Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: There's a lot to learn when it comes to marketing any business, especially marketing restaurants. But if I could boil it all down to just one thing, one idea, one foundational piece, really, one book that I think all operators should read. It was written by Seth Godin. It's a book called Purple Cow. Purple Cow basically talks about the power of standing out, of being remarkable. He basically says over the course of that book, and it is very, very short, very easy to read over the course of an afternoon. He basically says the key of any small business is to create the kind of experience, to create a product, a service that moves people so much that they can't help but come back so that they can't help but go rave and tell other people about it. And the crux of that book, again, purple Cow by Seth Godin, the crux of it really gets to the heart of what our business is built on, which is word of mouth. In order for us to stand out in a noisy marketplace, we need other people to market with us and for us. So today we're going to talk about how you stand out. We're going to talk about how some of the best companies in the world, some of the best restaurants in the world stand out. You can apply these lessons directly to your business. It's a shorty episode. Don't go anywhere.
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. This is the Restaurant Strategy podcast, two episodes every single week. I also run a group coaching program for restaurant owners that want to increase the profitability of their restaurants. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com schedule that's the way that you get started. There's no pressure. You're going to sign up for a 30 minute call if you want to learn more about this program. I've been running this program for over four and a half years. The impact we've made is incredible. 30 minutes, absolutely free. You're going to get to know me, learn more about the program I run. I'm going to get to know more about you and more about the restaurant that you run.
Let's get to know each other. We ask each other a bunch of questions and let's see if you're a good fit. If we feel like we can solve the problem that you have, we'll talk about next steps and if it's not a good fit, totally fine. At least we will have met each other. It'll be a great conversation again. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule as always, you're gonna find that link in the show notes 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?
[00:02:58] 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?
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.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: To learn more about Marquee, go to marquee.com, m 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 in today's episode, I want to talk about the power of being remarkable, the power of standing out. Here's something very important to talk about this a lot. I got a bagel shop in my town and the bagel sandwiches are great. So I go and get a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich. It is great. It is a great version of that product. And I have never, never, ever, ever gone to any of my friends, texted them, called them or over dinner a week later, been like, oh man, I gotta tell you, I had this killer sausage, egg and cheese sandwich and they're like, yay at the bagel shop, right? I'm like, yeah, absolutely. It's never happened. While it is good, it is never so good or unique or stand out or differentiated. It is never remarkable enough for me to tell anyone about it. Now, if someone says, hey, where can I get a good, like, bagel sandwich in this town? I'd be like, oh, great. You know where? I love. I love to go to this place. But that has never happened. I've never gone out of my way. When people ask me, I'll tell them, so great. Kudos. They deliver a product that's good enough for me to recommend, but I've never gone out of my way to tell people about it. And that is a problem. Now, maybe you're sitting here and going, well, like, man, it's just a bagel shop. But if you want to survive, if you want to thrive, not just make money from whoever gets the idea to walk in, but if you want to give people the idea to come in and walk in, then we have to have this conversation about what I call evangelism. So if you've been following me for a while, if you've read my book, the Restaurant Marketing Mindset, you'll know that I talk about a marketing triangle. That when it comes to marketing, especially marketing restaurants, there's really only three things you need to do. You need to focus on customer acquisition, getting new people to walk in the front door. You need to focus on customer retention. So getting those new people to come back and increasing the frequency of visits from your customer base. And number three, you gotta spark word of mouth. I call that evangelism. Cause a restaurant grows the same way a church grows, right? So let me back up and say a church does not grow because a pastor walks into town and shakes enough hands, right? No, a church grows when service is held and a pastor stands up there and moves the congregation, moves them enough so that some woman in the ninth pew goes home or has dinner the next day or coffee with a friend and says, you know what? I heard this the other day at church and it really stuck with me. And she relays the story of the sermon that was passed on. And the person she's talking to goes, oh, my God, that sounds really great.
Sounds like it sounds like, I'd like this church. Maybe I'll come with you next Sunday. And that's how a church grows from 10 to 100 to 1,000 to 10,000. That's how a congregation grows. Because the pastor moves the people who are there, and they are so moved to Go evangelize for the church to go talk about their experience, the ways they were moved. It's really no different from a great restaurant, a restaurant that has this dialed in that when you have an experience and you can't help but talk about it. Now, when it comes to restaurants, word. Word of mouth continues to be the most powerful form of marketing out there. What has changed, though, is the form of word of mouth, right. Used to be you just, you know, had a conversation. I've shared this story before. So my wife and I like to go out to nice restaurants from time to time. And we've got another couple that we're friends with who are foodies. And so we go out with them a bunch, but we also go to different places than they do, and they go to different places than we do. And so what used to be, I don't know, 15, 16, 17 years ago, is we used to get together with them. We say, hey, so tell me, have you guys been anywhere interesting recently? And then they would say, oh, we went to this new place, blah, blah, blah. Or have you ever been to such and such. They would tell us some of the places they'd gone to in the two months since we had seen them. And what happens now, or what happened, you know, I'd say by like 2010, 11, 12, is that we no longer had to ask them. We would say, we would sit down at dinner and we'd say, oh, hey, I saw on Instagram that you went to Restaurant xyz. It looked great. Was it really? Did you guys really love it?
