look for things. You want to make sure you're found by the people who are looking for the thing you have. For me, one of the biggest takeaways, this became really obvious sitting there in the room, is that Google is the center of everything. Google has become the center of the restaurant universe. And I know that wasn't always the case. Even five years ago it wasn't the case. But it is now the center of the universe. Their algorithms are better and better and better. The tools they have are better for us in the restaurant industry. Now we can, you know, put a preferred ordering partner or Prefer reservation partner. We can have a clear call to action. We can upload our own photos. All of that is crucial. Purchase intent is everything. Google is where there is massive amounts of purchase intent. If you've been ignoring Google, now is the time. Today, right now is the time to dig in, both on the organic side. So SEO, Search engine optimization and SEM Search Engine monetization. Now you don't need to pay a company to, quote, unquote, do SEO for you. What you need is a really good, clean website. There are plenty of great, there are plenty, plenty of great vendors out there. Pop Menu is one of the sponsors of the event. They've been a sponsor of this podcast for a long time. I recommend them all the time. I think what they do is, is really, really compelling. I think it's really great. So you really need a really great website because that is your, that is your mothership, right? And then you need to manage your listings and reputation. Now we had Marquis in the room is another sponsor of the event, Marquis, M A r q I I.com and Ovation.
[00:22:07] I'll put all of these links in the show notes, but Marquee manages your listings and helps you respond to reviews. Ovation helps you get more reviews. So those end up being a one, two punch. So having a great website, right, that has all your information that is correct. Having listings management provided by Marquee, having Ovation help you generate more reviews, and then using Marquee to respond to those reviews in real time, all of that and then filling out your Google My Business page fully, all of that will help you more than anything else when it comes to SEO. And of course the flip side of that, and this is what I learned a couple weeks ago when I was invited to the Google Headquarters for a restaurant influencer event. And what was consistently sort of banged into my head listening to Rev Talk, my co host at the event, the SEO search engine optimization is the organic part of it. And then SEM Search Engine monetization is the paid ad side and that's the yin to the yang. And when you do both things together at the same time, it makes for a really incredible one, two punch.
[00:23:12] And one will help drive more traffic to the other and vice versa. So if you have ignored Google, I would say today is the day to go into your Google My Business page to look at your listings management. Whether you're doing it yourself or using or using software like Marquee. Touch up the website, touch up your Google My business page. Make sure your listings match across the entire Internet because that affects Google and how they rank you. And then if you're not running ads, you have to start running ads. Especially if you're doing like catering or private dining. It's huge. But no matter what, you should be running ads. If you got a steakhouse in New York City, you should, you should be running ads for best steakhouse in New York City. If you've got a taco joint in Dallas, you should be running ads for taco tacos in Dallas or best tacos in Dallas or best Mexican in Dallas. Whatever it is, you should be running ads. If you don't know how to run ads, a quick Google search will show will give you all kinds of tools to do it. And if you really need help, this is something that we do in the agency side. So part of restaurant strategy is the podcast, part of it is the coaching, and part of it is the agency. We now manage ads for 38 restaurants across the country.
