Secret Sauce - The Restaurant Marketing Podcast

We talk about what you can learn from visiting a Trade Show like Foodservice Australia 2019. Too many Restaurants don't think about how they need to be innovating to keep ahead of the competition. A great way to do this is to head to a trade show and talk to the vendors and other Restaurant owners about what is happening in the industry. We discuss - Organic Hemp Kombucha from Happy Hippy Drinks, True Foods and their activated charcoal wraps Italforni Pesaro's 90 second Pizza oven. These are just some of the examples of ways that you can innovate in your Restaurant. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

This is Part 2 of our Restaurant KPIs and Restaurant Metrics podcasts, detailing the kind We discuss cash flow tracking and influencing. Rent / Hour. Fixed Costs / Hour. These 2 metrics are often not considered in the Restaurant Business plan. Make sure you check out the show notes, or download the podcast, we have a lot more info on Restaurant Metrics jam packed into this profitable hospitality business podcast. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

Your restaurant's performance is bounded by it's performance across a range of Key Performance Indicators, but many restaurants don't bother to look at these numbers. We have 8 monitors that generate automatic data for our business so that everyone can see how the team is performing. We discuss 7 groups of KPIs that are critical to running a successful restaurant. We discuss some easy ways to collect and analyse these KPIs and improve your restaurant business. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We've discussed myths before, particularly marketing myths in Episode 64 and Episode 65 - Restaurant Marketing Myths. This episode covers the Restaurant Myths that we see that are causing financial damage to so many Restaurants and some of these are killing Restaurants. Have a listen and see if you are falling for one of these myths. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

If you interested in cutting Restaurant costs, check out our Free Tools. We talk about just how much people are saving with these ways of cutting Restaurant costs. We look at the myths about the kind of food that you have in the restaurant, and how great food just doesn't speak for itself. It's the economy stupid - no, often it isn't. There might be fundamental issues with your Restaurant that you need to fix. Everyone will love my Restaurant - no they won't. And try to appeal to everyone is a great way to have an average Restaurant. You can't create a great culture in a Restaurant. Wrong, there are lots of ways that you can do it. Check out Nick Sarillo and Carrie Luxem, they are experts in building great Restaurant cultures. 9 (yes number 9 in our list of the Top 7 Restaurant Myths :) ). You can't make money in Restaurants. Yes you can, you need a plan, a great team, some great products and you need to execute on it. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We have more details on what we cover in the show notes. We split the venue into different parts: Food Drinks Events And discuss some bespoke marketing ideas for each of them, and then combining them for a better result. Have a listen for our tried and true methods of increasing large venue patron numbers. Links mentioned in the podcast: Creating an Annual Restaurant Marketing Plan. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We discuss one customer who increased his prices by 30% for UberEats customers. His REVENUE stayed the same, (so he lost 30% of orders). This means that he is now shipping each order at a price that makes sense for him. Many Restaurants are turning to Pick up only services powered through their own website, using FROLO, the Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system to take orders without commission and offering a pickup and save campaign. Looking for ideas on how to find new customers and turn them into repeat customers. Lots of tricks for Pubs, Clubs, Hotels and Bar marketing that can make a big difference in revenue and profitability. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We discuss who you can create a template for a marketing campaign based on the Lamington Cake restaurant marketing campaign that we discussed a few episodes ago. Links mentioned in this podcast. We discuss the campaign by Dinner by Heston. We look at some of the ideas we mentioned in the online ordering podcasts. Here is the Restaurant Creativity and Innovation podcast. How to create an Annual Restaurant Marketing plan. Some great ideas for How to get Great Restaurant Photos. These are the resources mentioned. To see what we discussed in this podcast, visit the Podcast Show Notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We continue on with our discussion on increasing profitability with online ordering. We look at decreasing costs with companies like Menulog, Just Eat, Grub Hub, Uber Eats and Deliveroo. Should you use UberEats or Deliveroo? Which one is better for your Restaurant? What is the long term prospects for Menulog? We discuss where we think this will go. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We discuss packaging, kitchen throughput, pickup only and differential pricing. For the details of what is discussed in this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

This episode has an example of a great Restaurant Marketing campaign from the talented marketing team at Dinner by Heston. We break down the process that they used and more importantly the way that you can replicate their success. Check out the show notes which have a lot more detail on the episode and the example of the marketing campaign. We break down the new Lamington Cake marketing campaign, looking at the steps they took in this great marketing campaign and how you can do this in your Restaurant. Disclaimer - these guys aren't customers of ours, we are just fans of their food, their team, their Restaurant USP and their marketing! For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

This is the 3rd in our SEO series for Restaurant Websites. If you missed the first one, have a listen to it first, as this podcast builds on the first and second episodes in the Restaurant SEO series. Check out the Show Notes for this podcast. This Restaurant SEO Series is designed to help you do your own SEO or at least work out if the marketing company you are dealing with knows anything about Restaurant SEO. If your looking for help, you can always talk to the Restaurant Marketing Experts! :) We would love to hear from you! For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

Check out last weeks episode and our Google Analytics podcast to help you get the basics for Restaurant SEO. We continue on with some of the tricks that SEO companies use, like monthly SEO contracts. The main thing that a lot of Restaurant Marketing companies do is send through reports, especially SEO reports, many of which are automatically generated. What platform is best for your website SEO? We discuss some of the tools that you can use to make the SEO better. Remember, we are now talking about technical SEO, not the business SEO. Wordpress tends to be a lot better for SEO because of some of the tools that are available. A great example if Yoast SEO, which is pretty much the industry standard for SEO tools in Wordpress. The more often you create content, the more you need to think about SEO tools. Make sure your Website is secure. Google has made a commitment to try and make sure the internet is safer for people using the internet. One of the ways that businesses can make the web more secure is to make sure that there is a Security certificate installed on the website. This means that communication between the browser and the website is encrypted and ensure. This is pretty easy to do, but there are still a lot of websites that aren't optimised. Is your Restaurant website mobile optimised? This is really important because the number of people browsing your site from a mobile is increasing all the time. Google has a quick and easy tool to help you find out if the website is mobile friendly –https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly. How fast is your Restaurant Website? Speed is a big factor for Restaurant websites. How quickly does each of the pages load? People on a mobile often are on networks with slower downloads, and they often leave a page if it is taking too long to render, so check the page speed of your website. Here is a Google tool to help you with this and the report has some things that you can look at to increase the speed of your website. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ A lot of the information is quite technical but it is a great tool to tell you if you have issues and see if you need to talk to your web developer. This report will also give you some tips to increase you websites page speed. Stay tuned for part 2 of our Top 10 Tips for Restaurant Website SEO.

