Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you do charity events, community events, street fairs, farmers markets, if you do any of those sorts of things throughout the year, I'm guessing you're doing them wrong. Let me tell you what I think you're probably doing. You're probably bringing a whole bunch of product, trying to sell as much, maybe trying to sell out and make as much revenue as possible. If that is your plan for those events, then, yeah, you are doing it wrong. I'm going to tell you how to do it right. On today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
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.
Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy. In case you don't know me, I wrote a book. It's called the Restaurant Marketing Mindset. I give talks all over the world. I host a group coaching program called the P3 mastermind. We put hundreds of people through the program. Over 150 people currently enrolled in the program. And of course, I host this podcast. I do this podcast, free information, free education, twice every single week. You can do me a favor, though. If you get any sort of value from this show, please go to Apple Podcasts, leave us a five star rating and review. That, more than anything else, signals to everybody else out there who's looking for help, who looking for a show like this, it signals to them that this is worth listening to. So if you feel like it's worth listening to, if you've gotten any sort of value, go to Apple Podcasts. It takes two minutes. Just leave us a five star rating and review. Just let people know what you've gotten out of the show. Bunch of you have done that, especially over the last two or three months, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. Go. Pause now. Do that and then come back.
Avi, you love to go out to eat. So, as a guest, what's your biggest pet peeve when you're trying to choose a place to eat?
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah, as the father of two children, I can't leave the house for less than $30 an hour. My wife has celiac. So when we're going to make a dining decision, I live and die by that menu. I'm in there researching what's available. What can my wife eat? What can we share? What do I get to eat off of her plate? Um, and so that menu is just a crucial part of all decision making for me as a consumer. It's why at Marquee we focus so much on our menus, our menu integration, so that as operators, your menu that lives in your point of sale that you want customers to see is available and up to date everywhere.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: To learn more about Marquee, go to marque.comm a r q I-I.com to learn more about this and all of the incredible features they have.
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All of those links will be in the show notes.
Okay, so today I want to talk about community events. And when I say community events, I mean these charity gatherings, a farmer's market, a street fair, anything where you are outside of your four walls, where you put up a tent, you put up a stall and you're trying to sell as much food as possible. Even I've got a client who does was a big vendor at the Texas State Fair and even they were doing it wrong and they make a ton of revenue over the course of the the month long event. If you are just trying to sell food and make as much money as possible, you are missing out on a key opportunity when you community events. It's to make sure that you deepen your relationships with the community. So bring product, bring very capable salespeople and try to sell out and try to generate as much revenue as possible. Obviously I know that's why you do it, but the whole point of going beyond your four walls is like a, like a big mothership is sending out little UFOs across the galaxy and trying to bring people back specimens back to the mothership. You, your goal should not be to sell food. Your goal should be to bring people back to the mothership. And if you go into it with that frame of mind, it changes how you approach your day or your weekend or your month at the Texas State Fair. If you say, yep, I'm going to sell a lot of food, a lot of hungry people are going to be walking around. We will feed them. Great, that's going to happen. That's going to be a residual benefit of you being there. But what you really want to do is try to get people back to the mothership. Now, there's two important ways you can do that, and this is a playbook of sorts. Number one, you've got got to get people's contact information.
Just like if you go to the bar and you see somebody attractive and you want to strike up a conversation, you ask, what. What do you do? You ask to buy them a drink. You say, hey, can I buy you a drink? And they say, yeah, sure. They don't take the drink and walk back to the corner with their friends. They don't. They understand that the point is to have a drink, right, 20, 30 minutes with this person, and if they hit it off, maybe they get their phone number and then go back to their friends, or maybe they have a second drink if it's going well. The point of buying somebody a drink is having the ability to have a little bit of connection and the ability to connect with them later. That's super important to remember when it comes to these community events. When you are doing these, the number one focus should be on gathering people's information. That's really crucial. The number one way I know how to do this is by using sort of the fishbowl tactic, right? Old school. You put a fishbowl out there and you say, hey, you know, enter to win a prize. Put your name, your email, and your phone, phone number, or put your business card in there and we'll draw a winner at the end of the day. Now, you can do this with a giant fishbowl. You can do this with a giant jar, a jug, whatever. You can also do this digitally using a QR code, right?
However you do it, you need a way to collect information. Now, the simple way is to just say, hey, we're giving away $500 gift cards to our restaurant downtown.
Just enter here and we'll. We'll draw the winners at the end of the day. And maybe you do it live on Facebook or, you know, whatever it is, Gather people's information, get them to put their name, their phone number, their email address, bonus points for their birthday. Trust me, you're gonna want that later.
Gather their information. They put it in the. They put it in the bowl, and then you draw winners at the end. Here's the important thing. When you draw the winners at the end, you will reach out to them and Say, hey, congratulations, you won one of these hundred dollar gift cards. We'll have it waiting for you at our front podium. Come pick it up. You do not email it to them. You do not mail it to them. They have to come to the mothership in order to get it. That's crucial right now to everybody else. So if you're at a street fair and there's thousands of people walking by all day, and you maybe get 500 entries into this thing, you give away $500 gift cards, and then you reach out to the other 495 people who entered the drawing and you say, use some version of this phrasing. Well, you didn't win, but you're still a winner even though you didn't win one of our hundred dollar gift cards. We're giving everybody who entered a $10 gift card. Just show this email next time you come into the restaurant. Again, the idea is to bring them in, right? To pull them into the mothership. And I tell you, even if people are collecting information and giving, doing a giveaway at the end, they are not doing that second move that I'm telling you to do, which is where you get 495 other people who are excited about your restaurant, excited enough to enter a drawing and to really give you their information.
