The Menu Designer

Great tips for having a successful super bowl party. Get the word out now that you are having this great party. The longer you have to promote the better the response. Tell everyone that walks in the door until the day of the party. Get those table tents and posters hung. As with any promotion you need plenty of time to promote it. Have your staff wear buttons, put messages on the POS receipts. Post video on your social network.

1. Show team pride. Dress the part and decorate the joint!

2. Four quarters to feast. Plan your specials in quarters and don’t forget to include food items.

3. Corral the grub. Setup an easy access to a beer tub or sandwich bar.

4. Hydrate the fans. Have plenty of ice cold beer flowing.

5. Bring the party to others. Encourage people to capture video and photos that can be uploaded to social network sites to share the fun with friends.

6. Prepare a special menu. Be creative and make it feel like a game program. For this special day create specials around both team favorites. Let customers take them home a souvenirs.

7. Train the Staff, Know the game. Make sure your staff is up to speed on the game and its players. Quiz them before they hit the floor offer staff incentives as well.

8. Safety first. When drinking, always make sure there are designated drivers among your guests,  retain a shuttle service for safe rides home.

9. Raffle Ticket Prizes. Make a MVP ball: Buy a football and markers and ask everyone at the party to sign it. Then, present to the winning ticket holder at the end of the game with a “Most Valuable Customer” award.

2. Order cards and carriers for all occasions; birthday, anniversary, promotional and holidays.

3. Hand out promotional gift cards to bring in new customers. Distribute preloaded cards to nearby businesses to reach new customers. Amounts like $5 and $10 get them in the door with potential to spend even more.

4. Run a customer rewards promotion. This will entice your customers to come back more often and spend more when they do.

5. Engage your employees by having them upsale gift cards. Give them small rewards that really add up as well for added incentives.

6. Place cards and promotional materials in visible areas of your business, such as near the entrance or at the cash register. Create signage was well on table tents and mini posters in the restrooms.

The Menu Designer can design your cards with your logo, seasonal & creative designs for your cards and card holders. Your credit card processor will create the actual card.

The Menu Designer also can create signage and table tents for you to place around in your establishment.

13 Ways to win regulars

#1 VIP them – Regulars influence others to come to your place, so who better to lavish with perks? Pair them with your best staff members, give them plenty of special treats and make sure the mangers stop and chat.

#2 Know them – Collect information on their likes and dislikes, where they are from, what they do, where they vacation, how old their kids are, etc. – any information that can be used to personalize service and build relationships.

#3 Hire cultivators – Look beyond basic service capabilities and personality traits when assessing job applicants to include memory skills. “You want people who have a good memory for faces, names, little details” Simon says. “When guest are treated like regulars, they start to think of themselves as regulars and the bond is strengthened.”

#4 Do a newsletter – It’s an easy way to reach guest who;ve been in your restaurant or on your web site. Collect business cards, do check stuffers, run contest to gather email addresses and make sure your regulars are signed up. Use the newsletter to publicize menu specials, insider information, special events or special deals for regulars.

#5 Hit them early – Go the extra mile before even starting to provide regular service. This is doing something really nice and really positive that we can surprise customers with before they get into the meat of their experience with us. It could be a gift of an appetizer before their meal. It could be a box of brownies delivered to a catering client’s office a few days before the actual order with a note thanking them for their order. Being pre-emptive surprises, gets people talking and sets a positive tone for the experience to come. It also increases the odds of them coming back.

#6 Hit them late – On the flip side, initialing an additional interaction with a guest long after they were expecting you to do anything is a great way to cultivate regulars, Simon says. Sending a thank-you notice to the regular customer a few weeks after they came in for an anniversary or a birthday. Little time-lapsed extra miles like these can have a huge influence on making a customer into a solid promoter for life.

#7 Feature secret specials – Regulars love feeling like they’re insiders. One way to help them fell that way is to tell the about unadvertised specials that only your best customers know about. Have some things that only those who come in often or whose servers let them in on.

#8 Set aside freebies – Distributors often have deals like buy a case of wine and get three bottles free. Put those bottles aside and when regulars come in with something to celebrate pour them a free drink from that stock.  Distributors often have give-aways like T-shirts and hats. Collect them and then have a special night to give them to your best customers.

#9 Follow up – Do what you commit to do as part of providing good service, but take it a step further. Email or call to make sure a promised gift card arrived, go back and check to make sure that re-made item was actually delivered.