We talk about why it is super important for all Restaurant owners to take a holiday and some of the tips that we used to take our big Christmas holidays. We talk about the differences between business and technical SEO. We discuss the technical SEO tips that you need to be thinking about for Search Engine Optimisation for your Restaurant Website. The first tip is to review any contracts you have for SEO. A lot of people spend a lot of money on SEO without any real results from their efforts. We discuss the data that we are seeing for Restaurant websites and we discuss the Return on Investment for individual pages. We like to focus on the individual ROI for each page on your website. The ROI can be very high for niches that you are ranking for. The SEO is all about getting those customers in for the first time. There are other techniques to get them to come back. We discuss a multi niche strategy which can really help you increase the number of visitors to your website. We discuss the average number of visitors to your website. Some people don't know how many visitors they get and some are shocked at the actual average number of Restaurant visitors. We look at Corporate Events as a part of your SEO and why it is important to look at what you are trying to focus on with SEO. Don't fall for what we call the 'electrified banana' effect. This is where an SEO company will shape you towards keywords that are easy for them to rank for, not what is going to make money for you. We discuss some of the tricks that are used in the SEO industry so that you can have a better discussion with them about what YOU want. (Obviously, we do Restaurant SEO, so maybe you should take to us. :) ) One of the SEO traps you need to watch out for is if you are being brandjacked. Restaurant Brandjacking can decrease the effectiveness of your SEO and increase the cost to acquire a customer AND decrease the numbers in your Restaurant CRM.

How did you go with the Restaurant Trends podcasts, looking at the trends that we see as being important in 2019? We look at the Restaurant Customer Loyalty Graph in this podcast and how you can drive customers to the right, increasing the value of your average customer in the process. We are now presenting a new view so that customers can see how customer loyalty is evolving over time to have a time based view of customer loyalty. This is built into FROLO and FORBS, providing a great way for you to see how your customers are becoming repeat customers. Repeat restaurant customers are really important because it increases the average Long Term Customer Value for your Restaurant. Our demo of the Restaurant Customer Loyalty Graph shows how customers become worth more to your Restaurant as they order or book more often. We discuss how your Long Term Customer value graph can show you the success or lack thereof of turning new customers into repeat customers and why for some Restaurants this isn't a problem, but for others it is. Your customer loyalty graph can increase the value of your Restaurant when you look to sell it. Identifying loyal customers is really important creating great experiences for your high value customers. Loyalty coupons, such as in FROLO, can dramatically increase customer loyalty. The loyalty coupons drive customers to order again, especially as the customer gets closer to their free meal. Email marketing is a great tool for increasing LTCV for your Restaurant customers. Facebook retargetting is a really powerful way to re engage with customers. Are you using the Facebook pixel? This is a very powerful retargeting tool that works well across website visitors and visitors to a certain page. What is your process around special events? This are a great way to give existing customers a reason to come back and can be married up with a call to action towards new customers in the niche that you are targetting with your special event. Driving customer behaviour with repeat visits can form habits and customers with a weekly habit are among the most valuable customers for a Restaurant. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

Beverages are part of the megatrend towards healthier options that an increasing number of people are going to be looking for. Fermented drinks like Kombucha are going to be increasingly popular, with 5x the number of people looking for Kombucha now than 5 years ago. We discuss where you want to sit in the product adoption cycle / trend uptake and whether you want to be doing the heavy lifting in educating your customers. We discuss bugs - are they going to be a trend with bugs? Possibly not. A lot of people are talking about it, but there is still a lot to do with customer education to make it acceptable and there is also a lot of work to be done with the supply chain for it to become economically sustainable. Delivery + Take Home. Pizza delivery has been done, probably since the 1950s. Deliveroo wants to see a dramatic uptake in breakfast and lunch deliveries and will be looking to charge 35% commission. Breakfast will probably be hard work to find people looking to order their breakfast for delivery. We discuss the options for Restaurants as there is a slowly increasing number of customers looking to eat in their own home. There are options for Restaurants rather than signing up for Deliveroo / UberEats / Delivery Hero / Grub Hub. Check out the Free Restaurant Online Ordering system. Maybe try a pick up only system, do your own deliveries, or try some of the other combinations. We discuss the genius in the Dominos Pizza delivery system and the delivery fees that Dominos charge. We think that these are some of the smartest guys in the delivery game, and you can use some of their tricks. Innovation - this is becoming an increasingly hot topic. More Restaurants are searching for ideas on Restaurant Innovation, in fact our podcast on Restaurant Innovation is one of our most popular episodes. Whether it is in the menu, the business model, the site, the team, there are a lot of strategies that Restaurants are becoming increasingly interested in to help differentiate themselves. Niching down - more Restaurants are creating bespoke niche plans across multiple niches in their Restaurants. We discuss some ideas like your Whiskey drinks list. Marketing - there will be a lot more Restaurants that are going to create a real marketing plan. Using the data that they have from their online ordering system or booking system and trying to target and retarget as many customers as possible. More restaurants will be looking at ways to move their customers to the right on the customer loyalty graph. The number 1 trend for the Restaurants - well, you will have to listen to the podcast. :) Seriously though, this is really important and it is a really common mistake that we see time and time again and it really is detrimental if you aren't focusing on this trend. People who follow this, restaurants who build this into their business, they are much more likely to be successful. We talk about the search for General Tsao's Chicken. If you haven't seen the Netflix documentary, check it out - it is a great example of menu engineering and adapting a cuisine to a market. Cricket OJ + Yoghurt smoothies. Yes, we talk about Crickets and OJ smoothies. Have a glorious 2019! For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We have created our list of the trends that will be impacting (increasing or decreasing) profitability. This is based on our conversations with our Restaurant customers across 17 countries along with some Google search trends analysis, plus our reading of the We talk about the impact of being behind the trends, with the example of the Melbourne Burger Wars. We discuss the winners, places like 8 bit, Huxtaburger and Easy's. We start by discussing Google Search Trends and what you can learn from it and more importantly, how you can use it in building your marketing and business plan. This can help with your specials and your menu board. We talk about wages in Restaurants. Restaurants are looking at the product that they have, so that they can decrease the skills requirements, looking at roster costs. Openings - there will be a lot more openings this year. As the pressure increases in the industry, there are more experts looking to take advantage of the opportunities that are coming up in the industry. These opportunities are coming about through the leasing deals that are on offer. The food trends themselves are something that a lot of Restaurant owners chase, but I don't think it is as important as many people think. The ability to authentically and passionately relate to a type of food or method of cooking is not something that can be changed each year to chase the new trends and it confuses customers. Beverages- coffee, tea, fruit drinks. There is a lot of opportunity around beverages, as a source of income and as a way to increase the gross customer spend. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

