Frequently Asked Questions

55% of Americans celebrate their birthday at a restaurant according to the National Restaurant Association. More people eat out on their birthday than on any other occasion and it’s also the time when they spend the most. You want your customers to consider your establishment when they are making their birthday plans. Birthdays are a year-round, 365 day a year opportunity, not just Fridays and Saturdays. Our program will help you overcome seasonally slow periods and is immune to economic downturns. The Full Table Birthday Program rewards your current customers and makes them better customers. According to a study by the prestigious Bain and Company consultancy, “Acquiring new customers is 5 to 10 times the cost of retaining your existing customers.” Mass-marketing coupon programs attract bargain hunters making their profitability questionable. Our birthday program is for independent restaurants only, and only for your existing current profitable customers.

Bring in more of your most profitable business. We will increase the number of birthdays celebrated in your restaurant … by 10 times or more! If you think birthdays are profitable, then you understand the profit potential this program holds for your business.

More upsell opportunities. Birthday parties are more likely to order alcohol, higher cost menu items and desserts than non-celebrating tables.

Bigger parties. People like to celebrate with family and friends.

Exceptional returns. Redemption rates are 25% and higher. You can expect to see $10 – $20 in revenues for every $1 spent. You don’t need to take our word for it since you’ll receive quarterly reports that tell you exactly how much money the program costs you and how much it’s bringing in.

Higher gratuities for your staff all year round. Birthday celebrations tend to be larger parties and bigger tabs. And that means bigger tips.

Exceptional customer goodwill. Your customers will perceive you as doing something for them on their special day. In our own restaurants, barely a month goes by that we don’t receive thank you cards from customers.

Convert lunch customers into more lucrative dinner customers.

Proven success. We have run this identical program with great success in our own restaurants for over 20 years, as well as in locations across the U.S.

Our program was developed for the busy restaurant owner. Full Table Marketing’s founder and managing partner is Gary Pomponio, who developed the program for his own restaurants before marketing it nationwide. This truly was developed by a restaurant owner for restaurant owners. We know you already have too much to do … so we have made it virtually effortless for you to run.

Virtually no additional work for your staff. All they do is present a sign-up form to customers with the check informing them that a free gift awaits them on their birthday. When customers come in on their birthday and present their invitations, the waiter fills in the number of diners and the amount of the bill. That’s it.

Higher gratuities for your staff all year round. Birthday celebrations tend to be larger parties and bigger tabs. And that means bigger tips. In our 74 seat Italian restaurant we determined that an additional $76,000 in tips were earned by servers in one year.

This is a proven program, so how much you earn is up to you. Very simply, roughly 25% of customers who receive an invitation to celebrate in your restaurant will do so. Therefore, the more sign-up forms you send to us, the more birthday celebrations we will drive into your restaurant.

The basis for the success of this program is that, on a table-by-table basis, a birthday 4-top is more profitable than a regular 4-top … even after your gift.

Here is an example of how successful this program can be: One of our restaurants has only 74 seats. In a one-year period, we hosted 5,111 birthday celebrations, generating over $410,000 in sales. Total program cost for that incremental business? Just $19,000.

No problem. We can handle each restaurant individually or provide you with the opportunity to cross-sell locations. This program can be an excellent way of introducing loyal customers of one restaurant to another.

You’ll receive quarterly reports detailing costs and revenues attributable to this program. We are actually creating a database of all your customers who take part in your program. When you send us redemptions, we update your database so we know who responded and how much they spent.

Detailed information tells you even more. The information in the database is broken down to individual zip codes so you’ll know exactly where your business is coming from. We’ll also detail the average diners per party and the average tab for customers celebrating with you.

Privacy is absolutely guaranteed. In fact, you own your customer database. We will not trade, sell or use your database for anything other than birthday invitation mailings unless you request it.

Only your customers who sign up for the program will receive a birthday card from you. We do not do mass mailings.

Use your database for future marketing efforts to your customers. Just ask us for it as often as you need it, and there’s never a charge. How you employ this customer list is only limited by your imagination.

• Email is cheaper, but far less profitable.
• Far fewer customers will sign up.
• 30% of email addresses change each year and there’s no forwarding.
• Spam and delivery issues result in far lower response rates.

Mail provides an upscale experience that email can’t match. An email birthday card is just an online coupon. People love receiving birthday cards and perceive mailed cards to be more personal and exclusive than email.

We ask for email addresses on the sign-up forms and will provide them to you if you want them for other promotional efforts.

Some of our best clients came to us after trying their own programs. It may sound simple, but we have invested hundreds of hours of software development time to make this complex program turnkey for our clients. Do you have time to enter and update thousands of customer records in your own database? Then to print and mail cards each month? Would you track who responded and remove people who have moved or never responded to your offer? When you add up the effort, time and cost of an ongoing program you’ll realize the value of our turnkey solution.

We also mail far more efficiently than you could on your own. Our postage rates are lower and we have programmed our database to generate the highest possible response rate.

We only mail to people who are likely to respond. The rest are removed from your database. That’s why our response rate is 25% or more. For example:

• We only mail to zip codes in your area.
• Non-responders are pulled from the database.
• If someone moves away, they are removed.
• We have programmed a 4-step algorithm to compare and pull multiple entries. Whether someone accidentally enters twice, or tries to get more than one invitation a year, we will eliminate 99% of these situations. (Yes, we will even catch that J. Smith, John Smith, and Johnny Smyth is the same person.)

The offer that works is a free entrée to the birthday person. We have tested appetizers and desserts and they do not work. Remember, you are making this offer to an existing customer on their birthday so it needs to feel like a gift. Importantly, the numbers show that birthday celebrations, even after your generous gift, generate increased sales that more than offset the food cost.
Limits to protect your upside cost include:

• maximum price limit
• exclusion of specific holidays
• not combinable with other promotions
• not valid for take-out orders
• limit of one per table

Finally, you can remove anyone from the database at any time, for any reason you choose. You make the call. You can even “blacklist” someone so they will never receive a card, even if they fill out a new sign-up form.

Customers receive their birthday card roughly two weeks before their birthday. They can redeem your offer seven days before or after their actual birthday, which is printed on their personalized card. However, you may choose any time frame you prefer.

Your only costs are:

• Printing your guest sign-up forms – We will supply you with a master copy of three forms to a page. These are very inexpensive to print.
• $1.42 for each birthday invitation we mail for your restaurant (multi-unit owners, call for quotes).

There are no other costs associated with this program. Here is what you receive for that small fee:

• Sign-up form design and artwork
• Birthday invitation copy and layout
• A start-up kit that takes you through the simple steps to set up and run our program, including guides for your staff
• Birthday invitation printing and personalization
• All postal expenses, including:
  • paying for mailing the birthday invitations
  • supplying postage-paid return envelopes for you to send sign-up forms and redeemed invitations to us

• Data entry for all sign-up forms
• Data entry for all redeemed birthday invitations
• Database file maintenance, appending and tracking
• Quarterly and annual reports sent to you

We’ve made our program virtually risk-free.

There are no up-front set-up fees, no hidden costs, and there’s no time commitment – you can cancel at any time.

There is none. You will need to sign an agreement that you are aware of the cost of our service and a promise to pay. There is no time or dollar commitment. If you run this program according to our instructions we can all but guarantee that you will be profitable from the very first month we mail invitations on your behalf.