Secret Sauce - The Restaurant Marketing Podcast

It's a management truism that gets measured gets managed, that goes for Restaurant Marketing as well.

Last podcast covered the trends and the megatrend for indie restaurants.  We look at the trends for restaurants we see in 2018. 5.  Experience Design – VR experience at Restaurant Lume, Saved by the Max in Chicago and now LA.  These are examples of restaurants that are doing a great job with designeing an experience.  Where there is experience, there is margin! 6.  Zero waste – decrease food costs...

The changes we are seeing are: Changing / Evolving consumer tastes - looking for new experiences. Workforce management - the skills shortage is will drive significant change as restaurants look to manage their teams better in the face of declining numbers of people choosing hospitality careers. Profitability will be the mega trend for the next 5 years.  More restaurants are saying that it has neve...

6 - Marketing is all about discounting.  A lot of Restaurants already discount, especially if you are doing lunch or breakfast meals.  We look at dynamic yield pricing for Restaurants. 7 - We are killing it on Instagram, (or Twitter or Snapchat) - we don't need any other marketing.  Marketing must, Must, MUST be tied to revenue and too many people think that having 100,000 people following them on...

Wouldn't you be sad if your Restaurant was missing out on $100,000 a year in revenue because you believed a couple of these myths.  We discuss what we hear from Restaurants vs what we actually seeing as working for Restaurants around the world. We look at Restaurant Dark Kitchens and how they are starting to change the way that food is delivered to Restaurants. 1.  SEO is a monthly ongoing cost -...

We talk to Wally from Mama's BBQ Chicken and Salad Bar and the process he has used with Facebook Live videos to turn around his business. The Chicken Shop wasn't doing too well, some weeks needing to put money in to keep it running.  This is a problem that far too many Restaurant owners are all too familiar with. To try and turn things around, Wally started doing some Facebook Live videos.  More p...

  Processes - How do your team know what it is that they are meant to be doing and how do you ensure consistency across visits for customers.  Work out where the problems are and create a system around that procedure.  This is a part of winning back more of your time.  There will be less questions for you and less time fixing up mistakes. Restaurant Business Plan - Lets review the Business Plan th...

This is a self first aid program for Restaurant Owners to help you build the restaurant that you always wanted and that you can be proud of. We are focusing on small iterative steps that are low or no cost for Restaurants  How do you know if you need to do a Restaurant Rescue? Are you happy coming to work each day? Are you proud of the restaurant? Are you spending enough time with your family? Are...

We look at how Restaurant Innovation can help you build a more profitable Restaurant business. What is the link between Innovation and Creativity. We look at the Triad   Technique, Inputs and Creativity and how that feeds into creating an innovative menu, an innovative restaurant and an innovative business. We look at the approach to the ingredients that Shaun uses with sourcing ingredients.  How...

The team at Marketing4Restaurants.com have been busy creating our first courses for Restaurant owners. We are about to open the Marketing4Restaurants University.   We are creating a series of online courses to take you by the hand and skill up you and your team on how to run your own Restaurant marketing campaigns.  This is a really exciting development. We cover what is the story for your Restaur...

We talk to Restaurant Sales expert Robbie Doyle from Buy Grow Sell .  We look at the tactics that you can use and how you can best plan for the restaurant sale so that you can get the best sale price for your Restaurant. We discuss: When should you start to think about selling your Restaurant? How to prepare to sell your Restaurant? How do you work out the sale price of the Restaurant? What kind o...

The Restaurant industry is often a very tough  Today we interview Chef Shaun Quade from Restaurant Lume , and how his journey with mental illness has interacted with his journey to opening Australia's most creative Restaurant. This is an important subject for anyone who is travelling with mental illness issues (which is a lot of us), and also really important for anyone working with or employing p...

We look at the role that wine plays in a restaurant as a part of the experience that you are creating for your customers. What is the process that you should use in building a wine list and how does that reflect on the customers that you are looking to attract to your restaurant and what the menu is like. How can you use dynamic content on the wine list to increase the number of times that a custo...