This is part 2 of what we've learnt in producing the first 100 episodes of Secret Sauce. 5. We continue with a discussion about Creativity and Innovation. This is something that we are seeing a lot more restaurants starting to focus on. We look at food combining and some other techniques that you can use be work on your creativity. We also discuss innovation and what it means in your Restaurant. We discuss how you should embrace failure in your Restaurant. It is a fundamental part of the innovation and creativity process. 6. We discuss how you should be thinking about your customer contact details as a part of your Restaurant Marketing plan. Having a plan is really important and something that probably all successful Restaurants have. There is a lot of information that you should be collecting and using to turn your new customers into repeat customers. We look at the importance of the marketing plan and how you can create an annual restaurant marketing plan. Planning makes execution a lot easier, because you will have the time that you need to plan for each of your marketing campaigns. This is really important, especially if you are planning on creating special dishes as a part of your campaign. We discuss the role that Red Robin's Ramen Burger campaign played in the revenue increase that they saw. 7. There is a lot of information that you should be collecting and using to turn your new customers into repeat customers. We talk about using Facebook ads as a part of the research for your marketing plan. You can run ads to see whether customers will be interested in a product or concept. This is a really cheap way to do market research. 8. Who are your customers? Do you really know who they are? 9. We discuss the art of tying all of this together. It creates a much higher level of complexity that people need to be thinking about, but in putting it all together, you will decrease the cost to acquire a customer. We talk about how Restaurants can get help with implementing a Restaurant Marketing plan. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We review what we have learnt are the most important things in Restaurant Marketing. Thank so much to all of our listeners. The response to Secret Sauce has been truly amazing and we have learnt so much in producing it for everyone. We review our Top 5 podcasts of all time - these are the ones that have been downloaded the most and that people continue to download today. Our Top 5 podcasts of all time are: 39 - The Secret of Restaurant Profitability - New ways to look at Restaurant revenue and profitability. 1: 8 ways to make your Restaurant busy on a Tuesday night 20 - Your 90 Day Restaurant Marketing Plan before you open your Restaurant 37 - Restaurant Innovation and Creativity 40 - Restaurant Leadership - Steps to help you be a better leader in your Restaurant Technology: Mobile Phones for photography and marketing, POS machines, IP Cameras, online ordering and bookings management systems, hiring and managing your, and your staff. Team: Your team is a really important part of the product in your Restaurant. We talk about the experience we had at 7 grams. It is a great story of how building a great team is so important. Your Story: What is your Restaurant's story and how do you tell your story? Is it included in Step 0 of the SEO process? How do you niche down your story? Your Menu: Costing a menu that contains epic dishes that draw customers in is the underpinning of a strong and successful marketing plan. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We look at how you can improve your Linkedin Profile. This is something that you want to do before you start actively posting, because people will start looking at your profile and you want to have the best profile possible. The next step is to start building your Linkedin network. Who should you connect with and who should you avoid? How can you increase the success rate with the connection requests that you send? What is the importance of having over 500 connections? Why is this an important metric? How much time should you spend in Linkedin? We look at how Linkedin works for Corporate events. This can be a real sweet spot, with businesses looking to do Corporate events. These are less price sensitive and generally run events midweek, which can be really profitable for a restaurant. We look at building multi-channel marketing strategies with Linkedin as one of those channels. Are you a Restaurant Thought Leader? We then discuss what you should be posting up on Linkedin. Creating posts that demonstrate your knowledge and your skill is really important. Videos, of course, are a big opportunity as well. The better the post, the more engagement you will have. Tag people into the post. Show of your skills and your knowledge, or share news from the industry with your take on it. The feedback that you get from the Analytics in Linkedin gives you a really good idea about what is with your audience. We finish with a really cool trick that you can use in Linkedin. Have a listen. Not a lot of people know about it and it can be a real game changer! For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We talk about really hot Chicken Vindaloos! A great little Indian Restaurant with a really hot Vindaloo. This is a key differentiator for them in the local market and we look at how they have a pretty unusual menu for a traditional Indian Restaurant. They have a few mini platters, making it easier to upsell customers to a higher average sale value. We talk about why you should be thinking about Linkedin Marketing and we also talk about a way that you can create a Linkedin Marketing process that is quick and simple to do so that you aren't spending too much time on yet another Social Media platform. We discuss how you can use Linkedin to help with building your personal brand, it can help with hiring, corporate hospitality, finding partners that you can do joint marketing, and staying up to date, networking. It can also help with getting customer feedback. There are half a trillion impressions per year on Linkedin, but only 3 million are sharing content, so there is a lot of impressions going to a small number of users. This creates a big opportunity for those who can create the content. Make sure that you set some time to have a look at your profile because you want to get your profile right before you start driving people to your profile. How can you make sure that your profile is set up for success? There are some things to think about to create the best possible profile to help you be successful. We discuss the reasons why Linkedin is worthwhile to use. There are 500 million people on Linkedin! For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We discuss (quickly) the power of Linkedin and how it can help you with your Restaurant. Check out my profile and connect with me to keep up to date with the best tips for Restaurant marketing. :) We then continue our series of podcasts on how to get great images for your Restaurant. Take a little time. Make sure that the lighting is good enough for the photos. Dim lighting is your enemy. Look at the shadows. Make sure the lens is clean. We see too many images with dirty lenses. Use a tripod when needed. They are cheap and a mini tripod for your phone camera are very cheap. Try different types of framing. Look at the composition of your photos. Try the rule of thirds. Be on the lookout for great photos. Learn how to use your camera. Learn some of the advanced photography photos. Don't use the zoom on a mobile. Use different perspectives. Make sure that the background and the framing is correct. A clean background draws the eye into the food that you want to photo. Have a think about black and white, sepia or any of the other filters that your camera has. Use the photos in multiple places. Have a look at post processing. Learn how to use a photo editing program. Try Canva or even the Microsoft Word photo editor. Take multiple photos. I am always adjusting settings, backgrounds and framing so that I can get the best possible image. Unleash your creativity! Take the damn photo! Photography is a great way for you to show your creativity, your food and your Restaurant so it is worth the effort to get some of the great images that you need for epic marketing. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We celebrate new customers in France and Cyprus! We discuss GoPros and their use in your Restaurant and the kind of video that you can create with a GoPro. What are the types of images that you need to produce for your Restaurant Marketing? There is a process that you can take to get the kind of images that will help you convert better from prospects to customers and customers to repeat customers. What are the photos that you need? Who is in your value chain and what part can they play in your marketing? What is your role in the Restaurant? What role can you play in marketing? Should there be photos of you in your Restaurant? Sometimes it is important not to be in the marketing of your own Restaurant. We talk about those situations. Do you market your team? Are they in your Restaurant photos? Team photos can have a big impact on the restaurant and we discuss the benefits you can have in sharing images of your team. Photos can really tell 1,000 words and in your marketing plan those 1,000 words can be really valuable, so getting photos of the right kinds of images is really important. Why are photos of Restaurant important and what is the number 1 problem with most common Restaurant interior photos? We talk about derisking transactions. This is something that a photo can do really well and can be very important in improving your conversion rates. People want to avoid conflict so they are often unlikely to bear any risk as to what the experience is that you are offering. Photos can really help with that. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

