Restaurant Promotion Software Keeps Small Restaurateur In Business
Jasper, Georgia, isn't exactly on the beaten path. It's about an hour north of Atlanta, at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. That's where the Jasper Steak House is located. This rural restaurant serves delicious country-style meals and until a few years ago business was good. But when a Wal-Mart, a super theater complex complete with stadium seating and 22 corporate restaurants moved within 14 miles, business took a sudden dive.
“When your restaurant seats 300 in a town of 2,000 you know you've got your work cut out for you” says Salem Suber, owner and general manager of Jasper Steak House. “In this part of the country 14 miles is the distance to your mailbox. How could I compete with dinner and a movie? I soon experienced a loss of 25 percent of my business. It was devastating. Instead of giving up, I decided to fight back and that's when I discovered how a little guy like me could compete against the big guys. That is through a simple concept called neighborhood marketing.”
Neighborhood marketing saved Suber's restaurant and today sales have never been better. Suber continues, “I started by building a database of names of my existing customers and did every thing I could think of to add the names and contact information for new customers. Through the database we developed birthday clubs, anniversary clubs, our very own Jasper Steak House Country Club, all offering incentives for people to come and see us. The only problem was that it was killing me off. Managing the database was exhaustive. I knew that I had to find a way to automate the process, I just couldn't keep up at that pace.”
That's when Suber began using restaurant marketing software. At first he hesitated to spend money on the system, but as soon as it was up and running he knew that it was the answer to his problems.
“I quit all mainstream image advertising. Instead I put all our efforts into ads that revolved around a specific offer, with a specific deadline. To get the offer the potential customer was instructed to go to our website and input their name, address and email information. Without having to input any data from the restaurant, our software was able to use that information to create any number of promotional pieces including letters, newsletters, postcards and e-mail notices. The system coded each promotion.
“Processing the marketing campaigns is very fast. The software does all the work. So when a postcard was brought back in for redemption, we could easily input the code (in seconds) and at the end of the day see a recap of the daily return on investment for that specific campaign. I can see exactly what I spent and what I earned to date for that campaign,” continues Suber.
“The secret to survival in this industry is direct response marketing and the secret to that is the efficient management of the database. You can even do Guest Satisfaction Surveys and Mystery Shopper Evaluations right within my software. I looked at lots of other systems but no one has a turnkey solution as complete as mine. I now do more marketing in less time and show better redemptions using the software.
“I would hate to think what would have become of my business had I not found the RestaurantMarketingGroup.org when I did, it truly saved my business!” adds Suber.
Since 1981 Ron Wilkinson, the Founder and President of the RestaurantMarketingGroup.org, has been helping restaurants increase their profits all across North America. Ron is a noted author and speaker on restaurant marketing with 52 years of experience in the restaurant industry. Contact Ron at (888)776-3484 or Ron@RestaurantMarketingGroup.org.
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