Chapter 10 - Restaurant Promotion and Advertising

What is promotion and advertising? Establishing a personality-atmosphere | Trademarks and themes | Upgrading the menu | Making the menu fit your restaurant | Giving the children something special | Successful promotion ideas | Effective advertising | How to capitalize on publicity | Putting motivation research to work | Identification of market | Summary

Broadly speaking anything that is done to increase sales is promo­tion. This includes public relations practices, paid T.V., radio and newspaper advertising, highway and entrance signs, direct mail to customers, and publicity of all kinds. The printed menu is part of promotion, literature to induce the customer to buy.

Operational practices are part of restaurant promotion. Service and cleanliness are indeed part of the sales program. In fact, cleanli­ness is usually number one in the promotion program. A good share of the success of Howard Johnsons can be attributed to the emphasis placed on sanitation. The over-all effect a restaurant has on the public and its customers measures its promotion efforts.

The restaurant public is likely to judge a restaurant as a totality— everything about the restaurant, the courtesy of the employees, the kind of advertisements used, the design of the building itself, its decor, the smartness of its menu, the relation of the restaurant to the com­munity, and the food itself. A completely successful restaurant is successful in all of its aspects.

Establish a Personality

First step in a promotion plan is to establish a personality for the restaurant, a personality that sets the place aside as a separate identity. To make it stand out from other restaurants, make it at least a little different in design, in decor, and in items and services offered. Create an atmosphere.

In the restaurant business atmosphere is probably the best promo­tion possible. It's the thing people talk about, the thing that makes them return. It's the popover muffins at the Watergate restaurant in Washington, D.C., the piled-up portions and Madame Pompadour's piano at Creighton's in Fort Lauderdale, the spotlessness of Van de Kamps in Los Angeles.

ATMOSPHERE CAN BE BROKEN DOWN INTO FOUR PARTS:

1.  The physical part—the building, the signs, the parking lot and the general decor.

2.  The personal part—what you and your staff do to make the guests feel important.

3.  The food—its quality and appetite appeal.

4.  The distinctiveness of the restaurant—the way it stands out from other restaurants. This may be the menu, the wonderful service, the music played, the convenience of the parking lot, or what have you. Of course, the way your restaurant is different must be in terms of the other three parts.

Then there's the use of a signature or trademark. Every restaurant has a personality and a name. Give your restaurant a Dale Carnegie course—build a personality. The trademark should set off pleasant reactions in everyone who sees it. Some highly effective ones are The Magic Chef, The Little Chef, The Big Boy, the Howard Johnson's Simple Simon and the Pie Man. Van de Kamps of California use the Dutch Windmill—very good, because Dutch and cleanliness go to­gether.

The Big Apple, The Juicy Steer, The Copper Kettle, The Coffee Pot, The Chicken Pot, The Chicken Basket, The Carousel, The Barbecued Burger—all set off pleasant images for the customer.

"Jones Drive-In" or "Brown's" are perfectly good names and, de­pending upon the location, service, food and personality of the oper­ator, may be highly successful. How much better, though, to take an idea such as The Carnival, The Bun and Burger, The Yacht or The Tarn O'Shanter, develop it imaginatively and build a complete promo­tion package of highway signs, stationery, building and uniforms—all tied together with design—a trademark and color.

Develop a Theme

The successful restaurant operator is selling much more than food. He is selling himself. He is selling taste. He is selling atmosphere. He is selling glamor, a social gathering place, beauty and excitement. All of these must be tied together to make a package—a promotional package which is pleasing and will be remembered.

The package should have a theme, a bright and yellow ribbon around it to wrap it all together. Suppose, for example, that you are featuring barbecued sandwiches. The building itself, the entrances, the menu, the matches, the carhops' costumes all should fit the barbe­cue's idea.

To illustrate what is meant by developing a promotion theme, here are a few promotion devices featuring "Smoky" the pig, who is seen on the road sign making sage comments on "Growling Stomachs." A trade­mark such as "Smoky" is a good promotion device on which to hang all selling ideas. The caricature is easy to remember and gives the deft touch which lifts a promotion program out of mediocrity.

On entering the drive-in, the guest immediately sees the theme again. In the illustration, "Smoky" appears at each side of the entrance gate.

