Thanks for joining me back on the podcast. Welcome back. This is a marketing episode. My guest, Mr. Sebastian Stahl, is the founder behind the Breadth Marketing Agency. He’s also the author of a book, the Restaurant Marketing Insider. We’re going to talk all about marketing, common mistakes that restaurants are making with their marketing, the importance of being able to track your marketing versus throwing so much money out the window on experiments.

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It’s all at restaurantrockstars.com. Check out the Academy. Now, on with the episode.

You’re tuned in to the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast. Powerful ideas to rock your restaurant. Here’s your host, Roger Beaudoin.

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Welcome to the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. So glad you’re here today. Thank you, Roger. Thank you for having me. You have an extensive restaurant background, and I know that you’re going to give our audience lots of nuggets and insights into what’s happening now and where they should be thinking about moving their business forward.

let’s start with, The failure rate, I’m seeing restaurants, not only in my neighborhood and in my state, but across the country when I travel, restaurants are still failing left and right. What do you think is happening here? What’s going on?

So Roger, I think that there’s a lot of things, right?

That raising labor costs and all this stuff that’s happening with food costs and all those things. But I think it’s just really a matter of restaurateurs being a little bit they’re not really adjusting to the times. And I think there’s. A lot of issues that are not being addressed, especially, the mid level restaurants that kind of just stay the same and they haven’t evolved with the time.

And they haven’t figured out that what’s happening is, it’s either you need to streamline or you need to innovate and create an experience. That’s really the two sides that we’re seeing in, in, in the restaurant trends. That’s one of the things. And also, I think it’s just a matter of seeing the restaurant business, they’re not really seeing the restaurant as a business, but, and not really creating the processes that they need to have in place to make.

The business profitable. So I think that’s what’s happening. And, we see it with our clients that we work with. We have a few full service restaurant quite a few full service and then quick service. And you see the difference between the concepts when they’re innovating and changing with the times and the people that refuse to go through that and make those changes.

And so they start just, they’re not being profitable and they fail. So that’s really what we’re seeing here.

I think you’re talking about, what are those relevant systems that are lacking in these restaurants and approaching things as a business? That’s what I’m hearing you say.

And they’re battling the inflation thing and the rising costs and the volatile markets, of course. You’re probably seeing that menus aren’t that profitable also, and that they’re not looking at their menu from a profitability standpoint. Why don’t you give us your insights into some of those things?

Dive a little deeper.

For sure. So listen, we just had a conversation with I’m sure one of our partners actually with the restaurants we have in Miami and I’m no longer really in the business with them, but we were having a conversation especially, particularly about that. Because even though that business for that restaurant It’s very streamlined, very focused on processes and profitability.

There are still part of the menu that, remains unprofitable. So now there’s big shift here and going really deep into each menu item. Thank you. And understanding the profit, the profitability of each item and understanding really if it’s moving the needle, if it’s making an impact or not. And then just removing everything that’s noise and just keeping.

The items that make money. So that means removing a lot of products from your inventory, right? The things that don’t make sense. Streamline, simplify. Yes, exactly. Streamline, simplify, but at the same time, still be able to deliver value and a great experience. So those things combined, that’s where the restaurants that are successful and are going to be successful.

That’s where they’re heading.

That’s very good advice. We talked about relevance a moment ago. You mentioned that word relevance, and I think that’s so vitally important right now, because just because you’ve been successful doesn’t mean next week, next year, you’re going to stay successful. There are certain things that are constantly shifting in this business.

You have to be aware of the competition, what they’re doing, but it’s not just your menu or your ambiance, your promotions. It’s also about. People aging out, what do you see and what mistakes do you see restaurants making that, you can just tell, you know what, you’re not going to be around next year.

Do you see this often with clients or with places you go out to

eat yourself? So I’ll tell you, and I’m going back to this example, right? Because it’s just so close to, to me with, our restaurant concepts in Miami. We’ve been, that one of the brands have been around for 15 years in the market.

So what’s happening in a market like Miami is that you’re getting a lot of new people in the city, especially after COVID, there are just a ton of people that moved to the city. Everybody was, everybody else were locals were priced out because it got really expensive. So talk about relevance here, because to stay relevant within a completely new market and being around for 15 years, what do you have to do?

Those are the questions that you need to be addressing. If not, you become stale, there’s new concepts opening all the time, and then you’re done. So what happens with these concepts is that we need to be constantly innovating. Things like the menu things that we just talked about, streamlining that, but also creating innovating in the menu and the things that you’re offering, but also in terms of the experience itself.

And then on the marketing side, you’re reintroducing a concept to a whole new people, whole new, batch of people in the city. And that’s happening in a lot of cities because they’re growing, right? The, the most popular cities. So you need to be constantly, putting your story out there, Marketing to new people and getting new people into the door.

