[00:00:00] If you're like any of the restaurants that I work with, I'm guessing that you are either flat or down from where you were revenue wise last year. And that's because the economy is going through this wonky period right now. But we still need to drive sales. That's why it's crucial to make sure we're focusing on catering and private dining. Because what's better than getting a deuce to walk in or a four top to walk in? Well, how about filling your private dining room with a 20 person party? Or how about booking a 40 person off site catering event that represents huge money and it comes in in buckets, not just in dribs and drabs. But we need a system for going out and getting it, for, for generating continued business and for finding new business. On today's episode, we're going to talk about your inbound and outbound processes, meaning inbound, how do you get your phone to ring? And on the other side, outbound, when your phone doesn't ring, how do you go strike out and find new business? This episode is highly tactical, very specific. Make sure you got something to take notes. All of that on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
[00:01:02] 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.
[00:01:33] 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 and sustainable business. As many of you know, I write books, I give talks, I host this podcast two episodes every single week. But I also work directly with restaurant owners and operators from all over the world in my P3 mastermind program. It's a group coaching format where I work with restaurateurs who are ready to make more money. If you are ready to make more from your restaurant, then the best way to get started to just have a conversation, no pressure, absolutely free. The best way to do that is to go to restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule. You grab time on the calendar. You'll chat with me or someone from my team. We'll ask some questions about you and your business. You'll get to ask us questions about the program and what I think you'll find is an incredible community. Over 150 people currently enrolled in the program spread across four different groups. We've put another 200 people, meaning over 3, 350 people are either in the program or have come through the program. We've grown it from one to two to three now four unique groups. The reason we've grown is because the program works. It's no no silver bullet, no pixie dust, no magic, just sound business practices and systems you can implement right away into your business. We always ask for a six month commitment, but I think what you'll find is a profound difference after just 90 days in the program again. To have that conversation, visit restaurantstrategypodcast.com Schedule grab time on calendar. As always, you'll find that link in the show notes.
[00:03:07] Now the National Restaurant association show happens every May. It is coming up in just a couple of weeks. Happens in Chicago, Illinois. I will be taking the stage. If you are going to be in Chicago, I want to know, I want you to reach out to me.
[email protected] Again my name is K L O S E
[email protected] Let me know you're going to be there. I'm going to be podcasting live from the floor on Sunday morning and Monday afternoon and then I give my talk on the very last day of the event. Event. I hope to see you there. And if you're on the fence, if you're still debating whether to come or not, this is me pushing you off the fence. Just go. They always get like 40,000 plus people in attendance, thousands of vendors. You are going to go there and level up. You're going to learn. You're going to connect with other owners and operators to figure out how to be better at your business. And hey, guess what? If you're there, you and I are going to get to connect again. The National Restaurant association show happens in Chicago, Illinois May 17 through May 20. I am on stage on the 20th and I hope to see you there.
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[00:05:46] Okay, so today we're talking about private dining and catering sales. And what I like about this is that, yes, obviously your product has to be buttoned up, right? It's got to be a, you know, good food, good service, right? You have to have warm hospitality. It's got to be something that people are willing to come back to over and over again. But when we're talking about business development driving more sales, this is a straight sales conversation. And so it actually has less to do with hospitality and more to do with the inputs and outputs. And I told you we were going to split this conversation into two. I want to talk about your inbound processes, and then I want to talk about your outbound processes because I think a lot of people out there, and I see this a lot, I think they take a scattershot approach. I think they use the shotgun approach where they just sort of spray, right? This is food drops out. You know, food drops at all the car dealerships, food drops at the local doctor's offices nearby without a real strategy, without forethought put into place. So I want to talk to you about how we connect the dots from step one, two, three, and four. Again, we're going to split, split the conversation in two. We're going to talk about inbound and outbound. Let's start by talking about inbound. When we talk about inbound, we mean inbound leads. So getting inquiries to come in, emails to come in, getting the phone to ring. For most businesses out there, you guys are just running an inbound campaign, meaning you're picking up the phone when it rings, you're answering the email when an inquiry comes in. And what I want to show you is that there are things you can do to make the phone ring more. You can things you can do to make more email inquiries come in. So what Are those. There are six different areas I want to cover and these are tactical, these are specific. And I promise you, they all work. Number one, you've got to optimize your website. So let's say you offer catering, right? Off site, off site catering. You offer catering trays, things like that. You got to tell people about it on your website. It's got to be somewhere on your homepage there has to be a dedicated page, right? Where the, you know, in the navigation bar it says catering when someone clicks there. Very, very. What does that page need to look like? It needs all of the