If you reach out and give them a $10 or $20 gift card, whatever is appropriate for your price point, some meaningful percentage, maybe 20 or 25% is what I've found. In my experience, 20 or 25% of those people will come down, you will get them down. And guess what? When they come down and show their phone, their smartphone screen to the person at the register and say, hey, I was out at the fair and I entered a drawing and I got $10 off, as they said, just to show this to you, boom, a bell should ring. Because you know, now that your marketing worked. That's marketing, right? Marketing is about getting people to raise their hands, hey, who likes barbecue? And then people raise their hands, say, perfect. So enter here to win $100 gift card. And then when they come in, right? Marketing is two things. Getting them to raise their hand and getting them to change their behavior so they wouldn't necessarily come. But since you gave them a $10 gift card, basically, or $20 gift card, they changed their behavior and they went out of their way and they came down to you. That's how you make marketing work. You identify people who like what you have or would buy what you have. And then it gets them to change their behavior when it comes to customer acquisition, which is exactly what this is. That's all you should be focused on. Even when, if you're losing margin, even if you're giving something away, you're trying to get them to change their behavior. And it's not easy to get people to change their behavior. So give them something. So even in the fifth, the fishbowl tactic, right, you draw five winners at the end of the day. And yes, more than one winner is always helpful because people feel like, oh, I got better odds. So the end of the thing, you pick five winners and you reach out then to all the losers and you say you didn't win, but you're still a winner, and you give them a 10 or $20 gift card. That's what I found is a great way of doing it. Now, if you want extra bonus points, because you want to try and get as many people to sign up for that as possible, you give a tangible benefit there at the fair, right? So I would say enter to win a hundred dollar gift card, and everybody who enters to win also gets a free lemonade out here at the fair. Or they get a free, you know, free box of cookies, something that you'd be willing to give away anyway, that you really weren't going, right? So you've got cookies, you're not going to sell the cookies. You only do them to give it away. Because if they have the chance of winning a hundred dollar gift card and they get a tangible benefit right now in the moment, would they be willing to do it? Because if you get thousands of people walking by your stall and hundreds of people going there, you want as much as close to 100% of those hundreds of people to enter. And you know, even if people walk by and they're thinking, oh, I don't want to go to this restaurant, I don't want to go to this vendor, but they see there's some tangible benefit today and tomorrow by going, maybe that will tip the scales in your direction. Now, are you losing a little bit of profitability from the event? Yes, absolutely. Are you losing a bit of profitability when you drive people to the restaurant by giving stuff away? Yes, obviously you are, but you are acquiring customers. You are getting new people to walk into your restaurant. And again, getting new people to walk into your restaurant is important enough that I would be willing to lose margin just to begin that relationship. So if you are going to the street fair and you are manning it with enough people to just try and handle the crush, congratulations, you're not doing it right.
If you are focusing on customer acquisition, on data acquisition, because at the end of the day, right, if you get 500 people to enter, you get 500 emails, 500 phone numbers, you can do a text message campaign, you can add them to your, to your regular database and they then start getting regular emails from your restaurant so you can remarket to them again. This is why we go to the bar, we buy somebody a drink and we try to get their phone number so we have the ability to, to connect with them later tomorrow or next week. If you are doing these community events and only focusing on moving product, only focusing on driving revenue, you are missing the whole point of it. The whole point of it is to introduce yourself to people who don't otherwise know you because they don't come to your side of town, they don't regularly walk past your restaurant, they don't drive past your restaurant, they had no idea who you are because you are not convenient to their lives. But now that they met you at the street fair at the farmer's market, they maybe would go out of their way. Especially if you entice them, you make it a appealing for them to come that first time by giving them a discount. I promise you this is how to make these things work. And if you haven't done these before, wait till you see what it does to your revenue. Wait till it see what, wait till you see what it does to your customer acquisition numbers when you put something like this in place. That's it. That's how to make community events work. It's a simple playbook, literally do exactly what I've outlined. Appreciate you guys being here every single week. Obviously there are a lot of great podcasts for you to listen to. If you are a restaurant owner, you're ready to level up. If you're struggling with profitability, meaning you're stuck at single digit profits, or maybe right around 10, 11%, but you're ready for 15, 20, 25% or more. I promise you we're really good at getting good restaurants. More money. We can help you make more money, free up your time. That's what the P3 mastermind is all about. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com schedule that's the way to get that conversation started. You'll see there's a link to a calendar, you'll end up chatting with me or someone from my team. We'll get to know each other a little bit better, we'll see if you're a good fit, if we can fix the thing that you're struggling with. I'd love to show you how we. How we do that. Appreciate you guys being here. Thank you very much. I will see you next time.