Yeah, so the other thing that we see is a lot of owners, depending on of course on the size, they fail to invest in branding and positioning. Because they see it as, and they see it as an afterthought. Okay, marketing or branding, positioning, it’s it’s the extra stuff. I’m not really going to invest in it because it doesn’t make sense.

They don’t see the immediate value in this. And so they failed to do that.

Can you explain that really quickly? You’re touching on a great subject here. And let me take you back to a college course I had 40 years ago. And marketing 101 was about product, price, place, and promotion. They called it the four P’s and that’s old school stuff.

But now when you speak about positioning, can you explain what that specifically means? And how would you position a new concept versus one that’s been around forever?

So positioning is. How are you going to be perceived in the minds of the consumer? So what is your brand about? Who’s your audience?

And what do you represent in people’s minds, right? So that’s positioning. So I’ll give you an example. So let’s say we’re talking about this concept I was mentioning. , it’s a sushi and Peruvian restaurant. It’s geared towards a young crowd, right? In terms of positioning, what is your first, how are you going to communicate this, what is your brand voice, how do you sound like, what is your image and style like, what is everything in terms of the language that you’re putting out there, who are you speaking to and how are you speaking about it.

When you do that consistently over time, through all the channels that you use, digital marketing, PR, anything that you do in terms of marketing and PR, it needs to stay consistent and repeating the same message. So then people start remembering your brand for what you want them to remember it. And you speak to the audience that you’re connected to.

So that’s what positioning means.

You fail to do that and your brand positioning is scattered, meaning inconsistent messaging, you’re talking to different audiences, the chances that people are going to remember you are way slimmer. So if you fail to invest in this push and, in branding and positioning of your brand and getting into the, in front of the right people, then you lose relevance because people aren’t going to remember you, right?

And they won’t tie in your concept So whoever’s doing a better job with that is going to position themselves in the customer’s mind in the customer’s mind before you, right? So that’s how we see, the importance of positioning and branding. And lastly, if you’re looking to grow and if restaurants are really looking to grow for the long term and you don’t invest in this, then if you decide at some point to sell, is going to, your value is going to be a lot less because when you invest in branding and positioning then your whole concept, I mean your restaurant brand, is going to be worth way more.

So if you decide to sell, you’re not just selling for the value of the business but for the value of the brand. So for example, coca-cola, netflix like any of these, have invested millions, billions of dollars in branding and positioning because it’s not just a product which people can emulate, but it’s the actual brand.

So it’s the same

thing with restaurants. Are there keys, the brand piece unto itself? You’ve done a great job in explaining positioning, but the branding is the foundation of a successful restaurant. And I know I travel quite a bit and I still see a lot of generic restaurants, like ABC restaurant, that’s not a brand.

It’s a cuisine and you know what it is, but it’s a brand. But what are the keys? What are those foundational elements to establish a brand and then continue to promote and build that brand so it has an image, an aura, an recognizable logo or a symbol? We all know, if you see a logo on a coffee cup and if it’s green, chances are, it’s Starbucks.

We all know what just do it means. Like all these are brands, and like you said, they’ve spent billions of dollars on promoting these brands. Restaurants don’t have the luxury of the budgets to do this. But if they’re smart and resourceful, what can they do to establish and really grow a brand? Yeah.

So like you’re saying, Roger a lot of restaurants, they just pay any designer to do their logo, whatever.

One logo, one color, that’s it, right? But if to invest in a brand, You need to really define what you’re about, okay? Start with your personality, what you’re really about. If you, if your brand was a person, who would they be? How would they dress? How would they talk? Where would they travel? How do they look?

That’s how you build a persona in, about your brand. So once you have these things defined, then That persona is going to speak to, is going to tie into a certain audience. Let’s say, for example let’s go back to, we can go to any brand, but let’s go back to this brand, okay?

It’s a Peruvian Japanese place, it’s called Shuichi, right? When we were defining that brand, we wanted to speak to a younger demographics because that’s what the product’s about. Light, affordable, flavorful, innovative, fun. Creative, all of these things. So when we’re defining who this brand is, who Zuvich is, for example, we’re talking about a young, right?

What’s the age, about 30 to 40 years old, traveled, speak several languages, whereas let’s say, in different clothing brands, maybe uses brands like Banana Republic, maybe uses brands like that are still nice, but affordable. So all of these things, they might sound funny to talk about this stuff, right?

And when you talk to restaurant owners about this, it’s what the hell are you talking about? But when you start putting it together, then it starts making sense. So if you build this persona now you can start defining. What is your brand going to look like? And if this person, what it looked like, then you start defining this.

Okay. The type of colors, the type of language that you’re using, right? Who is it? And so that’s how you start that creative process. And then you start building. On this brand that’s going to tie in into the customers that you’re trying to reach with your product. So there needs to be a match between what you design and everything and what your brand looks and feels like.