following things. It needs big, beautiful pictures or videos, right? You have to tell the story visually. You need some clear copy that explains what you do best. Should I hire you for my wedding? Should I hire you for my office party? Should I hire you for the kids, you know, you know, soccer banquet? Should I what? What do you do best? What do you do? Well, right, I'm guessing you're not going to be perfect for everything and there's things that you excel at and things that you wouldn't do very well. So just people know, right? We cater, you know, functions from, you know, 10 to 50 people. We specialize in blah, blah, blah. Past events include blah, blah, blah. It's two or three sentence, right? For SEO purposes, but also for the users who are coming there who are looking for catering. Just tell them a little bit about what you do and what's in your wheelhouse. So the very first step is that you have to optimize your website. You have to talk about your catering in numerous places across the website. You need a dedicated, let's say catering page or a dedicated private dining page. You need beautiful pictures and or videos. And you need clear copy that explains what you do, who you're for, right? Should I hire you to cater my wedding? Should I hire you to cater the soccer party at the end of the season for the 20 kids and their parents in my backyard? Tell me what you do on that page. In addition to pictures, the videos, a little bit of copy. You need an inquiry form right there. So name, email, phone number. Phone number is crucial. Please do not just ask for the email. Name, email and phone number, date of the event, proposed time of the event, the number of people, and then what I always say at the bottom is, tell me a little bit about the party you're looking to throw. Tell me a little bit about the event you're hosting, right? What you're going to do is you're going to get into the heads and Say, well, I'm throwing a bridal shower for my sister and I'm throwing a, you know what I'd really like to is blah, blah, blah, they're going to tell you a story which then you're armed with something personal when you pick up the phone. So when we're talking about beefing up our inbounds, the very first thing you need to do is optimize your website. When you have a dedicated page that converts well meaning, captures people's information, drives them to fill out the inquiry, well then what happens is a lot of things we can do to send traffic there. Traffic just means users. Users who are on the Internet, we can send them there. There. The next thing we do then when we're talking about sending people there is we utilize our email. If you offer catering and or private dining, I would talk about that one out of every four or five emails and I would probably add it as a PS at the bottom of some of your other emails so that people are always reminded of it. You are top of mind when it's time for them to book the food truck, when it's time for them to book a private dining space for dad's graduation or dad's retirement, right? So you optimize your website and then you want to drive traffic, you utilize your email first to drive traffic. Again, one out of every four or five emails you send should be about your catering and or private dining. You should also leverage your social media, talk about it every once in a while in the feed, talk about it in your stories every so often. And if you've got a link, if you use something like linktree or Milkshake to offer a bunch of different links, there should be a link there to your website, should be a link to book your reservations, there should be a link there to explore catering options or whatever it is you offer there, right? So you're gonna optimize your website so that whenever you send traffic there, it converts and then you use your email to send traffic. Use social media to send traffic. I would utilize, and this is the fourth point here, I would utilize in store collateral. So depending if you're casual or fine dining, this works, right? In a casual setting, you're gonna put flyers up, you're gonna cards around, you're going to put a sign at the front host stand or at the bar, right? You're going to do that. Now if you're a fine dining restaurant, maybe it's just a simple postcard that you drop with a check or it's a Check insert that goes in the check presenter, right? Something to let people know that you have a private dining room or that you do off site catering. So utilize the hundred, two hundred people that you have every single night. If I had 200 people every single night, I would want to make sure to let them know about this very profitable product that I have that makes money 20, 30, 40 at a time instead of just two at a time. So don't, don't forget how crucial that is. Right. The last thing is to opt or the fifth thing is to optimize your Google listing, right? So on your Google my business page, you'd be amazed how many people do that. Part of that are like the, the different subheadings you include. Make sure you talk about your catering and or your private dining. Make sure there are pictures of your private dining room. Make sure there are pictures of catering trays if that's something you do. And the last thing, and this is really, really CR is run Google Ads for catering and private dining and run meta ads for private dining and catering. I'm telling you those two areas will drive meaningful traffic to your catering page, to your private dining page. And you don't have to spend thousands of dollars a month. You can spend 10 or $20 a day on either or both of those platforms. And for less than $1,000 a month, you'll be driving a ton of traffic to a page that hopefully has been optimized so it converts. So when we talk about inbound, right. When we talk about private dining or catering, a lot of people out there, a lot of restaurant owners I see just haven't properly maximized those areas, are not utilizing their social media and their email are not, don't have in store collateral, don't have their Google listing optimized, don't have a dedicated page, clean convert, you know, a clean page that, that is focused on conversion and they certainly don't run ads. So if you want to get started with this and make the phone ring more, generate more inquiry emails, those are the things you do. We're going to talk about Outbound in just a minute after another word from our sponsor.