So by them posting, they are prompting, they are sparking the word of mouth. And then, yes, and then naturally, we ask them about it. They tell us more about it, and we either add it to our list of places that we want to hit or we don't. Based on their review, rather than us prompting it, prepping it, the restaurant has created an experience that the people, in this case our friends, the other couple, can't help but post about, rave about, brag about, gush about, evangelize about.
That's the key to marketing restaurants, word of mouth. And the key to word of mouth is I always say this. Think about it like you're putting your thumb on the scale. So word of mouth will happen naturally. Of course. People will come in and then go tell their friends, their colleagues at work the next day. They'll tell their mom when they talk to them on Sunday night, they will talk about it. But what I always want to do is put my thumb on the scale when at all possible. I don't want to rely on somebody to do it for me. I want to make sure I'm putting the thumb on the scale and that I know I'm helping to make this thing happen, whatever it is. And in this case, I want people to be so moved by the experience that they can't help but text their friends and tell their colleagues the next day and take a picture, take a video and post those photos and videos, videos and leave an online review. Not all of them, but any one or two of those aspects is a form of evangelism. And whatever is right for the person in my dining room, I want to make sure they know that this is something they're going to want to rave about. They're going to want to share the story of this. Now let me back up and let's remove this from the restaurant world. Let's remove this from the food industry. You know who does this really well? Massive companies like Disney. When you go down to Disney World and you go to Epcot, there's a giant golf ball looking thing. I mean, literally, it looks like a giant golf ball on the horizon. For the life of me, I don't know anybody who goes to Epcot and doesn't take a picture of that. And most people who take a picture of that also want to post a picture of that. It is a form of evangelism. And Disney, all those years ago when they created this place, said, man, this is going to be something nobody will have seen anywhere else in the world. And they will not be able to resist taking a picture. They will have to take a picture and they will have to share that picture. Right? So all those years ago, they. People would say, oh, my God, you'd never believe what I saw, right? And now it's that social proof. This is my kid in front of the giant golf ball at Epcot, right? The castle at Disney, the characters, there's all of Space, Mountain, whatever you want to say.
Disney, for an example, does this really well. You know who else does this really well? Cities, giant monuments. Paris is a great example of this, right? How many people out there, if you're listening to this, if you've been to Paris, answer this question. Did you go to Paris and not take a single picture of the Eiffel Tower? No, I don't think so. And when you went to Paris, and I'm assuming you took a picture of the Eiffel Tower, did you share that picture? Not necessarily posting it on social media. Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. But you probably shared pictures with your kids or your parents, your cousins, your friends.
You came back and showed people your trip and so they saw a picture of you in Paris or you in Paris in front of the Eiffel Tower. Cities do this really well, right? So again, it's New York City, the Empire State Building or the Freedom Tower, and you know, Chicago with Wrigley Field or the, you know, the river there. And you've got Boston with Fenway, and you've got, you know, London with the I, and you know, on and on and on. Cities do this really well with their monuments, right? It's something you can't help but take a picture of and you then want to share that. I can go on and on and share a million examples, but big companies like Disney do this really well, right? Great, great retailers do this. So you think about Louis Vuitton or Hermes or Tiffany or Chanel.
They do this really well. And again, my example of cities. Cities do this really well. New York, London, Paris, Tokyo. They've got things that you can't help but take a picture of, right? You take a picture of it and you share it. And these are manufactured, right? Of course, there are landmarks around the world, there are national parks, and there are certainly amazing things. But I'm talking about how you build marketing and how you manufacture something, right? Epcot, the giant golf ball, is manufactured. Somebody had the idea to put something up that nobody had ever seen before, that nobody was ever gonna replicate. And then people come in, they take a picture of it. They can't help but take a picture of it. Same thing. Eiffel Tower was such a unique structure. It continues to be such a unique structure the world over, on and on and on. And of course, then I could give tons of examples of restaurants that do this really well.
I'll use a high end example just because you guys probably know it. So Grant Achatz has a restaurant out in Chicago. It's called Alinea. It's three Michelin stars. It's a very expensive, high end restaurant.
Only tasting menus. It's molecular gastronomy. So it's quirky, it's weird, it's lots of science in there. At the end of the meal, they do this table dessert. So they literally put down these giant boards and like smash things onto the table and splatter chocolate and everything. And they literally give you a spoon and you eat right off the table. It's very cool. If you've never seen it before, it's very unique. It's not like you order a piece of chocolate cake. It's not like you're ordering the creme brulee. You're getting this dessert smashed onto your table and you eat right off the table. It's cool, it's quirky, it's different, it is remarkable. It's something you take a picture of, a video of, it's something you tell people about, it's something you want to post to prove that social proof, that status that you were there. Also at Alinea, right after that, the last little picture piece, the last beat of the meal is these helium filled sugar balloons. So they literally deliver these sugar balloons. So instead of it being a balloon of rubber or latex, it is made out of sugar and they've pumped helium in there. So what happens? You press your lips to the sugar and you suck in and the helium goes in and everybody's talking like they're chipmunks. And then at the end, as the helium is removed from the sugar balloon, sugar gets smaller and smaller, smaller. It becomes like a piece of candy that you can then eat. It is like nothing else in the world. It is extraordinary. It is the definition of remarkable. Right then when we talk about a low end version of this, I talk about black tap, right? Kraft burgers, beers, and they do their like crazy shakes. So if you've never seen these, these are milkshakes that are giant. They've got like hunks of cake hanging off the side. They are remark, they are unique. It's like something you've never seen before.