It needs to tie in with the audience you’re trying to reach so they make a connection. So that’s the process behind branding. Of course there’s more to just that, there’s more to just designing a logo. You need to really dig deep and get into all these things. So then you can really create a strong brand.

It’s really fascinating to me, those really successful restaurants that have created a strong brand, and then they’ve been able to sell so much merchandise with that logo on it, they’ve created online stores and people internationally are even buying this stuff because they’ve You’ve done such a good job in creating this aura around the brand, and it may have nothing to do with the food and drink they sell.

So I’m fascinated by that. This is what’s possible. You build a strong foundation of a brand because we go out to eat, all of us, and you’ll see lots of restaurants that have printed up the t shirts and the hats, and it just sits there and no one really buys the stuff. Because

It was a, it was not a well executed effort, perhaps, or maybe they tried to sell stuff before people even thought of it as a brand, but this is foundational. There’s colors, there’s fonts, you mentioned the word consistency, that’s absolutely essential. Would you ever recommend, and maybe in your practice, in, in your in your agency, you might survey the guests of a restaurant and ask them if you are And is there a common thread in the survey between what people’s perception of that restaurant is, or do you consider this a brand, or what do you think about when you hear about Joe’s restaurant?

I’m always fascinated by that. Is that ever done? And is that focus group information positive in most cases, or can you

learn from it? You can, 100%. So one of the first things that we do, Roger, when we onboard a new client, especially, it depends on what services we’re providing, but is exactly that, right?

We don’t do it in the actual, in the physical style, like conducting an actual focus group with them. We’ve done that in the past with our spots, but we use their database to conduct this type of research because a lot of restaurant owners are making assumptions. They’re making assumptions of what people think, what people perceive, what they know about them, what they don’t know about them, all of these perceptions.

So before we create a plan for them, we need to better understand what the perception truly is about their brand. So create a, an extensive questionnaire. We give them an incentive. Of course, we get, we give people 10 off or whatever it is for the restaurant so they can complete that survey because it’s going to give you valuable information into what’s happening and how people are really perceiving you.

And it’s a win. At the end of the day, they come to the restaurant for 10 bucks off whatever, they spend more, so it works out. That’s one of the things that we do. But you’d be surprised, but it’s really eye opening when we look at those results because whatever, many times what owners are assuming that people think, it’s not right at all, and we’ve conducted actually in person focus groups as well, and we did this in one of our restaurants as well, because we were having issues. that we could not get this restaurant up and running. We would just go up in sales and go down, go up in sales and go down. And we were next to a, very popular street, but it just wouldn’t work out.

So we got a, we did some focus groups with different type of customers and what we learned was amazing. All the way to the menu material, that’s how people would perceive you. So they’ll tell you some of the findings. Lighting, too bright, you’re perceived as a lunch spot. I don’t want to be there for dinner.

Your menus are plastic. Lunch spot. I don’t want to go there for dinner. Doesn’t make sense for me right now. You guys are next to a more casual concept. My customer perception, same thing. I don’t want to go there for dinner because you’re next to these concepts. Or you’re next to, you’re even close to a UPS store or whatever it is.

So even placement, your location and how you’re perceived around who you are can have an effect on what people think about your concept and how they perceive you. It’s all down to levels of music. If it’s a high tone and you have a crappy sound system, again, perception. People didn’t perceive it as a place to go at night.

So all of these little things, that we found when we went through this, that made such an impact that I just, it wasn’t, because we wanted to drive dinner traffic. And because of all of these little things that were in place that we hadn’t noticed. People weren’t coming. The funny thing is, Roger, that we have, when we look at another locations that we have the same concept, we had all of the things that we could not deliver on this restaurant.

We had them in the other place and the perception was different. So at nighttime, it’s good. Everything worked out, same menu. But just like all of these little things that you wouldn’t think are important, that you don’t want to invest in, made a huge difference.

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Wow, you’re talking about impressions now.

And if you think about how many impressions a guest has from the minute they park their car in your parking lot, or they walk in off the street, we’re talking about hundreds of impressions during the course of their experience with you. And you mentioned some that can even be turning our guests away from our restaurant.

Because you don’t have that attention to that detail. That’s marketing unto itself and thinking through every aspect of the guest experience and putting yourself in the guest’s shoes and taking a step back. And I’ve said this before, I know on multiple podcasts, but it’s we do get really close to our business when we’re owning it and running it every day.

And you need to turn that switch and try to take a step back and look at it from a fresh perspective. But thank you for pointing that out. I think that’s absolutely important to, to think about. Let’s get back into your background because you’ve been in this business a long time. Can you tell us how you first got into the restaurant business and maybe what you’ve done in your career before you got into obviously podcasting and agencies and writing books?

And we’ll talk about all that, but how did it start

for you? Roger by. I guess like by mistake, like a lot of people in this, by mistake. Okay. Yeah. Cause listen, you, I just had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was just I was drawn into the restaurant business since I was, young, I was in college and I just really liked every time I stepped into a restaurant and what I would feel.

