One Restaurant Owner To Another
A note from Full Table Marketing partner and restaurant owner, Gary Pomponio.
I’m sure you’d agree that great food and great service are essential for any restaurant. But, to be successful over time it takes more. It takes smart marketing that keeps your customers coming back.
As an independent restaurant owner myself, I was inundated with pitches for my marketing dollars, including newspapers, magazines, coupon books, and an unlimited number of “unique” advertising opportunities. Two things always occurred to me. First, the vast majority of new customers who took advantage of special offers never came back. Second, I never knew which form of advertising worked since there was really no way to measure effectiveness in hard dollars.
That’s why, over 20 years ago I started a birthday invitation program in my restaurants.
My customers already considered my restaurants to be a great place to celebrate a birthday. And, that business was very profitable. Birthday celebrations tend to be larger parties and people spend more.
The program I developed increased the number of birthdays celebrated at my restaurants by more than 10 times. I tracked costs and sales and found that the return was roughly $20 for every dollar the program cost. It’s no wonder that to this day we still run the program ourselves in addition to marketing it nationally to other independent restaurants.
Forget all your preconceived notions of kids’ birthdays and pizza parties. Everyone celebrates their birthday and you want to cash in on this.
Here’s an actual example of this program’s profitability. In our own 74 seat restaurant, in just a single year:
- 5,111 birthday celebrations were hosted (roughly 100/week),
- generating over $410,000 in sales,
- plus over $76,000 in additional tips for the servers.
Virtually all our clients enjoy similar results — redemption rates of 25% or more and returns of $10 to $20 on the dollar (that’s a 1,000% to 2,000% return).
This program has been so successful for us that we no longer spend money on any other advertising or marketing. We can do the same for you. Call us today at 888.399.1471.
