restaurant management

It is said that if you can’t get your product to the customers when, where, and how they want it, they will simply buy a competing product. This is increasingly true especially in the service business where there are a lot of competitors. There is a restaurant open on every corner of the street and in order to differentiate your restaurant from the crowd, you need to have different marketing channels. The first benefit of having marketing channels is that it saves time and money. You will be able to attract the right type of customer in an efficient way. Rather than letting them find your restaurant by luck, you create an excellent image/brand of the restaurant so that the customers can associate themselves with that brand. Another benefit is that it helps in rapid distribution of products and easy access to new customers. Having the knowledge to understand the needs of the customers, predicting the inflow of customers on a certain day; supply chain management would be easy if those things are in place. The factors of channel selections are the type of customers, the type of products, channel partner capabilities, business environment as well as competing product’s marketing channels.Everyone knows that in order for a restaurant to be successful, the location has to be great, the food has to be great, the customer service has to be great and so on. However, the owners often miss out on the most important aspect of running a restaurant i.e. consistency. No matter how great the restaurant is, if the chef is switched every single week, the taste of the food won’t be consistent. Similarly, no matter how great the marketing strategy is, if the marketing message is not consistent on all advertising platforms, it creates confusion within the customers. There will be a mismatch between what the customer sees and what they get afterwards. Therefore, it is necessary to have a solid integrated marketing communication (IMC). In this modern world, customers check your restaurant online before even thinking of entering into the restaurant. Therefore, your restaurant needs to be updated consistently on new offers, new deals, loyalty membership cards, interesting menus, BOGOF and so on. If the marketing message is not tempting enough, people will not enter your restaurant. People think psychology and consumer behaviour has nothing to do with business but this is farther from the truth. It is important especially for a business to understand the consumer’s buying behaviour. We have already discussed how to segment target markets and create a USP for that target market. So, now we need to go one step deeper. Does our restaurant attract those types of customers and their buying decision? This question needs to be answered. If a restaurant is opened in a high-class location and targets people with higher socio-economic status, are you creating that type of environment inside the restaurant? If there is no car parking, then those target customers will not bother to come to your restaurant.In order to understand these concepts, there are several factors that influence consumer’s buying behaviour. First are situational factors such as social situation, time, reason for the purchase and mood. Second is personal factors which include personality, gender, age, stage of life, attitude and lifestyle. Moving along, there are psychological factors such as motivation, perception, learning and mental positioning. Last but not the least, there are societal factors that include culture, social class, opinion leaders and friends/families. There is a difference between a famous, well-established restaurant and an independent restaurant that have just opened weeks ago. That difference is in terms of brand awareness. People do not know about the recently opened restaurant. So, the question is how do we go from a newly established restaurant to a restaurant that is filled with people who love the food, the customer service, the location and everything.There are mainly four stages of customer experience. First is the pre-consumption phase where people do not know about your restaurant. We need to communicate our value proposition through brand awareness. We let them know about the type of restaurant, the types of food we serve, the location we are in, the opening and closing hours, the ambience and everything in between. Basically, we are trying to make the potential customers aware that we are in business and you are welcome to visit us in our restaurant.