Especially just the connection with the people, music branding, just, just the senses. And just like how I could just disconnect and have this wonderful experience at a restaurant, so those things I was really drawn into. And so I had a marketing background, actually worked for big companies before Leo Burnett, big agency, and then worked for Kellogg.

Oh yeah, did you work in Chicago for Leo Burnett? No, actually in Central America. Oh,

Oh, yeah, you just said that. I think they were based in Chicago because I was in advertising a long time ago and I applied once in Chicago. I ended up working in Los Angeles, but

anyway,

I don’t want to take away from your

story.

Go ahead. No, no worries. So I did that and worked for Keller Company as well. And so it had that marketing background and then, with my brothers, we started talking about developing this restaurant concept. My brother was in coffee business. My other brother was doing other stuff. And so we got together and we started working on this concept, right?

Of we wanted to do a fast casual at that time. It was Chipotle that was starting out with the whole thing with fast casual. And then it was Payway at that time as well. So that was back in Man, 2002, something like that. So we started looking at developing a sort of similar concept because, okay this stuff is working in the States because we used to travel back and forth.

And so that’s how it started. So then my brothers went into, on their own, did something completely different. And I stayed with the restaurant and I, we started literally, we bought a we had this office space, got a stove, hired a chef, And then just started working on different recipes, bought a bunch of books.

We love Asian food. So we started getting into the Asian food and and some of the Latin mixes in there and just started playing with it, make it a ton of recipes, trying it out testing. Eventually we built the space, a small restaurant and I had the right idea of opening.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Wonderful, you were tied

to that place for a

while.

Three

day parts, yikes. Try to do that today with the staffing challenges, right? Oh my god no. It was horrible. But anyways, again, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t know any restaurant operations.

I knew marketing really well. I knew business. So that’s how, so that’s how it started. So that restaurant actually ran well, for some time, and I just went through the growing pains with all of that stuff. It was messy in many regards. And then after that’s how I got, that’s how I got in it.

Then after that I moved to Miami. And in Miami I partnered with this another friend that, that was living there and came up with a different concept. I swear I was never gonna get back to it ’cause it was just so crazy and the hours were nuts and had no social life. But I got back into it.

It just, once you’re in it’s just hard to get out. Everybody’s under your skin. It runs deep. I get it.

Yep.

Yep. That’s what happened. So we opened a restaurant in Miami in Wynwood, which is one of the. Now it’s a popular neighborhood. It used to be up and coming, if it wasn’t really that popular at that time. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You had to establish, be part of the establishing of the neighborhood to become a draw for guests to say, Hey, there’s some new restaurants and it’s a happening spot,

but

that takes time.

For sure. So it was weekend traffic. We did more of a higher end stuff there.

We did a full bar, the whole thing. And man, again, huge learning experience. It was still the, location was great because we got a great lease space, parking, all that stuff, but again, up and coming area. So you gotta be careful with that stuff because if it’s not there, you’re not going to be there.

 Let’s talk a little bit deeper about specific marketing and strategic marketing versus experiments. Do you see restaurants throwing lots of money out the window on ideas that they just try, but it’s an experiment. They’re, they can’t track it.

They don’t know if it’s working, but they’re spending money on it. Do you see that happening much? A

hundred percent. I see that all the time. And I think, I think that the most common, I think, misconception, I think, for restaurant owners is that. They think that marketing means social media only the organic content, right?

And so they’re creating content, setting up pictures and doing this stuff there, here and there. And they’re just they’re not seeing results, right? Of course you’re not going to see results. That’s a long term game. You need to have it, but it’s not everything. So that’s something that happens.

And then, when they start trying to get into the paid ads part of it, they have no strategy or anything like that. They’re just, let’s say they come up with a special and they’re trying to run ads. They see that Facebook prompts you to boost a post and they think that’s actually how to run an ad.

Facebook likes to take your money. Yes, they do. But my apologies, but so Facebook likes to take your money. And so it’s just really easy to do that, to just go in. And boost to post and spend money, right? But you’re not going to see any results, there’s no way of tracking anything, and you’re just, let’s say, setting up an image of whatever special you’re running, and when you click on that ad, where is it going to take you?

So they fail to see the entire journey that needs to happen for a marketing initiative to be successful. Now, stepping back a little bit further, Even beyond that is the strategy. Okay. So you need to understand first, where are you at with your restaurants? Okay. What are your pain points in terms of, these are your, these are all your revenue centers, right?

Depending on the type of concept that you have,

right?

If you have private events, if you have catering, if you have your dining, then you have your online orders. And what makes sense for your concept? Because I see sometimes restaurant owners, for example, Oh my, let’s say my happy hour is slow. Okay. And I want to push that.