Customers first eat with their eyes, so the photos that you use on Facebook, Instagram, and your website are really important when you are trying to convert prospects into customers. Before we get started with Restaurant Photography, we look at a little bit of marketing innovation that is working really well for one of our customers. We look at how you can get the images that you need for your Restaurant marketing. We talk about Professional Photographers and the best way that you can structure a brief for your photographer. How can you get the best value from your photographer and what tips are there for the kind of photos that you need? Not everyone has the budget for a professional photographer, so what are the alternatives? We have some great ideas around how you can get some great photos on the cheap. How can you drive your customers to take photos of your food and of your Restaurant? User Generated Content from your customers is a great way that you can increase the amount and strength of the word of mouth that you can get from your customers. What about your staff? What is their role in the photography part of your marketing plan? We discuss what types of cameras that you can use. Should you use a Digital SLR, a compact, a phone camera? Make sure that you have the photos that truly represent your passion and your food. We've seen websites that have photos that I think actively decrease the chances that a prospect will come into your Restaurant. You don't want to be one of those Restaurants. Photos help tell your story and that story is a big part of why new customers will come into your Restaurant. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. We discuss the merits of mobile phones and the photos that they can take in your Restaurant. Food photos with modern mobile phones can be a really quick and powerful way of getting the photos that you need of your food, your team, your customers and your Restaurant. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We start out by talking about Adriano Zumbo's Patisserie, which went into administration. We look at this as an example of how you need to be careful about your Instagram marketing. It is hard to get people out of Instagram and even harder to create revenue from it, so we look at some ways that you improve the profitability of your Instagram marketing. Adriano even sold his house, possibly to try and keep the Restaurant business going, so this is a real tragedy. Was it related to Fancy Nance? Could the concept have been better tested with a popup? Are you selling Restaurant Gift Certificates? Should you? Does your GC system feed into your CRM? We look at how important it is to identify your high value gift certificate customers. Gift Certificates can be a great way to improve the cash flow of your Restaurant. What is the breakage rate of your Restaurant Gift Certificates? Not every Certificate gets redeemed. This is added profitability for your Restaurant. Too high and you could be creating upset customers, but there is a definite opportunity to improve margins. There are 2 customers in every Restaurant Gift Certifcate transaction, the buyer and the recipient. This transaction gives you 2 contact details, which is why your CRM system is so important. Restaurant Gift Certificates are a great way of increasing brand awareness for your Restaurant because it creates locked in customers. We also discuss product extension and inflation, both good reasons to be using Gift Certificates in your Restaurant. And finally, don't forget the upsell opportunity. So now that you fully understand Restaurant Gift Certificates, sign up for our Free Restaurant Gift Certificate system. It does everything you need, even taking the payment for you. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We discuss the Just Eat half year results. Our advice is always to try and negotiate on the rates that they charge. There can be a big variation between the commissions that they charge different restaurants - so negotiate and see how much you can save. (Or you can get Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering with FROLO) :) This episode covers People and Processes so that you can take a holiday. People. We've talked to some experts on Restaurant hiring and culture, like Nick Sarillo from Nick's Pizza and Pub in Chicago and Carrie Luxem, from Restaurant HR Group, about how to hire right for your company and how to retain great people. Getting the hiring right is a big part of building a strong team and a strong team is a team that can function when you are away on your holiday. Process The last P in the 3Ps of taking a holiday is process. How do you do everything in your Restaurant? Clear communication about what the job entails and how it needs to be done. We look at a couple of examples around how process can make a big difference in your business and how it can build trust into your business. Too many businesses don't do inventory and they are afraid to leave the business because they are worried that too much stock will walk out the door if they aren't there. Too many restaurants are only open when the owner is physical in the Restaurant. If you had great processes, you can then open longer, which can dramatically increase profitability. Have a listen to this because it can make a big difference. Some tech we use are Slack and Zoom. This helps our teams communicate. Confluence is a great tool to keep all of your procedures. This is great for recipes and for all of your opening and closing routine procedures. IP cameras are a great way to provide a powerful tool to help with trust. It is good to be able to review the video for instances when a customer claims a hair is in their soup, or someone working the till, or the staff member that doesn't do any work. Helping Restaurant owners take a holiday is a big thing for us, so if you've used any of our tips or tools to take a holiday, please send us a photo! For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