#10 Use social media – In addition to diligently responding to positive and negative comments, monitor your social media accounts for other opportunities, as well. For instance, a Facebook fan who posts that she;s bringing her wedding party in for dinner soon provides an opportunity to reach out to her, find out when they’re coming in and do something special. Free dessert or a champagne toast is a simple gesture and afterward the happy customer will make a happy post.

#11 Support their causes – When budgeting charitable contributions for the year, find out where our regulars would like the money to go.

#12 Think beyond locals – Out of town regulars who come in just once or twice a year deserve regular treatment too. They come to the annual convention, spring training, snow birds, vacation. Keeping a “sign our book diary” near the hostess stand give them an opportunity to be hear and responded too once they leave.

#13 Make a strong last impression – A nice extra mile at the end of an interaction makes a powerful last impression, one that can create a feeling that usually lasts far longer than the actual encounter itself. Maybe you walk them to the door and hold it open, refill a togo cup with fresh coffee for the drive home even any hand written note in a togo order that say who packed it and if you are missing anything to call them personally. These are small but really positive ways to end interactions in ways that will keep moving people along the road to being regulars.

Getting hold foods cold, quickly

You’ve got options when it comes to choosing a method for rapid cooling. Depending on your operation and the food that you are cooling, you’re sure to find something here that works.

• For solid foods like large roasts, turkey or other big items, the best way to speed up the cooling process is to cut these large items into smaller pieces before placing them in refrigeration.

•For soups, sauces and stews you can also divide the food up. Pouring these foods into shallow containers only a couple of inches deep will increase the surface area and promote rapid cooling.

• The most common method is an ice bath. The ice water bath can be in a clean sanitizer prep sink or in a large container. Place the hot food into the ice container in the ice bath, stirring the food frequently to help drive down the temperature. Use lots of ice, adding more as needed to keep the ice bath cold.

• Use a specialized tool such as an ice want to cool liquid foods. The ice wand is a hollow container that you fill with water and freeze. Once frozen submerge the frozen wand into the hot food to cool from the inside out. Ice wands are available from restaurant supply companies.

• There are also specialized mechanical united called blast chillers or blast freezers that use high speed fans and very cold air for rapid cooling. These work quite well, especially if you have a large quantity of food to cool down, but they are large in size and can be costly.

Information in this article was obtained from Foodhandlers.com

When your customer opens the menu, we know they you going to order something. The goal is getting them to look at the more profitable items and order them.

Menus should be laid out in neat columns with clean fonts. List the price in a casual way. This is the # 1 thing that most restaurants get wrong. When all the prices are aligned on the right, they can look down the list and order the cheapest item.  It’s better to have the digits without the dollar signs discreetly tucked at the end of each food description. That way, the customer’s appetite for tropical ginger chicken will be whetted before they see the cost.

Placement is also important. Menu engineering shows that on a 2-panel menu the most valuable real estate is the upper-right hand corner. That area should be reserved for more profitable dishes since it is the best place to catch–and retain–the reader’s eye.

Popular staples like a chicken sandwich or a burger–should be harder to locate. Make the customer read through a mouthwatering description of Caribbean fish tacos before they find the popular staples. This is like the grocery store putting the bread in the back; you have to walk by all sorts of tempting, high-priced items to get to it.

Make sure you use mouthwatering descriptions on signature items to make them stand out from others. What would you rather eat, plain chicken or fire-grilled chicken breast with a barbecue rub? Scrambled eggs or farm-fresh cracked eggs lightly sauteed in butter? Think flavors and tastes, words like tangy and crunchy give the customer a better idea of what something will taste like.

Pricing points, menu position and layout all have a lot to do with getting them to spend more. Have your menu engineer review your menu today and take steps to improve on your menu.

www.themenudesigner.com

Is graffiti an art form or a visual nuisance? Whatever side of the argument you land on, you have to admit that graffiti draws attention. Graffiti marketing, otherwise known as four-walls marketing, is the most cost effective tool for operators to attract new customers, repeat business and increase sales. Graffiti marketing uses every marketing zone in your restaurant to sell specials, pump up promotions and pack your party room. Take an inventory of your restaurant. Decide the zones best suited to “get the word out.” Use banners on your building, signage in your lobby, table tents on every table and flyers at your hostess stand and distributed in every take-out order. My favorite tool is signage in the restrooms. A little unorthodox? Yes. But it’s the only place your marketing message is not competing for share of attention. Marketing through multiple zones ensures your message is seen—often more than once, maximizing its impact. Graffiti marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to get your marketing message out.

www.themenudesigner.com