Okay let’s understand your concept first. Is it really even a concept that’s going to be good for happy hour, right? We have a client that they understand that they’re not the right or might not be the greatest concept for happy hour, but they do really well with the other revenues or the other time, the other revenue centers and the other hours.

So they know that pushing happy hour is a lost battle because the type of audience that they have is not a happy hour crowd. So you can push that all you want and spend a lot of money there, but it’s not going to drive any results. So there’s, that’s why you got to step back, look at your concept, understand what really makes sense for your concept.

Let’s say you’re trying to push brunch. Are you really a brunch restaurant? Or you’re just coming up with a brunch menu and trying to push that and see if you can get some people in the door. Understanding, being true to your concept, to who you are as a brand, to your menu, what you’re about, and then focusing on what’s really going to make a difference and what you can really push and, get those results.

So that’s what you need to do. Step back. Then when you’re creating any type of initiative, marketing initiative, is understanding, okay, timing execution, because those things are going to be, super important. And then making sure that you’re going to be out when you’re promoting any type of initiative.

You’re going to have, you need to be in all your digital channels, plus the grassroots stuff, four walls experience, which you can, you always need to have. That’s a given, right? So again, strategy first, again, look at your numbers. Look at what makes sense for your concept. Don’t come up with specials that don’t make sense for you, sense for your concept or anything that you need to push there.

And then come up with a plan, okay? And then put everything on a calendar so then everything can be executed cohesively in a time frame that makes sense, that can be executed by your team properly, right? And then make sure that when you’re going to communicate, you need to be on all channels. If you have an email list, You need to have one.

Get your data. Please build your database since the beginning. And own the data. Yeah. And own the data. Man, we had a huge thing that with the client. They didn’t own the data. That was a huge problem. But anyways, so own the data. Yes. Get your email. Get your stuff on your Google listing. Put it out there on your, social, organic content, paid ads.

If you have an SMS platform, use SMS depending on, again, depending on the concept and what you’re communicating, but it’s very useful if you use it properly. Websites, right? You got to be everywhere because people are hanging out in different places online and you just need to be everywhere. You can’t say, I’m just going to send an email and hope that it’s going to work and you’re going to get those results or just run paid ads and you’re not, talking to your audience that’s within your four walls.

Cause. You already have a lot of people coming into your restaurant, right? You need to talk to them as well, train your team. Your team is also part of your marketing channels, so that’s super important and I think it gets missed quite a bit, right? The pre shift meetings on a regular basis, train them, get their buy in on what you’re doing with your marketing.

If you don’t get their buy in, they’re not going to say anything, they’re not going to tell the people, they’re not going to get excited, so at the end of the day that’s a really important piece because Whatever they’re, whatever you’re doing, if it brings more people, it helps them.

So you have to always lead with what’s in it for them when you’re training your team and getting their buy in. Because it’s difficult, as we know in this industry, to get buy in from everybody in the team. But if you lead with that, that makes a difference. We used to have those meetings every single, day with our team back in the, restaurant days.

And that’s, that was our approach. And it was, even with that, it wasn’t easy. Same thing with your marketing. Always lead with what’s in it for your audience. Because we see a lot of especially if it’s a chef centered restaurant saying, Oh, look at me. I’m so great. My menu is fantastic. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

If you don’t have that reputation built, nobody’s going to care anyways. You know what I mean? So always lead with value, always lead with what’s in it for them. So anyways, that’s a little bit of a summarized version

of

what you need to look at.

SMS versus email is a much higher open rate because people are just so glued to their phones.

And as soon as it dings, it’s like everyone picks it up to see what it is. So if you’ve got a strategic message in there, or if you can send a photo of tonight’s special that’s far more effective. likely to get a hit than an email, right? Because everyone’s email boxes are just inundated. Yes. So there’s an idea.

Let’s talk about budgets. Now, whether we’re talking about paid ads and social media or any forms of marketing that once we’ve established, okay, what’s trackable, is there a rule of thumb for amount that a restaurant should spend based on their sales, whether they’re full serve or quick, fast, casual? There’s gotta be some sort of a rule of thumb or at least a rough estimate of.

To get any results, you should be spending at least this based on your sales. Can you explain or give us some detail on that? So

overall, Roger, and of course you know this, I’m preaching to the choir here, but really it’s it’s, you need to have there’s two types, two different types of budgets, right?

Let’s say if you’re a new restaurant, you need to consider a pre opening budget for marketing, right? So that’s going to be different. Then you’re normal, right? Open a normal budget that you have on a regular basis because you’re a new concept. Nobody knows who the hell you are. Okay. So just opening the doors and hoping that people are going to come is a bad idea.

And we see that happen over and over again. Because they don’t understand, they see, again, marketing as a afterthought because I’m just going to open, I’m in a great location, like people are going to show up because my food’s great. It’s not always the case, many times. So in terms of budget, the pre opening budget It’s going to depend really on the capital that you have, but I would say a huge issue is undercapitalization when you open a new restaurant.

