On A Wait

Restaurant operations - tips, advice, and discussions

Technology vs. Restaurant Marketing

I broke down and bought one of the new cell phones that do everything but scratch your back. You can get your emails, search the web, get weather and news, sports scores, track your GPS location, get driving directions, play tunes, play games and much more. After about three hours of learning all the features, I realized that perhaps the new technology was just old technology in a smaller package. Did I really need to have anything other than the basic functions of a good cell phone? As a customer of a restaurant would I really want to see ads popping up on my cell phone?

While my purchase of the latest greatest cell phone was part of my attempt to keep up with hyped technology, it caused a mental exercise to relate to the restaurant industry and technology in general. Just how far is too far for the average restaurant owner? Do we have the time for social networking on sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and many more? Is there a time versus rewards limit?

The average restaurant owner is already burdened with 25 hours of needs to be packed into 24 hours almost seven days a week. Can we justify the results that might be achieved from time spent on the learning curve of the latest technological advances?

After considering all the pros and cons of various technology options, here are a few observations:

• Unless you use technology as a hobby, you can’t possibly keep abreast of every new idea, concept, tool, website and overzealous report of new ways to market your restaurant through internet based hyped.
• New digital tools may benefit many types of businesses for efficiency, communications and arms length transactions with customers. The restaurant business is not impersonal – it is just the opposite.
• Customers for a restaurant are considered guests; to be entertained, given an experience and build a relationship through face to face communications.
• Restaurateurs need to keep abreast of some techno tools, but only to the extent that they are customer driven. An example is email. Five years ago, perhaps only 50% of your diners had email. Today, it may be 80%. The relatively low cost email marketing is one to embrace, but still you cannot forget that other 20%.
• Justifying long hours at a keyboard to post blogs, keep websites current, create and answer emails, post on social sites and all the other options can’t be justified as compared to all the other marketing options for restaurants that exists. The time versus reward is not there – today at least.

From my vantage point the restaurateur may want to assign some young bright employee to keep tabs on what the internet’s latest trend is and report back. You can pay their high speed connection bill and let them use their free time to explore the options for your restaurant. They can monitor customer comments on sites like ChowHound and other restaurant review blogs in your area.

The bottom line is this; your hours of time at the keyboard can be better spent doing things like:

• Developing a new marketing plan for the next six months.
• Finding new creative ideas for new and old customers.
• Focusing on customer retention and service.
• Use viral marketing to network locally through word of mouth campaigns.
• Use email judiciously to communicate worthwhile information to guests.

Until the cell phone can scratch my back and the internet can show our sincere pleasure in greeting guests, I’ll stick with new ideas that focus on direct face-to-face contact with my guests and prospective customers when it comes to marketing my restaurants.

Larry Edger, Author

The Restaurant Ebook

The Restaurant Marketing Plan Handbook

 

 

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