As a restaurant owner, when did you last take a holiday? We is your next holiday planned for? Do you have a holiday planned? Too many Restuarant owners aren't able to take even a short holiday from their Restaurant and I think that is really sad. It leads to burn out and people falling out of love with their Restaurant and if you don't love working in your Restaurant, how can you expect your employees to love coming to work, and when no one loves coming to work, your customers aren't going to love coming in to eat. We talk about Foodora leaving Australia. There was no surprise here, especially with their 2 court cases coming up in Australia. There has been a big backlash from Restaurants struggling with profitability and from customers as well. We talk about some of the tricks that Restaurants are using when they are using Deliveroo or UberEats to retain some profitability. The look at the 3Ps of Restaurant Holidays. Profits - you need profits to pay your wage and the costs to go on holiday! People - Great people make it a lot easier to get away. Processes - Great processes makes it easier for people to do what they need to do the way that you want it. Burn out is a real risk in running a Restaurant. There is a lot of horror involved in running a Restaurant. There is customers, suppliers, reviews, staff. A lot of these things can create a lot of pressure for you and without a break you can end up burning out. Too many people run marginal businesses without decent profit. Nothing is going to change if you aren't going to change. If your Restaurant is marginal, then you need to do something new, you need to change the business to make it profitable. A successful business is a business that gives you a good return for the work you put in. If the business plan won't work you need to change the business plan and if you aren't getting the number of customers, then you need to change your marketing plan. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

Knowing what is going on with your website is an important ingredient in your Restaurant's Secret Sauce. We look at bounce rates and then we move onto the dark arts of Restaurant Marketing - campaign tagging with the Google Analytics campaign builder. This is really important because it helps you keep your marketing accountable. Website speed and page load time is a really important part of the SEO for your site. This is more important for mobiles and most Restaurant customers are on mobile. Check the speed with the Google PageSpeed Insights page. What are the 2 types of customers who will be using Google and how do you treat each of them? What can you discover from the Behaviour and site content pages? There is a lot of information that you can find here and some of it is very important. We finish with the Secret to Restaurant SEO. This is what most SEO companies don't want you to know, we share it with you so that you can come up with a great SEO plan to increase web traffic, increase customers, increase revenue, increase profits and then decrease the number of hours that you are working in your Restaurant. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. We talk about our Platform, which give our customers comparative analytics, so that you can know how you are doing compared to other Restaurants. This can be a big competitive advantage over Restaurants not getting this information. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

Did you check out the episode on how to fly like a celebrity chef? The good news is that I have been practising what I preach and I've been lucky enough to make Platinum with Qantas. There has been a bit of travelling around the world, visiting Restaurants and being Platinum certainly makes things a lot nicer. How can you craete a loyalty program that makes your regularly customers feel really special? We go through each of the tabs on Google Analytics about the key metrics in Google Analytics. This will help you to understand how people are finding your website and also give you the insights to improve it. This is the most important part that you want to be thinking about. If you don't have Google Analytics, here is a link for how to set up your Google Analytics account. We go through each of the key metrics and what you can learn from the metrics and how each one of them fits into the Restaurant marketing process. Not only what does each of the metrics mean, but how you can increase them. Generally, hopefully, more traffic to your website means more customers in your Restaurant. How many people are coming to your website on a mobile? Is it mobile optimized? If not you might be missing out on many of the new customers that you need, especially if you are in a tourist area. The Audience tab gives you insights into who your customers are and what they are doing. Male vs Female and age group information can also be found. What are the differing sales techniques that you need to use for new vs returning customers?