Oh, yes. You need to I’m

sure it. Oh, all the time, yeah. That’s the number one cause of business or restaurant failures being undercapitalized, until you can build a market and build your repeat business, it’s like you’re burning through cash and it’s like Profitability of the menu, all these things impacted, but labor being high.

You’re absolutely right. You need a cushion.

Yes, a hundred percent. So then when you’re going into your, designing your budget for your operation, listen, restaurants have a, of course, we have thin margins and we are famous for wanting to have a very small budget for marketing. And it’s really, it’s normally between 1.

5 to 3 percent of sales, right? That’s like on a, that’s in a normal, basis But the thing is, that’s hard to, if you are already in an established restaurant making a certain amount of revenue, it’s pretty, it’s decent and you can work with it. The problem is, like when, again, when you’re getting started.

If you assign that and your sales are not there and you’re trying to work with, let’s say, a 1, 000 budget for marketing, that’s not going to take you too far, unfortunately. You know what I mean? You need to be realistic on how you set that. Okay, even those numbers is a benchmark, but at the end of the day, you have to really look at where you’re at and what makes sense for your business at the moment.

If you’re already, again, established that 1. 5 percent will work fine if you’re making 3 million and up in sales, that’s fine. Okay, 1. 52%, good. I always recommend to go a little bit on the higher side, if you’re stable and you have the budget to do it, because Again, it’s just if you do it properly.

If you’re not doing it properly, then don’t spend all that money, right? Because like you’re saying, Roger, the tracking is so important. It is difficult, honestly, with restaurants because there’s a certain level of attribution that you have and there’s a certain level of attribution that you don’t have.

So let me give you a quick example of that. So that just to put in together, tie in the idea. So let’s say you have a marketing budget of 1. 5%, whatever that’s going to be, let’s say 3, 000, 5, 000 a month. So first Who’s gonna execute your marketing as a restaurant owner? Is it gonna be you? Probably not.

Is are you gonna hire a team? 5,000 bucks a month is not gonna, it’s not gonna be enough for that. So then you go, okay, let me go on the agency side. Is $5,000 gonna be enough for an agency to, to run your marketing? Probably. But now you gotta consider ad spend. Like it just depends on what you’re gonna Exactly.

You have to see what they’re going to. What really they’re going to do for you if they want you them, if you want them to handle everything It’s gonna be around, that’s a ballpark. But anyways, so Once you start, you know with your marketing campaigns, let’s say you’re running a special for Valentine’s Are you’re doing this special menu?

You gotta be you have to know how to track this thing, right? So first is Run your ads properly, get somebody, of course it’s an agency, they need to do it properly with an ads manager, setting up your audiences, setting everything that they need to get to the right people, and then, of course you’re creative and all that stuff, then going with that.

And then, after that, what happens in your journey? They see somebody sees an ad, they see your email, where are they gonna go? Where are you sending them? Do you have a reservation system? What type of reservation system do you have? Do you have tracking links? So you can tell how many reservations came in through your email, came in through your SMS, they came in through your ads, right?

And so if you have OpenTable for example, which I, we like to use because it has all those integrations. You have OpenTable, it connects to Toast. If you have Toast, a lot of people have Toast now. So then you can see from the reservation actually how much money that person spent. So you can get really granular when it comes to the ROI with those specific campaigns where there’s a beginning and an end, a reservation for an event, and you can see that.

Now. You also need to look at the big picture because people might have seen your ads because you probably see a lot of clicks and let’s say 20 reservations or 15 whatever you came from directly from the ads that you can attribute to. But then remember people sometimes they see it or they see it a bunch of times because you want Also create frequency because you got to remind them and and they might not have made a reservation then but they talk to a friend, whatever, and they just show up to the restaurant or they called or they looked you up in Google and then they made a reservation.

So the direct line gets broken. I see. So you can’t attribute a hundred percent. You don’t have that attribution. So you have to look at then at the big picture, go in your, of course, go in your, in, in, in your POS, look at your overall sales, look at your check average, look at how many menus that were ordered, if it was Valentines, look at everything that happened beyond.

The direct tracking that you’re doing with your reservations. So then look at the difference between your year prior, if you were running that promo or a week prior, whatever makes sense with that particular thing that you’re doing. So then you can see an overall picture and say, okay, I had 20 reservations.

I had a 30 percent increase in sales or whatever happened. And then you can see what the real ROI is, because if not, it’s not really accurate. And with restaurants again, unless. It’s something very specific like private events that you’re doing marketing for private events and you can do a direct attribution, which we do with one of our services, then you can track a hundred percent ROI.

But with these other things, you can’t, right? So that’s just the way it is.

Let’s talk about, thank you for answering that. They give us a really in depth explanation and tracking is so important. So I know our audience is listening. How about repeat that? Business and loyalty programs. Is there anything you talked about staying relevant and we can go way back where a loyalty program was a coupon book or it’s buy one, get one.