[00:24:24] We're just getting started and, and yet the impact we're making is huge. The results we've seen are incredible. So if you want that, you just email me directly. Chip close.com c h I p k l o s e dot com. You do that and I will put you in touch with my business partner, Monica Hammond. Monica runs the entire agency side of the business. You can have a conversation with her, she can expl exactly what we do. Even if you don't use us, though, you have to do it yourself or you have to get another agency to do it for you. And they have to know what they're doing. So that was the fourth takeaway and I know it's a big one, that purchase intent is everything. So therefore Google is the center of our universe. Google then is SEO and SEM, organic search results and local listings and paid search results. That is huge. Number five here, right? This goes hand in hand with that. Your website needs to be streamlined, right? It needs to be easy for people to take action. You'd be amazed at how many websites are counterintuitive. They just, it should be very easy, right? So there's a thing I say all the time, which is that who's visiting your website, where did they come from? What do they know about you? What do they still need to know about you in order to take the action you want them to take? And the fifth piece there, right? To take the action you need them to take is the most important thing. You have to reverse engineer it. You have to know what you want people to do when they land at your website. Because if you're running meta ads, if you're running Google Ads, if you are being written up in newspapers and on blogs and people, all this traffic is driving, you know, all these channels are driving traffic back to your website. Then you want to make sure that your website converts, that people will do the things you want them to do. When they land there, it should be easy and obvious for them to do it. If you look at any of the big boys, right, McDonald's, Chipotle, Wendy's, Olive Garden, any of these things, it's very easy for people to take the action that they should take. Same thing with your website. I always use mightyquinnsbbq.com it's one of my favorite websites, because it is absolutely frictionless. It's very easy for people to do what you want them to do, right? And so, P.S. it's usually one of two things. It's either order online or book a reservation. In rare occasions, it might be book a reservation or order catering or book online. Book catering. Right, right. Something like that. Right? Order online order catering if catering is a massive part of your business. Otherwise, it's order online or make a reservation. Those are the two main keys to action, the two main calls to action. And most websites, either one or the other, with rare exceptions, there would be a secondary call to action. But it needs to be really easy for people to do what you need them to do. Finally, then, the sixth takeaway here is that. And so we have five sponsors for the event, and they were handpicked by us, by me and Rev, because they have compelling solutions, solutions we know have tons of value, really help restaurant owners and actually do what they're supposed to do. So we were sponsored by Marquee, Ovation, Pop Menu, Spoton and Kubrick's, and they were really crucial partners helping us through the event. But they're really crucial partners for the people, the restaurant owners that are in the room there, right?
[00:27:46] The takeaway for me was that owners are looking for partners they can trust, partners that provide something, a solution to a problem they have. But mostly they're looking for partners that they can trust, software that they can rely on, and all of that. And so, and I know you guys, right? We didn't have tech stack 10 years ago. Now we got Tech Stack. And so you need to know who to turn to. I will say here, straight up that the people who sponsor the companies that sponsor this show are vetted by me, are handpicked by me. Most of them. Most of them were conversations initiated by me. I Reached out and said, I love your product. I recommend your product all the time. I'd love to put you in front of a broader audience of podcast listeners. Can we talk about. Can we talk about podcast sponsorship? So most people didn't pay me for the right to advertise to you guys. It's the other way around. I asked them to help me create this show, keep this show run, running, and to put their product in front of you guys so you can feel really safe with, under with knowing that anybody who's a sponsor on this show has been vetted by me, that I know the product, I know it works, I use it, I recommend it to clients, members have used it on and on and on. That was the same thing that was true at the P3 summit. And I know that's something that's. That's hard. You go to a trade show and there are hundreds or thousands of vendors, and you don't know. You don't know who to. Who to look for. And so you go to the names that you've heard or you go to the companies that your neighbor uses or whatever, and that's not necessarily the best one. So know that your trust means a whole lot to me, that when you listen to this show, you can. You can trust that the people that I'm putting in front of you, the companies I'm putting in front of you, actually do what they say they can do, are actually really good. And they've all been vetted by me. Same thing with the events. So again, big thanks to the sponsors of that event for helping us throw such a successful event. It was absolutely awesome. But I know the people in that room were looking for people they can trust, and I think they found companies that could help them with the problems they had. And I think they found partners that they could trust. That's that. The P3 Marketing Summit, Salt Lake City. Those are my six biggest takeaways. Keep tuning in. If you're not signed up on my list, please do
[email protected] Otherwise, please, please keep tuning in here. As soon as the digital access, right. The online version of that thing, because we filmed every single session. And you'll get the entire slide deck, the master deck, 624 slides long, long scripts, tactics, strategies, everything you need.
[00:30:20] All of that will be available in the next two to three weeks. So stay tuned. I wish it was available right now. It's just not. Because there's a massive amount of footage that we have to sift through and edit that's it, guys. I really appreciate you being here. If you have questions about any of this, as always, you can always reach out to me directly. I respond to each and every email I get. Sounds crazy, I know, but I do. So if you have questions about any of this, please do that. Otherwise, sign up for the list. Keep tuning in and you'll learn more soon. About the the Digital All Access Pass. Appreciate you guys very, very much. Thank you and I will see you next time.