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[email protected] RestaurantStrategy I will add in here. This fits in perfectly with what we're about to talk about again, davosalestax.com restaurantstrategy and yes, that link is in the Show Notes.
[00:16:57] Okay, so today we're talking about how we grow catering in private Dining. What I love about this is that this is just straight sales inputs to outputs. What are you doing to generate a result, to get a certain desire to hit a certain desired goal. Talked all about inbound. How do we get our phone to ring more? How do we get more inquiry emails? The other piece to this is outbound. And here's what I will say. Somebody told me this a very, very long time ago and I know it seems weird, but when you get these systems up and running, 70% of your business will be coming from your outbound efforts. Only 30% will be coming from inbound. And that's crazy to a lot of people because right Now I'm guessing 100% of your business is coming from inbounds. So just think of all the money you're leaving on the table. I'm gonna talk about how we get started properly with outbound in a very. And we have to start with low hanging fruit, right? In a very approachable way. When we get started with outbound, the first thing we do is we make sure to button up the systems that we already have in place. Number one, your follow ups. If you are not following up with every single client currently, this is how we do it. First of all, you must follow up with every single client the day after the event. So if they get lunch catering, you are calling them the following morning, the following lunchtime. If they do a private event on Thursday night, you are calling them Friday morning, morning. And you are not sending an email, you are not just thanking him. Hey, I hope everything went well. Let me know if there's anything you still need for me. Thanks so much. Click send.
[00:18:38] Done. What you do is you pick up the phone and you call them.
[00:18:45] When you get them on the phone, it's starting off like a customer service call and it's turning towards a sales call. If it's a B2B client, meaning if it's a business. Right. If it's a, let's say a pharmaceutical company that ordered catering from you or booked out your private dining room, what you're looking for is future business. So it starts as a customer service call, right? Hi, how was everything? I heard you guys had a great time. Just want to make sure. What did you guys think? Did you. Was there anything we could have done better, et cetera, et cetera? Hopefully. They say it's amazing. No, there's nothing. Nothing where you could have done better. It was perfect. Great. Then you say perfect. Tell me. We'd love to take care of you again. When are you doing this again. What events do you have coming up you want, you are pitching yourself for new business. That's what you do for B2B. And when you have a B2C client, meaning somebody booked out your private dining room for a graduation party or for a birthday party, all you're asking for again, it starts with a customer service call. How was everything? Is there anything we could have done better, blah blah, blah. And then it turns to, you know, listen, the number one way that we, that we grow as a small business is through referrals. Is there anyone you can think of of that's got an event coming up, a baby shower, a bridal shower, a graduation, a retirement party, a birthday? Is there someone you know that you can connect me to? That's what you do. You're asking for one or two referrals. And then basically what you're going to do is you're going to ask for their information and you're going to ask them to connect you via email. Would you mind just sending a quick email connecting me to your friend Diane, Right. And then she'll, you know, this person will say, hey Diane, I wanted to connect you to Chip. Chip runs the private events at restaurant xyz. He took care of our party last night. And I know you've, you were trying to find a place coming up. I think you guys should definitely connect. It's something as simple as that. And then basically you say, great, I'll take it from there. So if you are not buttoning up your, if your follow up systems are non existent or not buttoned up, now is your time. Now is the time to button them up. You have to be following up every, every single party the day after by phone, not email. The worst thing you can do is, well, great, I'm glad you enjoyed everything. Let me know if you've got anything else coming up. Click. They'll never call you again. What you have to do in order to get the sale, you have to be bold enough to ask for the sale. If they say, oh, I can't really think of anybody, right, you're going to say no problem. Do you mind just giving it some thought for a week or two and I'll just touch base in a couple weeks, is that okay? Right. You're asking for permission to reach back out, to follow back up with them and with the B2B client, right. They say, oh, we don't really have anything else coming up. We don't