I own a restaurant that has been in the N Dallas area for over 10 years. I've owned it for the past 5 and have increase sales year over year until the last few years. I honestly just don't know what else to do and looking to see if anyone has any thoughts on what I can do. Let me start by saying I haven't had a price increase in 2 years. We have had competition move in, but nothing more then what has come and gone over the years. I'm a big fan of marketing and think its crucial in any business to survive. I've also asked customer after customer have they noticed any change in food quality and all have told me that its actually gotten better.
The marketing efforts I do right now:
-We do VIP email marketing
-We are on twitter and FB(so hard to grow our fan base. Think we have over 200 fans right now)
-We do email blast offering coupons, free tea, free dessert, birthday meals..etc
-We are doing grocery store coupons, but have seen little success with this. Lucky our contract ends dec 2010
-We hired a catering manager that has helped generate additional revenues and is a work-in-progress that once sales outweigh her base, it should be great. So far we have doubled sales each month since we started 3 months ago!
-we do door hangers on apartments with our menu
note our menu is a very attractive piece with colorful pics and easy to read. Price point is from 6.50 to 9.95
What has happened is our sales took a dive a few years ago, so we started delivering and that helped, but last sept 2009 our lunch business took a dive of almost 25-30%. Lunch historically has never took a hit in the past 9 of the 10 years being in business, we have been stable lunch always!
what i'm having issues is to market to lunch people. How do you get someone in the area to come to your place during lunch. Yes we deliver, but need that traffic coming in. I don't want to cannibalize our business and compete with a subway as we cant go that low. We serve big bowl salads, homemade pastas, pizzas burgers and sandwiches. I feel we are priced right and have been told so many times by our customer.
any thoughts on what to do? we are in a retail center and with a prick of a landlord group reit its hard to do much marketing in our center. traffic in the center is down and they don't care to do something about it as we struggle to stay alive.
The only last thought I have is to put someone in a costume and send them to the street as the landlord doesn't own the sidewalk and hand out menus to cars at the light.. but i think the city might have a issue with that..
any help would be greatly appreciated.
The marketing efforts I do right now:
-We do VIP email marketing
-We are on twitter and FB(so hard to grow our fan base. Think we have over 200 fans right now)
-We do email blast offering coupons, free tea, free dessert, birthday meals..etc
-We are doing grocery store coupons, but have seen little success with this. Lucky our contract ends dec 2010
-We hired a catering manager that has helped generate additional revenues and is a work-in-progress that once sales outweigh her base, it should be great. So far we have doubled sales each month since we started 3 months ago!
-we do door hangers on apartments with our menu
note our menu is a very attractive piece with colorful pics and easy to read. Price point is from 6.50 to 9.95
What has happened is our sales took a dive a few years ago, so we started delivering and that helped, but last sept 2009 our lunch business took a dive of almost 25-30%. Lunch historically has never took a hit in the past 9 of the 10 years being in business, we have been stable lunch always!
what i'm having issues is to market to lunch people. How do you get someone in the area to come to your place during lunch. Yes we deliver, but need that traffic coming in. I don't want to cannibalize our business and compete with a subway as we cant go that low. We serve big bowl salads, homemade pastas, pizzas burgers and sandwiches. I feel we are priced right and have been told so many times by our customer.
any thoughts on what to do? we are in a retail center and with a prick of a landlord group reit its hard to do much marketing in our center. traffic in the center is down and they don't care to do something about it as we struggle to stay alive.
The only last thought I have is to put someone in a costume and send them to the street as the landlord doesn't own the sidewalk and hand out menus to cars at the light.. but i think the city might have a issue with that..
any help would be greatly appreciated.