Many small Restaurants use Credit Cards to pay for a lot of bills. With some really simple changes, you can make a really big difference in the kind of travel that you can take. We talk to Steve Hui from I Fly Flat. This is something that we do a pretty good job of, and I was able to get an upgrade to Business Class last year for our family as we flew from Melbourne to Singapore in December last year. This was an Epic experience flying Business Class with Qantas. Steve discusses a range of tactics that you can use fly in style around the world, just by changing some purchasing habits and maybe just even changing your credit cards. Travel is a really important part of life, I think. Experiencing different places, different cultures. To pick the right card, you want to match it to your suppliers. We talk credit card surcharges and some ways that you can negotiate down the credit card surcharge with some of your suppliers. Not many small business owners are doing this, but it can be a great way to start travelling, or to start travelling in style. We look at a way that you can increase the points that you get from making payments to the government, which can make a really big difference in your points balance. We talk about the experience as a Qantas Gold customer, which gives access to Lounges around the world. Grab a quick shower in between flights and some complimentary food and drinks before your next adventure. The kids loved the upgrade to Qantas Business Class. Important point - make sure that are paying off the credit card balance each month so that you are avoiding the expensive credit card interest. ** Update ** As we having been flying around the world seeing customers and studying Restaurant marketing, I have managed to make Platinum, which give you access to the First Class Lounge. OMG! These are epic. Definitely something to think about. Woo Hoo! ** Our BHAG is to make a meaningful difference in Restaurant Owners lives. Hopefully this will help inspire to start planning towards taking your next holiday. If it does, please send us a photo of you on holidays. We would really appreciate it. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We talk about a Restaurant in Perth who had been struggling for years and years now. He had a Restaurant that had very poor SEO, was quite hard to find in Google. He had a purple website with no images and no online bookings. It seems that the Restaurant wasn't too bad, but the marketing was just awful. The marketing mistakes that he made over the last 4 years could have easily cost him an extra $200,000. What could he have done with an extra $200K? Or should he have closed the restaurant 4 years ago? Either way he would have been better off if he had made a choice 4 years ago to either change something fundamental with the way that the Restaurant was run. We also look at the tragic story of Esquire. Head Chef, Ryan Squires, had worked at elBulli, French Laundry. A great chef who has worked his guts out running a great Restaurant and he has closed it and he views it as a waste of time. The food was immaculate at Esquire, great sommelier, eclectic mix of food and drinks. I thought the pricing was on the cheap side for the experience that they provided. How do we build Restaurant business that give the great chefs the resources that they need to run successful Restaurants. We look at some of the issues that Esquire had with it's marketing. Full on a Friday and Saturday night but quiet during the week, that is the hallmark of a great restaurant with marketing issues. There were a range of issues with the website and the online marketing. You don't want to have the best Restaurant that no one has ever heard of. He had a falling out with his business partner and that left him alone. Partnerships, when they work, can be very powerful and Ryan was left with all of the problems of running the Restaurant. For a Chef like Ryan, who needs to be highly creative and focused, it is very hard to do that when you are running the business yourself. Ryan is a highly mature chef, who approached his business in a very mature way. Hopefully we will see him back at some time in the future. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We look at what we learnt from Dinner by Heston. Firstly, have a think about the photos that you've got. I will put some images up in the show notes to give you an idea about the kind of photos that you can take with an entry level camera or a decent mobile phone. Dinner by Heston has a unifying story throughout the menu - cooking food for centuries ago and reinterpreting them in a way that is interesting and compelling for customers. Every dish had a story and they tell the story really well. There was Savoury Porridge. This was green and gives everyone something to talk about. Green Porridge. For Dinner. Savoury Porridge. Lots of interesting components to the dish to get people talking about the Restaurant. I was lucky enough that my wife had booked the Chef's table for us. A great high value experience that gives you a close up view of the workings of the kitchen. Our tea came with an hour glass to tell us when the tea was properly steeped. A small thing that signals the value of the experience that you are having. As a part of the Chef's Table, we were able to see the quality assurance commitment that the team have. It shows. The steak that we had was probably the best I have ever had. Mentoring in the Restaurant - does your head chef do this? Helping out all of the team to be their best in the team. I think mentoring is a big thing, it makes the team better and good mentoring usually means that your team members will stay with you longer because you are investing in their career. We look at the sourcing work that the sommelier. An eclectic range of drinks that were immaculately paired with the degustation menu. Do you have an incremental revenue opportunity from Birthday cakes? Have a think about creating unique and epic desserts. How can you create something, a physical link with the experience that you have created? Are you using OpenTable? Are you getting the email addresses of your customers booking through OpenTable? Do you want to be giving them access to your booking list to another company? We talk about IP leakage and what it can cost you. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

What if you ran your Restaurant like Princess Cruises? I spoke to a Restaurant owner and he said why think about cruises? We look at operational efficiencies and how looking outside the Restaurant industry can give you ideas about innovation for your Restaurant. We discuss Southwest Airlines and how they redefined industry best practice in turning around the aircraft. It is a great story about culture and innovation that you can use in your Restaurant. We look at our time from on the Sapphire Princess. We look at the food with Princess Cruises. It is amazing the quality of the food that is produced out of a floating kitchen. We talk about what it is that your customers buy from you. Often it is not the food, sometimes it is, but there are other products that customers are looking at. The chefs did a great job in the descriptions of the food. There were theme nights. These are things that can drive more customers on quiet nights. What if you swapped chefs with another chef to create unique events? We talk about the experiences created by the pool, watching the TV. We discuss beatboxing squirrels. Princess Cruises aim for a family demographic and do a lot of work around creating experiences for the entire family. How do they upsell with their alcohol? For a family, what is your mocktail play for the children? Wine tasting seminars, cocktail making seminars. All of these are experiential events that add to the value of the cruise and are centered around food. The chef ran a cooking demonstration, followed by a behind the scenes of the kitchen. 2670 guests and a crew of 1100. 3 square meals a day. The costings and planning are done very well, because when they can't run done the road to the local market. The cruise industry understands revenue per available bed. They aim to fill every room that they can. Princess Cruises really understand the power of social. The staff were always very keen to take a photo of the passengers with their own camera, knowing that the photos would be shared on social media. How do they create great experiences around the food? For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We discuss products and services. What is it that you do? Many restaurants that we speak to who have been running restaurants for 10 years still do not know what it is that they do and what it is that their customers buy from them. For the numbers for your Restaurant, make sure you have pessimistic numbers in there. Too much optimism in your P+L spreadsheet makes it very hard to be long term viable. What is your pricing strategy? How do you put a restaurant under management? Innovation - what is your approach to Research and Development. R + D can be a clear differentiator for your restaurant. Restaurants are designed for innovation, but too many don't innovate. Insurance, the costs and what is covered? Are you designing your customer for high throughput? Is your kitchen limiting the number of customers that you can manage? What is your strategy around supplier choice - this can make a big difference for your story, your margin, and your success. Fit out costs for your Restaurant. How can you get a cheap fitout for your restaurant? How much inventory do you need and how will you fund it. We look at the Restaurant Marking plan and some of the big mistakes that people make when it comes to the restaurant opening. Trading hours. This is a small question but has some huge implications for your Restaurant. This is not an easy question to answer without a fair amount of thinking and planning. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We talk about creating a Restaurant Business Plan as a living document to help you better run your business. We have a copy of blank Business Plan Template and we go through the process of filling it in, and give you some ideas and guidance around the kind of information that you need to put in there. Why is it important to create a Restaurant Business Plan? We look at some of the resources that you can use to fill in some of the gaps that you have. We discuss ownership structures, with the positive and the negatives that can coming from the varying structures. We look at some sources for funding for your Restaurant, there are some sources of funding that most business don't think about. What are the considerations for the domain name and the business name. We look at the considerations that you need to think about and some of the ways that you can protect your business and your intellectual property. Business location. There is a lot to think about in the location of where your business will be. We talk about the implications for revenue, rent and profitability are with the locations that you select. Should you buy your premises? What are the risks and rewards of this strategy? We look at the structure of the Restaurants organizational chart. What are the considerations here? How do you retain your key staff? Who is going to perform the roles that you need in the restaurant? What is the succession planning for the roles in the restaurant? How should you do your policy and procedures in the restaurant? Hiring - where can you find the people that you need for your Restaurant? Is Facebook advertising an answer for your recruiting needs? How long will they we working in the restaurant before the restaurant opens? How will you train your team? For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