And that is so done to death so long ago. And now we’re in a digital age. What are you seeing that works to get, let’s just say we get some new business in the door, we want to get them back. We want to turn them into loyal regulars. What do we do? And what do you see that works for loyalty and repeat business?

First, we need to go back to basics here, Roger, because it’s all about the experience that you have at the restaurant. If you’re delivering that, let’s assume you’re delivering a hundred percent of the experience and people had a fantastic time, then the chances that they’re going to come back, they’re pretty high.

Yes, they are. First, you need to get their data. How are you going to communicate them after they come in? So we have, let’s say we’re talking about if it’s not a full service, then yes, loyalty systems make a ton of sense because that’s the only way or a really good way to capture data, right?

Because if not, if you’re the full service, you have a reservation system, then you’re going to capture the data there if they made a reservation, right? So that’s the first thing, Roger, that you need to get their people’s information and they’ll be glad to give it to you.

When we talk about information, we just talked about the value of capturing telephone numbers so that we can SMS market to them versus the email thing.

Are people reluctant to do that? Or how can we capture that specific data? Because then we can go back and we can text them specials and promotions and all this other kind of stuff. Sure.

What do you suggest? So there’s so many platforms out there Roger, that in terms of a loyalty. Program or systems or platforms and they also integrate online ordering they integrate messaging they integrate the whole thing I can give you a couple of examples, you have something like app front you have something like have something like lunchbox.

You have something like there’s plenty of platforms out there that do this thing, you just have to find the one that’s best fit for you because some of them are pretty expensive, so you need to look at the ones that make sense, depending on the restaurant that you’re running and the things you’re looking for.

But that way, then, the easiest way to capture their data is, By asking them to join, there’s different ways of doing that. Either if it’s counter service that you’re doing a fast cash or joint, you have somebody at the countertop always reminding guests to sign up for the loyalty when they’re paying.

And that’s very simple, right? Toast will actually prompt you for that when you’re paying to see if you want to sign up for that. So that’s pretty simple as well. I’m nothing on Toast, but I don’t think it’s a robust system for rewards. I don’t think it’s the best platform. I think there’s better platforms out there for that.

Now it’s gotten better. Bye. So that’s one way that you’re capturing their data. People will give it to you. They don’t mind because you’re providing value, but that’s the thing that you need to communicate properly. Now, let’s say, for example, another thing is, if it’s a full service or even in a fast schedule, just remind them you need to have, point of sale designs or tabletons, whatever it is that you’re going to use.

Letting people know that if they sign up, they’re going to get something. They want immediate gratification. So offer something that’s, free in the moment. You know what I mean? It can be whatever, a dessert, whatever it is that you want to offer. It doesn’t need to be, something crazy.

People will go for that. Now, the point we’ve seen. They don’t work that well because people can’t associate a value to points. Many times I’ll get a hundred points. What does that even mean?

Uhhuh? . I see that. Yes, . Thank you. You know what I mean? For bringing that up it’s nebulous. It’s you’re right.

What is it?

What is it? How much do I get? You know what I mean? It’s and then how many times do I have to come to get like a me? 3 bucks off for a dessert I don’t care about that. So then loyalty systems, yeah, exactly. So they don’t work that way. Now if you make it, if you design it in the proper way and you’re giving value and you’re communicating the value properly, then people are going to sign up, and we just had a restaurant switch.

Actually loyalty systems, one of our clients in, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re providing value. We’re communicating. And there’s just, the switch was, it’s immediate. A lot of people are just signing up and it just depends on the concept too, right? What if what they’re willing to do but we get a ton of signups We get about 10, 000 contacts there on the sms platform to communicate with a lot of people There are multi unit restaurants that have different locations.

So that’s very nice But that’s how you do it, it’s selecting the platform providing value making it clear Communication, and train your team. Your team needs to be, again, get the buy in because they are the best tool, the best, yes, tool that are going to help you to really, get, to get those numbers in your database and get people to sign up.

I’ve always considered the team to be brand ambassadors for the business, and if they’re in it to win it, then they’re making great impressions on guests. They’re making friends with guests. That’s a reason unto itself to go back to a restaurant if you really had a great experience. So the value, the ambiance, all those things, but the people are the foundation.

So the training has to be there. So I totally agree with you. Let’s talk about your book. You wrote a book and it’s called the Restaurant Marketing Insider. Tell us all about it. And what do we learn in that book?

Yeah, so Roger I, in that book, I really just lay out everything that we’ve been talking about.

I there’s no quick magic gimmicks in there. It’s, there’s no shortcut strategies and stuff like that. Yes, they have their place, but I just go And I just dive into how you really need to set up the marketing for a restaurant, for your business and what you need to consider.

