Keep Business Coming in Year Round
It’s summer here in Palm Springs does this mean its time to close the doors if you’re a restaurant? Or are there things you can do to keep business coming in year round? Today on Reservations we share a solution
Transcript of the Video: Things to Keep Business Coming in Year Round
Hey, welcome to Reservations. I’m Jeff Harrison and I’m Andrew McCauley. Hey, we’re working on making sure our sound is good. So we’re trying something new again. Today we’re going to do a handheld microphone so it will be back and forth between the two of us. But today, Andrew, you know we’re standing in the street were literally standing in the streets of Palm Springs and this time of year. Here it is, June 25th at 9:15 in the morning. A lot of traffic, but a lot of businesses are closed. What do you think about all this?
Well Jeff, you know, here’s the thing. We live in a resort town if you’d like and it’s been a tradition for many resort towns here in Palm Springs and Palm Desert and the whole valley, close over summer. They closed over the summer because the traffic is just not there as we have a break in traffic right behind us. But you know, the traffic is not there for them to warrant to keep open so it’s pretty sad.
But what’s happened in the last few actually years is more and more people have been moving into the desert. To live here on a permanent basis, which means we still want to go and eat dinner, go out to our favorite restaurants. So it’s about time to find out how do you actually keep your business operating in a slow period.
How Do We Build An Audience?
Yeah, we’re going to talk all week long about what you can do as a restaurant owner. And of course this is good for any business, but as a restaurant owner to get your business consistent because no one likes to do this in their business. It’s hard to staff. It’s hard to make sure you have the right to the right food, you know that your food loss doesn’t when you’re doing this and this, that’s your food losses isn’t great.
So we want to talk about something all week long is how do we actually build an audience? And we’re talking about specifically building an email list so that you can say, hey, you know what? I want to hit the send button and I get an activity coming from it. Now, Andrew, we’re doing this for a restaurant out of Moreno Valley. Can you give us an idea when, when somebody opts in, what kind of a, I’m going to say redemption and say you sent me an email? How many people are actually coming in? What percentage?
So it wasn’t only about 20% right now. So of the people that come into our list. Good morning Eric and good morning Albert. I can see you guys popping in as well. I’m looking at 20%. So if we’re collecting a database, which is very important to do. Why don’t you collect that data database and you have them on your list, you can send them emails. Send them offers, you can send them information. But what we’re finding is around about 20%. One in five people will bring that off or into the restaurant.
Have A Database
This means if you have a database of 100 people, you’ve got 20 people coming into the restaurant. Here’s a cool thing about this, Jeff. You don’t have to actually go and pay to find those people. You’re not paying for an acquisition of a customer because they’re already on your database. So by simply sending out an email to that list, you’re getting some money coming into your store. Now let’s think about this. If you’ve got 20 people who are bringing in a redemption and your average ticket is $20, right? That’s pretty low because if your average ticket is $20, there’s a $400.
Did you remember in Palm Springs or on any canyon? I don’t think you can get a $20 tickets. Well not here, but in some places depending on your store, but let’s say it’s $20, right? Twenty dollars, 20 people bringing in cash in 20 bucks. There’s $400 in the cash register that Oh, you had to do was hit send on an email. You know, something that Oh boy, something’s walking the street. This was pretty cool, people walking their dog. Anyway, we won’t get it. But you know, I can hear somebody saying, Hey Andrew, that’s great, but you know what, I don’t have an email list, I don’t even have a database. So how would I even like, how does this make sense? And I want to address that.
Collect Their Data
And first of all, I want to point out someone, her name is Andy Hubca. She owns two restaurants in La Quinta area, one is called Heirloom and the other is called Cork and Fork. She does this I think brilliantly and the other day I get an email from her and it’s specifically for people on her email list. Not only has she advertised anywhere. In fact, I don’t think she does a lot of advertising because she started from the beginning building an email list and now she just sends it out. Now her email list, I’m going to venture to guess somewhere in the 4,000-5,000 range. So using your 20%, now that’s 800 people coming in, right? And so now you really move the needle. But what can somebody do that you know what they’re saying, hey, I like this idea? I love that database, but how do I even build one? I don’t have one. That’s right.
The cool thing about restaurants is that you’ve got food traffic. Okay. You’ve got people walking in the door already. Even in your busy season, you want to start working on this and your busy season as well. Collect that name and address that email address. So maybe it’s a collective business card. Do a business card draw, something simple like that. Maybe it’s a prize draw for the end of the month or lucky diner of the month sort of thing, but you need to collect that email address somewhere. Whether it’s an app on your tablet or whether it’s a handwritten note. Hey, there’s that truck!