Carrie is owner of Restaurant HR and company that specifically deals with Restaurant HR issues. She also runs CarrieLuxem.com which helps Restaurants with the broader HR issues, like leadership and culture. We discuss the definition of Leadership and how it is so important in Restaurants. What are some of the steps that people can take to be a better Restaurant Leader? We also look at the relationship between culture and leadership. Can anyone be a leader? We talk about some books that you can read: Rework - By Jason Fried Start with why - Simon Synek What are the first steps to take when you are trying to turn a restaurant around as a leader? You need to hold people accountable to what they need to do. At what size Restaurant is it important to create a vision? Carrie has created resources to assist Restaurant owners to create and execute on your Restaurant's Vision, Mission and Purpose. We talk about Linkedin and how Carrie uses it to grow her profile. Have a look at Carrie's excellent book - Restaurant Operators HR Playbook For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

We finish off place. Have you thought of running your Restaurant like a franchise? Get the economies of scale in purchases and economies of scales in activities in your restaurants. Create an operations manual so that everyone knows what needs to be done in the restaurant. We look at dine-in, take out and delivery. We finish off with promotion. Promotion is not about the promotions that you run, but the channels that you use to promote your restaurant. We look at some of the ways that you can increase the effectiveness of your promotion. You don't want to be the best restaurant that no one has ever heard of. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

Price Setting - How do you set the price? Price Leader, a Premium Price? How does that impact your customers and how does it impact your profitability? We look at M Y China and one of their amazing dessert item - the Sugar Egg Puffs. These are awesome. How does Menu Engineering fit in with your pricing? We look at the Dogs, Stars, Puzzles and Plow Horses. Revenue Per Available Seat Hour. What is this metric, where did it come from and how important is it to your business model. How can you influence it? Getting the balance between your fixed and variable costs is critical. How can you increase the number of hours that your restaurant is open without increasing the number of hours that you are working? Loyalty discounts can make a big difference in increasing customer loyalty. This increases the Long Term Customer Value for each customer and increases the Return on Investment for each new customer that you find. Payment Terms. Restaurants Love Cash! Prebookings can decrease your no show rates. Prebookings for fixed product, eg a degustation menu means you may be able to vary the price for higher demand nights. Place - where is the the place? Is it your Restaurant? Valet Parking? Ubers? Courtesy buses. How do food trucks fit into the mix? For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

What are the 4Ps and the Restaurant Marking Mix? We look at Product. It may be something that you eat or it could be something else, or a mix of both. When you fundamentally understand the product that your customers want, you will be able to price it appropriately. What are the demographics of people that you want to target and what is it they they want to buy? Should you change the products that you sell through the duration of the day. What is the competitor analysis look like? If there are 8 local pizza shops, you probably don't want to be the 9th. What do you do and do you specialise in it? How does the length of the menu impact the time your customers take to decide. Packaging is a part of your product. You want to avoid using other brands packaging for your food. Use the packaging to reinforce your USP. How does Nick Sarello at Nicks Pizza and Pub use monthly customer pizza recipes to build a community. Too many restaurants don't use just noticeable differences in their pricing strategy. Is Price part of the Product for your menu items? What is yield utilisation and how can you get it to work for you in your Restaurant? For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

Firstly, make sure you check you Google My Business account for your Restaurant. Incorrect information could be costing you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars! We talk about Jamie's Italian. A restaurant chain over $100 million in debt with stories of poor food, poor team culture and poor experiences for diner's. A Sydney Jamie's Italian was filmed using packet Gnocci when they advertise making their own pasta. I am not a food lawyer, and technically, yes gnocchi is not pasta, but it highlights some of the concerns about the chain. Jamie Oliver has done an amazing amount of work, particularly with school kids, to improve the diet of millions of people and to try and limit the power of food and drink manufacturers who create unhealthy food, but it looks like a licensing deal for his name. Building scale and keeping the quality is very difficult, it comes done to leadership and procedures. We went to Lagnaa Bare Foot Dining. This is a great Indian Restaurant in Singapore. Chef Kaesavan has done an amazing job with the menu and the experience that he creates. A lot of effort has gone into crafting the menu which does a great job of telling the story of his food. The experience is around the bare foot dining, which you need to ask for. Off menu secret items and experiences are a great way of making people feel like they are in the in crowd and everyone wants to be in the in crowd! The menu highlights child friendly food and has a heat rating for the hot dishes, with special events for those who love their food really hot. Bailey's Galub Jamun! Everyone should go there and check out how Chef Kaesavan has put together such a great experience. We went to Port Klang in Malaysia. There was one restaurant on Google we liked the look of, tragically it had closed, so we wandered around looking for authentic Malay food. There were a few restaurants, but none that were tourist friendly and had put in any work to attract walk ins. We ended up having some epic Japanese food. Beard Papa - this is a chain that does the 'World's best cream puffs'. These were a favourite with the kids (young and old) and would be the perfect addition to many restaurants desserts menu, looking for something tasting and I think probably high margin. Cow Dung Tarts in Malasia - they looked great, but I am not sure how keen I am to get more cow dung in my diet! :) For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes. It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page. We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools. Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.

