Great video. Just started a cafe I give muffin with coffee purchased. People like it. Bit of flour, few bananas. Cheap as chips. Then they come back for dinner not expecting anything free. But if they dont buy dessert I'll give them a little taste of what I prepared that day or a bit bigger portion. And if they become regulars I'm happy to keep looking after them. Mines only a small place so I literally see all the customers. No one is really aware if I'm spoiling a regular or not. Everyone gets looked after. 😀
You can’t give every time something free.. then customer will get to used to it. And he/she will be keep asking for free things. Once u don’t give customer will get disappointed and won’t come back again!
It's all about how you present it, and yeah sure your bound to get someone out there who is greedy and wants something free, but you can teach your managers how to spot the free seekers. They are typically bad tippers, or people who complain over little things.
This has worked on me with my favorite wine bar. Lol they gave me, free samples the first time, free fries the second time. And no tab the third time. Sooooooooooooo now I got there every chance I get. And they charge me full price, totally worth it tho.
Yeah, it's a pretty standard restaurant marketing trip, because the truth is if you have a coupon you are more likely to come back... If you are going to do something like this I'd pair it with a bio card so you could do some email marketing to them
The customers will establish a solid and positive experience for the first and second visit. Then eventually, they would become regular customers. This incentive structure is a brilliant and must-try idea! Thanks for sharing! 🙌
Instead of giving free you can increase the quantity in the food. There for customer will come again not only that it will increase the customer chain from 1 customer. it's my EXPERIENCE. For example: for first week give extra rice free or add 2 piece of chicken normal biriyani..
Giving away free things is a great way to gain customers and seriously do believe restaurants , should plan out on creating some free goodeybag every working day just to give to customers , yeah they can be expecting free things all the time but in these days competition is crazy in most areas, that's why believe going that little extra step further is worth it.
Not true. That's the short-sighted, narrow way to look at this. People get addicted to free items, not discounts... And if your product is that good, people come back. We have over $15 million in ad dollars spent on this stuff that proves this.
The best way i think you can grow your restaurant is by collecting reviews to your restaurant Because reviews build a trust to your business so if you collect great review from your customers you will set for new customers per day and keeping them
This is a great theory that Jon Taffer outlined during his podcast with Gary Vee. In practice I've rarely seen this work because these seemingly simple steps are actually very time consuming and require a ton of focus from the floor manager who is already busy doing 100 other things. This is not realistic for a long term, sustainable technique. You didn't mention what your online strategy is that replaces this outline but usually when something is automated, it loses it's effectiveness rapidly, if not immediately. Contrary to your mention about word of mouth, in my research word of mouth marketing brings in 2 thirds of the NEW customers walking through your door and will ALWAYS be the #1 most effective tool for restaurants.
It works. I use Facebook and build forms for lead generation and when customers dropped their information in the form we send them a certificate to come in for free and we have a 18 to 30% return. It definitely works.
@@purtismarks4452 OR you could put your money into search engine optimization and bring in substantially more customers in the door who are all totally ok with paying full price. I'm not disagreeing that this COULD work but it's a lot tougher to pull off than this makes it seem.
@@ErikShellenberger I do that as well. I try to employ many different strategies to bring customers and more bodies into the door. I think and believe a successful business will use multiple strategies.
Erik Shellenberger SEO is fine but when you know how to run an effective paid ad campaign it’s really hard to beat... I’ve done both but i very much prefer paid ads because i can prove my results and scale them...
1. Freebies have a cost. If you earn a customer for ever with a freebie, you will have to give him away freebies for ever and pay that cost for ever. 2. Customers only eat as much as they can. Because they eat the starter or the salad you give them for free, they will order less, and you will sell less. 3. Those customers who keep coming, get every time something for free and order every time less than they normally would will fill your restaurant, and you will have no room left for other customers that would spend more and pay for everything they eat. If I were a restaurant owner, I would never use your marketing services, even if you gave them for free.
Hi Alex! I totally get where you're coming from. If you'd rather check out other marketing strategies that fit better with your business goals, there are plenty of options out there. You can explore different approaches that'll help you attract and keep customers in a way that matches your specific needs. Choosing which marketing services to use is all about your personal preferences and what you want to achieve for your business.
I am thinking about a new type of restaurants : eating-spots, in eating-spots, food keeps changing, chefs also rotate, this is opposed to current restaurants, thanks to this rotation of food and chefs, eating-spots are way more powerful than restaurants. along with that, there is an app, people vote for the food that will be cooked in the next days. menu is influenced by the live input of the people via an app.
How are you suppose to know how many times your customer has been in your restaurant, as a owner it's impossible to keep track of that, I give free stuff to customers all the time and it gets them back but I haven't a clue how to go about your strategy.
Hello, thanks for your comment. In the restaurant industry, the margins are already thin so discounting food/giving away free food really hurts profit margins. We would love to chat to see if we can help. Do you have an email address we can reach you at?
How do you propose to track a first time visitor? What's the software solution? I've contacted our point of sale provider and several competitors and their software doesn't have the capability. They can't even tell me if a current customer has come more than once in a month. I would be happy to offer a free gift if a customer brings a friend for the first time, but I have no way to track if it's truly a friend's first visit. How are you suggesting a restaurant implement and execute this strategy?
Does your POS provider offer a loyalty program? You could use a free offer to get people to sign up. Then you can track their sales from there. You can offer different rewards to different groups of buyers to encourage them to buy again or buy more. It really starts with making an offer to capture their information, and then going from there.
Not really sure about this. Can you show actual numbers/stats? I highly doubt they will come back after they find out they won't get a free item or discount...
