May 2009 Archives

Promotions can be a great way to effectively drive trade, but care must be taken to ensure they don't reduce the focus on your core business.

Offering a free glass of wine with a main course, for example, would be an inexpensive and effective way to push sales of a new menu. But many customers choose to drink wine with their main mean anyway, so by giving them a free glass of wine you'd have lost the drinks sale.

Instead, try offering customers an incentive that they wouldn't normally purchase when dining. For example, an amuse bouche at the beginning of their meal or petit fours or a taste of a local cheese at the end. This way the customer still has that extra value, but you don't lose out.

By Catherine Hinchcliff, 3663 marketing controller

When marketing a business it's really important to have a clear strategy of where you want to go and what you want to achieve.

Every business should have a strong, commercially based marketing plan designed to drive traffic, increase spend and enhance the profitability of the business.

We've visited each of the Best for Business outlets, looking at their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and possible threats then, with their input, have drawn up a recommended marketing plan to help channel their focus going forward.

To do the same for your outlet, look at the following. Your:

• Strengths - what is good about your business that you should be shouting about and what resources do you have that work in your favour
• Weaknesses - what's not so good about your outlet, and what aspects could you do with strengthening
• Opportunities - how could you be pushing your business, what ways can you attract extra, or more suitable trade
• Threats - what is, or could be, stopping you from reaching your end goal

Once you've identified these, the fun can begin. You can get creative by looking at different ways to market your business going forward. For example: loyalty cards or offers for repeat custom, planning one off events or theme nights to attract new customers, creating a website, advertising in the press or direct marketing.

By Lindsay Winser, 3663 communications controller

Tucking into one of the best sandwiches I've ever eaten - fresh, crusty, homemade bread, rocket, beetroot, a huge amount of salt beef, a dish of gherkins, and a 'planter' of the best chips in the country!  - I looked around The Taverners and reminded myself how important on-site communication is for pubs and restaurants.

Roger and Lisa have ensured that their local sourcing is communicated to their customers through their food miles blackboard showing fresh crab and lobster sourced from the coast 8.7 miles away and that some of the fruit has travelled a whole 200 yards to the kitchen! But this doesn't share the whole story of the love and attention to the quality of food that goes behind the service of every meal; with examples like hand cut chips (prepared only on the day of use, so as it not allow the any decomposition of the starches) and homemade fresh cooking stock.

I recommended to the team that their 'house philosophy' should be communicated more strongly in the pub by flagging it up on the menu, the wine list, their business cards and on blackboards within the pub.

We spoke about communicating the homemade ethos more strongly by amending the font on the menus, creating a house style that reflects the food and culture of the pub. Changing the fabric of the menus to a more rustic and sustainable material was also discussed to emphasise this further.

It's these small but important details that give the customer a first impression of the venue they are visiting, and something operators should strive to get right.

By Lindsay Winser, 3663 communications controller