They are expensive, they are things you see a picture of and you go there to get it. And then you can't help but take a picture of it and post it to prove that you got the thing that you're supposed to get when you go there.
So there's a high end example, there's a low end example, and there are a million in between. The bottom line is someone thought through this. And again, I can give you a thousand examples. My clients, if there are members of the P3 mastermind listening to this, they will know I share tons of examples of you.
You simply must come up with something that people can't help but order.
You need people, you need people to go out and talk about you, right? Word of mouth. If we agree that word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool out there, which I wholeheartedly believe, and I think you do too, it's more important than any ads you run, than Google, it's more important than your website. Word of mouth, the experience moving people so that they go and talk about it, because you got 100, 200, 300 people who come in every single day. I would like 1, 2, 300 people to go out into the world Raving about the experience they just had.
So don't just be a plain, boring bagel sandwich. If you're gonna do a bagel sandwich, man, do it. So even this place. So then what would I do if this place hired me? My little bagel shop right in town. Right again, they're great. I would recommend them. If somebody asked, hey, where can I get a good bagel sandwich for breakfast? I would tell people to go down there. But what would I do to make it so that people couldn't help but talk about it? The simplest thing right here's a simple idea, Is that maybe I do my bagel sandwiches as triple deckers. Maybe I do regular bagel sandwiches, but then I have one item on there that is a massive bagel, oversized bagel sandwich. Instead of the bagel sandwich being like six bucks, maybe I have a $22 bagel sandwich. Now, I don't know what you'd have to put on a bagel sandwich to make it worth $22, but I'm sure we could put our heads together and come up with something that somebody said, man, they really great bagel sandwiches, and it's crazy. They do this $22 bagel sandwich that honestly is really expensive, but actually sort of worth it. It's lights out. It's got this on it and this on it and this on it. Man, you'd never believe how big it is or how tall it is or how stacked it is or messy it is. Whatever it is, I would build something that you can't help but talk about it, right? And it would be sort of outlandish.
It'd be sort of flippant to say, hey, here's a $22 breakfast sandwich when everything else on the menu is six bucks. People would be like, oh, crap. You would get a certain percentage of people that would say, all right, man, I got to see what this $22 sandwich is all about. And again, from an operations perspective, you, got to make sure it delivers. You got to make sure there's value, even though it's expensive, which is not easy to do. But if I were taking over that place, I would come up with something that didn't exist. Either the way we present our bagel sandwiches Is totally different than the way any other place makes theirs, Or I would come up with an item or two that was so outlandish so out there, going to the edges, that people are like, oh, yeah, really great bagel sandwiches there. But you know what? They do this one crazy thing. And even if you only sold a handful of them every single day, and it's the thing that would get talked about, because you would say, well, I went down and got this really great bacon, egg, and cheese. But you know what's crazy? When I was there, I saw on the board, they have this crazy $22 thing. So even if this person, even if I went down there and didn't order it, I would be moved to talk about it.
That is how you approach this thing. So if you have a signature dish, I hope it gets photographed and videoed and ordered and talked about. I hope people come in and say, oh, I gotta get that thing that everyone is always talking about.
If you don't have a signature dish, you need at least one. If you have signature dishes and they are not your most photographed, most videoed, most posted item, then you've got a problem. And I would strongly urge you to think outside the box and come up with some way to get this thing talked about, either in the dish itself and the combination of flavors. Right. Or the presentation or the service flourish that sort of accompanies it. I don't know what it is, but I know there are a ton of great examples out there. And all you have to do is think about your last 20 dining experiences. And of those 20, what are the ones that you still remember, and what are the ones that you talked about unprompted, not when somebody asked you about it, but when you said, oh, my God, you'll never believe this. Oh, my God, it was crazy. Oh, my gosh, I have to tell you about it.
That's how you know you're onto something. And you can draw upon your own experiences to come up with this. And I'm telling you, if you think about this, you will come up with something smart. That's it, guys. Be remarkable. Stand out. Create a differentiated product, a version of what you do that is unlike anything else out there, and that's it. That will help grow your business more than just about anything. Again, the book I talked about at the very beginning is by Seth Godin. It's a book that I called Purple Cow. It gets to the heart of this thing that we're talking about. You got to stand out. You got to be remarkable. Again, my name is Chip Close. This is the Restaurant strategy podcast. Appreciate you guys being here, and I will see you next time.