do many events like this. No problem. Do you mind if I just call you in A few months and see if you do have anything else that's popping onto the calendar. Usually they're going to say, yeah, that would be okay. You're just asking for the sale or asking for permission to sell them again, it's okay. That's how you get more business. I have worked with some of the best private events managers, catering managers, sales managers in my life. That's how they did it. They asked for the sale or asked for permission for the sale. That's the first step you do. Number two, you need a way to rework your old leads, right? So anybody who's booked a party with you in years prior, you should be touching base with them every so often. You should have good notes so you can have a personal conversation, but you should be reaching up, reaching out to them. So if you know an office hosted a closing dinner or a partner dinner or something a year ago, nine months after the event, reach back out. And it should be going into your calendar, right? So the, there's CRM software, there's sales software that will automatically set up tasks and reminders for you, or you can just do this manually. The bottom line is you have to be reaching out every so often, right? And the script goes something like this. Hi, I'm not sure if you remember me, my name is Chip. I'm the events manager over at Restaurant xyz. We hosted your partner dinner last January and I just wanted to reach out and see if you had anything else coming up. Have you booked a venue for your next, next partner dinner? Right. That's what you do. You find a way to rework the old leads to stay in their face, to stay top of mind. The last thing, and this is the thing we do right before we start cold calling, before we do food drops and all of that, what we do is we leverage your network. What you're going to do is you're going to get a piece of paper number at 1 through 50. If you've got partners, managers, chefs, whatever, they're going to get a piece of paper and list 1 through 50. You're going to put, let's say you do office catering. That's what you do. You're going to list everyone you know who has a job in an office. You're then next to that going to list what company they work for. And one by one, you're going to reach out to them and say, hey, Joe, I'm trying to grow the catering business here at the restaurant. I'm guessing you guys do catering there in the office. Who's responsible for ordering that cater for ordering the food. And would you mind sending an email connecting me to that person? What you're asking is to be personally connected to the gatekeeper. It's probably an executive assistant. It's probably an office manager. There's somebody whose job it is to order catering. And guess what, it's probably not their main job. It's probably just tacked on to their regular duties. It's probably a real pain in the ass for them. So what you need to do is have somebody walk you through the door. Door. Get you behind the closed doors. All you're asking is for an email connection and then you take it from there. Right. Thanks so much for the introduction. Moving you to BCC to save your email inbox. Hey Audrey, I know you're the office manager at this restaurant or at this office. We're trying to grow our catering business. Do you have a few minutes this week to chat about what you typically do and how we might be able to help you out?
[00:24:32] When you make a list 1 through 50 and all your partners or managers or chefs come up with a list 1 through 50, 50 and you work 100 leads, 200 leads. I promise from a list of 50 you will get 5 to 7 orders from that, from each list of 50, if you do this right and what happens is then your goal is to turn, you know, half of those five or half of those seven into repeat customers through the follow up campaign. Before you do cold emails, cold calls, before you start dropping food at random places that you've never heard of, the first thing you do is this. Just get the ball rolling with your own network. You have to be willing to leverage your own network and if that makes you feel uncomfortable, I'm really sorry. I promise you it will make you a lot of money. That's what I wanted to talk about. How we apply a sales process to our inbound and outbound strategies. Specifically when it comes to catering and private dining. Again, it all has to do with inputs and outputs. What are we doing and what are we getting out in return? Again, I want to thank you as always for being here. I want to remind you that I will be at the National Restaurant association show in Chicago. It's May 17th to the 20th. I'm podcasting on Sunday and Monday of the show and I will be speaking on stage Tuesday, the last day of the show. If you're going to be there, I would like to know. If you're going to be there, I would very much like to connect. I appreciate you guys each and every week. Tuning in this community is incredible. Feel really grateful to be at the center of all these great conversations. Thank you so much. I will see you next time.