Start Somewhere
You know, whether it’s a handwritten email database which I don’t recommend, but if you’ve got to do it, do it. Start somewhere. And as soon as you start building that list, that’s when you can start to market to them later. You know one of the things I noticed, I looked at to say how many people within 5 miles, what we’re standing or having a birthday in the month of July and the cool thing about it was there 30,000 people within a five-mile radius of where I’m standing and having a birthday in the month of July. Yeah. Could they do some kind of a program to get people to opt-in? For that what would you do?
Absolutely, these are number things you can do. Let’s keep it simple. We’ve got Facebook ads. You can target people who were having a birthday on Facebook. Target them, market to them and say, hey, if you’re having a birthday, come to our restaurant or our establishment. We will give you a discount or free meal or whatever it may be. It’s something simple like that. What if it kind of hit you right on. What if you said, hey, you know what? Everyone who comes in the month of July, not only will they get their birthday for free, but if they opt into our list, they’ll get one month worth of dinners at our restaurant for free. Do you think you’re going to get accurate information if somebody’s going to give you their database?
Follow-up So They Don’t Forget You
Absolutely, if you’re about to win something or get something of value, you want to tell that person how to contact you, so you’re going to get some really good information, quality information that’s not just a junky email. Yeah, so today we talked about step one, we’re going to talk about it all week. Hey, how do I keep my business? Even in a, I’m going to call it a destination area. How do you keep that traffic steady? How do you keep it steady that it doesn’t become like a red light and all of a sudden you look down there and you’re going, hey, we could have canon practice up and down the street because there’s nobody here.
One of the things to do is to build a database. Now, the sad part about this, in reality, Andrew is many people, businesses, it’s like that book that was written it says, who moved my cheese? During a season, it’s just rock and roll and like oh so busy. And unfortunately, that’s a time when they should have been collecting database, right? And they don’t because they’re too busy to do it instead of having a system in place. Now I want to take a little sidestep here. The businesses we work with, do we have a system in place for them?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and I mean we have a system where we’re collecting data by clicking the email addresses were following up with people, which is a key part of it. You want to follow up so that they don’t just forget who you are when they’ve given your email address. Because if you do that and you go to email somebody three or four months later and you haven’t spoken to them, they’re going to either go, who the hell are you? Or I’m not interested. I’m done. I’ve moved on. Okay. So you got to stay connected with them. And that’s what part of our system does, is it keeps them connected and keeps them wanting more about what we’re doing.
Put Them In The Comments
That’s great. If you have questions, do me a favor. Put them in the comments. I’ve got my glasses off so I really can’t see. I see a couple of people and trucks every day. Of course, we’re going to have trucks in that video. We made sure Shawn to stand out in the street, so we knew for sure there’s got to be like, I see a big white truck coming now, but I think we’re probably going to maybe be off there by then. But put some comments down below.
Make sure to share this and then make sure to join us again. We’re going to be on the streets of the Coachella Valley talking about that. Today, we talked about building a database using some kind of trigger that we know there are people using even if you’re in a destination place because of every, okay, here comes the truck. Shawn this is for you, it comes over the shoulder here. Here we go. There we go, alright Andrew, anything else? Hey, Andrew, you said on the way down there we’re going to do something kind of unique. What are we going to do? You said something about having a Webinar this week or an educational piece.
We Manage It For Them
We’re going to run a Webinar, especially for hospitality people. Just to show you what we’re doing with that system, how easy it is to build a database. In fact, we’re going to show you, we’ve got a number of clients who are the owners, the managers, the truck drivers, they’re not doing anything at all as far as the system goes because we run it, we implemented it, we create it, we manage it for them. They’re just sitting back counting the cash and watching the people come in. So we’re going to do a webinar. Just peel back the curtain and show you exactly what we’re doing. If you feel interested in that, just put a comment. Just say me in the bottom in the comments and we’ll reach out to you and let you know when that’s happening.
That sounds great. Hey, we’re going to wrap up today. We’re going to do a little bit of walking up and down the street today. We might go live again, you’ll never know. I see this young man over here. He’s pilling up with some more chips. We’ll probably have him on here just a few minutes and he’s running back inside. No, here he comes to the table. We’ll know. Anyway, I’m Jeff Harrison. I’m Andrew McCauley, with Reservation. We’ll see you again tomorrow right here on the streets of the Coachella Valley. See you later!
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