What is the Boost Juice way of marketing? How can they get PR coverage for an app update? Another example of how being a little bit out there can get you some great results. We managed to fly to Singapore in Business Class with @qantas, which was super awesome. Make sure you are looking into your credit cards and the points you collect! We got the upgrade with points which was super cool. We talk about the Tourist Traps. These restaurants rely on tourists, sting them and know that people will never come back. It was hideously expensive for what it was and we got tricked by the happy hour deals. We found Tokyo $5 Izakaya. This was a great restaurant. There was no website, only a hungrygowhere listing. This was clearly not enough because they are now closed :(. They had great food, great value and provided a great experience, but it is no good being the best restaurant that no one has ever heard of. Not having a website meant no Google places entry and less customers. Avocado Espresso smoothie - the Avo Freak from The Hangar. We visited Hong Kong Soya Sauce, Chicken Rice and Noodle. How can hawker food get 1 star from the Michelin Guide. What is the lesson for you in menu design from the street food hawkers. What lessons are there from Singaporean Street Food. How can you create innovative meals and experiences with ideas from street food. We look at packaging with Meatballs in a bucket! Molten Raclette Cheese is an amazing taste! Travelling is great for the soul and it is great for inspiration as you can see what other people and other cultures are doing with food and this can help you in your kitchen and in your restaurant to be more innovative and creation. Restaurant innovation can be a key ingredient in restaurant profitability.

This podcast started with an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that described Menulog as "the business partner he never wanted". We look at Restaurant Brandjacking and websites set up by online aggregators which look like the web Adwords Arbitrage. We discuss how restaurants can advertise on Google Adwords and get clicks to their platforms, not your website. We talked about this with Kyle Welter who used to work at Google and understands how big companies use this practice. We discuss how the margins that restaurants are charged by online aggregators and how some restaurants are dealing with the large fees that they are charged. How does the restaurant circle of life work and how can you avoid being of the restaurants that fails. Domain squatting - We have issues with big companies like Menulog registering domains 'on behalf' of restaurants. This becomes their property and they will build one of their websites, which don't have your phone number and don't havedirect contact details for your Restaurant. Each order coming from that website is charged the commission that they normally charge. Variable commission campaigns - restaurants are now getting a better placement in the online aggregator platforms by paying higher commission. We have seen this with Grub Hun in the United States. Vertical integration risk - Are the delivery companies like UberEats and Deliveroo looking to cook their own food? Deliveroo Editions is just one step away from Deliveroo cutting the Restaurant out of the entire picture for their business. As they look to increase profit margins, I think that it is a really big risk for restaurants. The restaurants are low cost with very low property costs. If they learn to cook, they could be very difficult to compete against. Franchise restaurants are starting to look at delivery options and online ordering aggregators. This may squeeze out the small restaurants that were the traditional customers of the aggregators. Is your brand at risk from other companies? Brand risk is increasing as big companies work to build their brands, not yours. Risks to the restaurants when using delivery companies include the lose of control over the time and delivery service that is provide. We discuss some of the interesting stories about delivery riders from the big delivery companies. The risks for UberEats and Deliveroo include whether the deliver rider is an independant contractor or an employee. There will be more scrutiny on this, especially around the minimum wages. What is UberEats long term plan - we discuss their race against time. Are battery powered delivery scooters are viable option for Restaurants to build out their own delivery service? Have you thought out about pick up only services for your restaurant? It is the perfect accompaniment for a restaurant with spare kitchen capacity. Are you using a Restaurant loyalty campaign for your online orders? Our Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system (FROLO) provides a built in loyalty campaign that works really well to increase the frequency of customer purchases. FROLO supports a receipt printer, SMS notifications and even a mobile orders management system. Drive your customers to Order Direct and Save! It's good for customers and great for you! :)

Oohbah Butler is a journalist who writes for Vice. He used to be employed to write fake reviews on Tripadvisor, getting paid £10 for each review. He had concerns about the impact that the fake reviews were having, so he created a crappy website for the Shed at Dulwich, a restaurant that only existed on the High Street of his mind and started getting his friends to write reviews for it. In April 2017 - he set up the Restaurant and it is appointment only. His menu was based on emotions. He went from being ranked 18,000 to the top 1,500 restaurants in a couple of months. The phone starts to ring (he bought a burner phone for the restaurants). He often didn't answer the phone, so people were thinking that they were very successful. Nothing gets a queue like a queue! If he did answer the phone, he said they were booked out for 6 weeks and hang up, August - number 156. The restaurant is getting job applications. Gets the restaurant to number 30. There are people looking in the street for where it is. Tripadvisor contacts him and they are the number 1 restaurant on Tripadvisor. Oohbah decides to go to the next level, so he opens the restaurant for a night. Have a listen to find out how the opening night goes. His experiment was to see if a Fake Restaurant could be popular on Tripadvisor. There are important lessons for Restaurants about how platforms like Tripadvisor can be gamed and also how you can use demand management to your advantage. This is also an example of the Emporer's new Clothes. This also highlights the issues with the Tripadvisor algorithm and just how it doesn't work. I've given up on Tripadvisor because of the number of Restaurants I've been to that are rally highly rated on Tripadvisor, but the Restaurant turns out to be awful. There is a significant difference between Google and Facebook ratings and there could be an issue with people not given their real details making the reviews. Oohbah's story on the Shed at Dulwich went viral when he came clean with what he had done. We also look at the the viral marketing from the White Moose Cafe and how their response created a different kind of viral response. Their approach is a lot riskier, but highly effective for them. Our advice is to avoid Yelp entirely. It has very expensive marketing campaigns that some restaurants have found to be nearly useless.

Woo Hoo! You've just done a weeks' worth of Restaurant Marketing.

Find out what works and what doesn't with your Restaurant Marketing plan.

Email Marketing - The simplest and cheapest way to fill a Restaurant on a Midwinter's Tuesday night

Facebook is pay to play now. This is a great thing. The budgets are low, the returns are high.

Some sites change every week, some haven't changed since 2002

When did you last post to your Restaurant's Facebook page?

The Menu is the critical in most restaurants, it is part sales, part marketing, part art, part science, and part soul and part passion - yet so few people work to improve it.