There’s different things that we explore from if, from going in house, there’s two decisions depending on the size of your restaurant or your business, right? Or how many, locations, whatever it is. If you want to, if you’re going to hire in house, what positions you need for that, how to create a marketing plan, how to execute it properly with your team.

If you’re going to go the agency route. How to select an agency, what you need to look for, the tracking, all the stuff we’re talking about, make sure that they understand restaurants and understand restaurant systems, because that’s the only way we’re going to be able to do it properly. And then, I just share my own stories and my own journey about the struggles that I had when I was, new and, still digital marketing was still like coming up and all the things that we need to figure out, the issues with attribution, we couldn’t, we were just, Is this bringing any results?

Is this working? Like we had all these issues and all the stuff that I went through which is why, I actually founded this company, this agency, to help restaurant owners not have those issues that I had and help them with that because it’s if I, if we can help, restaurant owners, especially, when they’re trying to wear so many hats like I did, and I just couldn’t, I didn’t have the time to operate.

Do marketing, look at PR, look at all the things that you need to look at in a business. You can’t

be an expert at everything and it’s bandwidth, but it’s like, where’s your time best spent? And using your team. I always called it empowerment, versus delegation. Anyone can tell somebody what to do, but it’s rare that people empower teams.

Your team to take on additional responsibility. And I think that’s true leadership right there, but you’re right. So many restaurants are tied to their operations. They can’t leave. And it’s like they think if I want something done right, I got to do it myself. And really, it’s about trust and faith and training.

And it’s amazing what your people can do to be brand ambassadors, to build your business. I totally agree with

that. And you’re talking about, you’re talking about humility, Roger, because that’s something that comes up again and again with our conversations about leadership. That is just such an essential, I would say, thing or value to have because it allows you to empower people.

It allows you to know that you are not the be all and you don’t need to be the be all and you can, help, get other people to help you with these things and empower them. To execute so anyways to do things so yeah, that’s what we I talk about in the book again It lays out how to do things, you know in looking at the big picture and strategy and how to structure your marketing in a sustainable way because these quick tactics of Let me just run these ads get a bunch of get people in the door Let me run this promo and hope for the best like those short term things will never yield the results that you’re after You Also understanding that there’s things beyond marketing that if they’re not set right, Roger, as it doesn’t matter how much marketing you do, it’s just not gonna work.

And, because I’ve been there, done that, and they’re expecting the marketing to be the life savior of your business. That’s just absolutely nonsense. If you don’t have the right location, which I would say would be number one. If you don’t have, because that’s just so key, and it still is, and it will always be.

Oh yeah, it will always be.

Absolutely right. For sure. Give yourself every advantage and have a great location.

And it’s listen and this, We fall into this trap of Oh, that’s a, it’s a great deal. And it’s in a good spot and we can make it happen. We can do marketing.

Don’t go for that. We’ve made that mistake. I’ve seen many people make that mistake and it’s just unsustainable. It doesn’t matter how much marketing you do, you can get it up. You’ll get your sales up and then it’d go down again up. And then and it’s just gets expensive. Exactly. So those are the things and tips we talk about there in the book, because again, everything needs to be working right within your restaurant.

And then marketing needs to be set up properly with the right structure. So then it can be effective. It’s a dream when you have all those things working together. Because that’s what really a business is about. Like you said at the beginning, Roger, this is not, restaurant is a business. It’s not just, there’s a it’s shift in perception that I’m gonna run this as a business. What are what are the elements of a business? What does it have? Operations, finances, HR, marketing. They’re all running together. So you have to have all those things in

place. Great to be successful. Fantastic. That is excellent.

That is what it’s all about. Thank you so much. Sebastian, you’ve been a great guest on the podcast. Thanks for being with us. No, thank you, Roger. I appreciate your time. That was the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. Thanks so much to our audience for tuning in. Thank you to the sponsors of this week’s episode.

I hope you all stay well, stay tuned, and we’ll see you next time.

People go to restaurants for lots of reasons, for fun, celebration, for family, for lifestyle. What the customer doesn’t know is the thousands of details it takes to run a great restaurant. This is a high risk, high fail business. It’s hard to find great staff. Costs are rising and profits are disappearing.

It’s a treacherous road and smart operators need a professional guide. I’m Roger. I’ve started many highly successful, high profit restaurants that I’ve now sold for millions of dollars. I’m passionate about helping other owners and managers not just succeed, but knock it out of the park. I created a game changing system, and it’s filled with everything 20 years running super profitable, super fun restaurants.

Everything from creating high profit menu items and cost controls, to staff training where your teams serve and sell, to marketing hooks, money maximizing tips and efficiencies across your operation. What does this mean to you? More money to invest in your restaurant, to hire a management team, time freedom and peace of mind.

You don’t just want to run a restaurant, you want to dominate your competition and create a lasting legacy. Join the Academy and I’ll show you how it’s done.

Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. For lots of great resources, head over to restaurantrockstars. com. See you next time.