    We look at Just Eats latest profit results.  Orders growth is slowing and they are relying more for Revenue growth on top placement, which is where Restaurants pay for higher results in the Just Eat listings.  In Australia, Menulog has struggled with the entry of UberEats and Deliveroo and our Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system. In this podcast we look at how you can build a community in y...

To many people think that Facebook is just selling stuff, but there is a lot more that you can do with it. In Restaurant Autopsy, we talk about a Restaurant that looks like it is entering the Groupon Death Spiral :(.  There are a lot of things that you can do that are free or don't take a lot of time, or are free and don't take a lot of time, and yet they still don't get done and this is how Resta...

Kyle Welter works at Tock , an ethical online booking and restaurant management software company.   We look at how Google Adwords works for Restaurants.  Not many Restaurants use Google Adwords, but companies like OpenTable and Dimmi use it very aggressively to come between their 'Restaurant partners' and the restaurant customers. We look at Arbitrage.  This is the process where you buy something...

We discuss some of the retargetting methods for Google Analytics and Facebook Pixels.  One of the Restaurants featured in the Cheap Eats guide 2017 for Melbourne only had a Menulog website.  It had Google Analytics tag manager and the Facebook Pixel on the website they provided to the restaurant.  Menulog makes a lot of money out of these marketing techniques.  They aren't too hard to set up and e...

We talk about the Masterchef Effect.  The Masterchef Effect occurs when your Restaurant gets a huge amount of publicity.  It could be from getting a great review on a popular website, winning an award, have a meal or event go viral or being featured on national TV, like Masterchef.  Too many restaurants aren't prepared for the Masterchef Effect and as such they miss out on the ongoing benefits of...

Hooray - Episode 50.  Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed to the Secret Sauce podcast since we started. We look at how a lot of Restaurants miss some fundamental marketing steps and when they get a great public relations win they aren't in a position to capitalise on that win.  Too many restaurants don't have a website, they don't have the Facebook pixel installed, they which means i...

We talk to Robbie Doyle from Buy Grow Sell  about the pitfalls and opportunities in negotiating a Restaurant property lease. This is particularly topical in Australia, with Sumo Salad putting two leasing companies into Administration because of the difficulties that they have had in negotiating the leases with Westfield.  Westfield, like a lot of shopping centre owners have tried to respond to dec...

We talk about Kalimera Souvlaki Art , which was recently written up in the New York Times by Sam Sifton.  How does a Souvlaki Restaurant in Melbourne Australia get written up in the New York Times? We talk to Veronica Fil, the Business Manager at Restaurant Lume . Lume was voted the Gault and Millau Restaurant of the Year in 2016. Lume works very hard to create unique experiences for diners.  They...

We look at Domino's Pizza.  They are a great example of a successful online ordering businesses.  The complete directly against Menulog / Just Eat / Delivery Hero and Grubhub.  They put a lot of work into their online ordering solution, because they need to differentiate themselves from other online ordering solutions. We look at the prices between 2 orders, one for take out and one for delivery....

Online ordering is a really important part of the revenue mix for some restaurants. This is the first part of a 2 part podcast on the economics of online ordering and how small restaurants are dramatically increasing profitability with a few simple tweaks. Menulog, Just Eat, Grub Hub and Delivery Hero are charging 13% commission and not giving the restaurants the email addresses, so it is very dif...

This special podcast covers the first two days from the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago.  The show is absolutely massive and after 2 days we have only down 2/3s of the show.  There are show many people to talk to, some many ideas to explore and some much food to sample :). We've gone looking for the best ideas to improve profitability in your restaurant, so we are looking at the pe...

This special podcast covers the first two days from the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago.  The show is absolutely massive and after 2 days we have only down 2/3s of the show.  There are show many people to talk to, some many ideas to explore and some much food to sample :). We've gone looking for the best ideas to improve profitability in your restaurant, so we are looking at the pe...