Thanks @mism2897! Let's stay connected. We would love to learn more about the types of restaurants that you work with and if we can help in any way. Feel free to book a time to talk more with us www.dinleine.co/howitworks
Sure! Let's stay connected. We would love to learn more about the types of restaurants that you work with and if we can help in any way. Feel free to book a time to talk more with us www.dinleine.co/howitworks
Usually i go to fast food late, hour before they close. I order my foods, when they throw more free food i find it bad. 1st i don’t like wasting foods i already ordered what i wanted. 2nd it makes it like cheap, they don’t value the ingredients they use. Maybe they should try can of drink on the house which i can drink later or decline if i wanted.
Loyal programs are a great way to boost customer retention! They can add a game-like aspect to going to the restaurant that encourages customers to come back (and pay) again and again.
If you are interested in hearing more about how we bring restaurants across the US, UK, and Canada customers on demand, then check out our free case study: www.misfitmedia.com/restaurant
Awesome Vid! I am about to start doing popup locations for my foods... do you think this and getting everyone on a mailing list would also work for giving them secret upperhand for being able to get into my future events. I will be doing very limited seatings. The goal is to impress the customers so much that we will be booked even without knowing the locations in advance for several weeks or months in advance.
This video of ours is actually REALLY old but we've had some AMAZING updates that do phenomenal with or without COVID. Head to our case study video here to learn more: www.misfitmedia.com/casestudy12
Not necessarily. In those first couple visits, you are convincing the customer that they will always get an experience that is worth paying for. For most restaurants, getting new customers in the door is much more difficult than retaining existing customers. This incentive structure helps bring those new people in to experience the restaurant's consistently good food and service. If the experience at the restaurant is good, the customer won't need another free offer to have a positive experience, so they will keep returning.
would have appreciated your own spin on this technique, instead of just repeating an interview from over 5 years ago, interested in your own ideas though, it seems like you have passion
This video is several years old. Our strategies have improved since then. How is everything at your restaurant now? Would love to learn more about what you do.
this is pretty flawed... you assume that it takes 3 visits for a customer to form the habit to come to your restaurant based on stats not using this strategy. I would argue that after 3 times giving customers something for free you got them in the habit to expect something for free every time you go there...
Jon Taffer who talks about this idea, pretty much word for word, on Gary Vee's podcast says "People get addicted to discounts, they don't get addicted to free". I don't know if that is true, but that was his theory behind it.
You don't need to give anything free. customers walk in to a restaurant to eat good food for affordable price and at least a good service. If you managed to give all these three consistently you are good to go.
Hi Artinangelo! I totally get your concerns about the cost and how some customers might behave. Yeah, pricing is definitely a factor for some folks, so it's important to strike a fair deal that works for everyone involved. And yeah, there might be a few customers who try to take advantage of the supplier once they've got the product or service they wanted, but that doesn't mean everyone will act that way.
Lmao you really recycled a Gary Vee video. Anyways, to most restaurants this strategy is very impractical. No customer nor owner counts how many times they've been in a restaurant.
I disagree, there are a lot of restaurants in the US and world, not everyone may be aware of this strategy, however if you want a tip, you can do a facebook ad to directly target those in your immediate area who's having a birthday and to come in for a free entree, or app, or whatever you feel you can give up :)
You'll get a lot of new customers but you sure as hell won't making money because this formula still only leaves you with about 15% of the original customers.
Hey Logan, that's not true. When you have the right systems set up, for every customer that shows interest in an offer, you'll capture their contact info as well which gives you the ability to follow up with customers depending on their interaction or not with your brand. Not just that, but what happens when these customers continue coming back month after month year after year...? Feel free to scroll through some of our other more recent videos if you'd like to learn more.
Not a good business policy. You have quality, service, detail, oriented treatment, etc... Giving/offering stuff to customers is "fast food tactics", not high end businesses. ;) By the way, think about what happens if every restaurant adopt this idea? We will have customers looking for free stuff " in rotation". That's why big retailers are narrowing those kinds of offers. Instead of giving many times, you give "big", few times per year.
In our experience, guests get addicted to discounts, not free items so we'd disagree. We've also done this for very high end brands and use the word "complimentary" instead of "free" to give it a more high end feel. You need to stand out in today's busy, competative world. This strategy has worked extremly well for us in the past and has helped us evolve into what we are know for today.
@@brettlinkletter "guests get addicted to discounts" ... "the word complementary instead of free". We totally agree! 😉 I truly believe you understood my argument, according to your reply. I'm on the (high end) business as well, in Europe, and also getting a lot of success. I work with different customers - business owners and as far as my experiences dictate, loyalty and long term profit doesn't come through "free" stuff but for a more complex interactions and undoubtedly from a great experience. The food market is one of the most saturated markets, especially in big cities, so we can easily understand that building a great customer experience is more than getting something for free. I think that this message is in fact what the video tries to suggest as a strategy. All the success! Good job! 😁😉
If i was ur customer and you did this to me i would feel like your running out of business and looking desperate or that the free food your giving me if not selling well.
@@DinelineInc i was all hyped and excited for the video, and done 4 lines, in each line i had to write give free food. Lol. Bro.... what is this , the route of bankruptcy?
@@jeffsmith2758 First of all bro.... this video is 3 years old, where have you been? And no but it's a free tip that you can use if you own a restaurant. Want something better, get in touch with our company.
You can market in social media to drive traffic, and if you happen to be doing it in tiktok, i recommend appraising its engagement rate consistently as it's a metric that tells you your marketability of your content and its reach/potential with its audience. It is appraised reliably using tools such as *phlanx's tiktok engagement rate calculator* than manual means