The menu itself is a miniature smokehouse, a small version of the real drive-in building. The bib 'n' tucker is for all "children," young and adult, and lends a picnic air to the place. Eating is made into something more than masticating and swallowing food. It becomes an event.

Smoky piggy banks given to favored customers and the Smoky straws for "pig size milkshakes" are additional details to round out the Smoke House theme.

Consider the menu—that silent salesman, that hint of things to come, that important part of restaurant atmosphere. It can be a nega­tive factor, lifeless and neutral; or active and alive, a positive selling force, even a thing of beauty to be enjoyed along with the food.

Are the colors, words, and pictures appetizing? Does the menu make you hungry just to look at it?

Idea for a highway sign using trademark pig caricature. Same design can be used for newspaper and television ads for recognition tie-in. Copy can be changed in ads as desired to feature different messages.

Entrance arch to parking lot features trademark pigs. Back­sides of pigs are seen when leaving lot to provide good humor touch to departing patrons.

A trademark piggy bank like this might be given  away with a special  such  as barbecued ribs.

This special design menu carries out the smoke house theme together with the pig trademark.

A special bib design continues the trademark tie-in. A match­ing trademarked napkin is served tucked in the pocket of this colorful "bib'n'tucker."

Nearly every menu can be improved. This will be true as long as we have new color processes, better paper, and as long as man has imagination.

Make the menu fit your restaurant: The menu is an integral part of the restaurant atmosphere. The menu should reflect the tone, the colors, the formality or lack of it, the style of operation. In other words, the menu is very much a part of the personality or identity of the restaurant.

Make the menu distinctive: You want your operation to stand out, to be different from that of all other restaurants. A menu that has "personality" helps to give your business "standout" value.

Use words that set off pleasant emotional responses in the patron: Words trigger the human nervous system.

Here are a few descriptive terms which are certain to make the mouth water:

Old Fashioned Custard Pie
Tender Buttered Green Beans
Orchard Fruit Cocktail
Creamy Cottage Cheese
Flaming Pit Chuckburger
Roasted one-half Maplecrest Spring Chicken
Prime Ribs of Corn-fed Kansas Beef
Sublime Sherry Sauce
Tasty Swedish Pancakes served with real Lingonberry butter
Hot Cakes with Oregon Wild Blackberry Syrup

Of course, menu descriptions can and have become so wild and unrelated to fact that they are ridiculous. One restaurant takes 200 words to describe one of its dishes. But look at this description of an orange drink as served at the Coffee Shop in the San Francisco Airport:

Whirly Bird

Chilled California Orange Juice and Lemon Juice blended with Mountain Honey served chilled and brimming with health for your morning perkup                60¢

Who can resist such a build-up?

Except for strictly fast-service, most restaurants would do well to dress up their food terms, plus garnishing and adding color or a bit of this or that. Add to the price also. Whipped cream on the chocolate pie, hot apple pie with a slice of cheese, cinnamon toast with a fruit plate, sour cream dressing with a large hamburger, nutmeg available for malts, and so on.

Develop your own specialty: Every restaurant should have a spe­cialty—something that is at least partly unique, something people can talk about. . . . "Have you tried the 'special' sandwich at the Corner Drive-in?"

The "special sandwich" may have little claim to distinction other than that it is served in a poppy seed bun that has been toasted. Or perhaps the tartar sauce is "Mary's Own Tartar Sauce." Mary's recipe for the sauce may come from Fanny Farmer's Cook Book, but Mary has added just a speck of garlic to the sauce, making it her own. The greatest chef of all, Escoffier, was not above using the same tactics. Sarah Bernhardt, renowned actress of Escoffier's time, loved his scram­bled eggs, claiming that the flavor was unparalleled. The secret Escoffier used was to place a small clove of garlic on the knife he used in mixing the eggs. The secret was kept because Miss Bernhardt insisted that she could not tolerate the taste of garlic.

Maybe your specialty is coffee, milkshake, corned beef on authentic dark bread, an ice cream pie, or a pie piled 4 inches high with meringue. The specialty need not run up the food cost. It should be a popular item, something with a little imagination and naturally something which can be done well and quickly.

Use color in the menu to arouse appetites: Recently a number of restaurants have illustrated some or all of their items in full color. Some of these are remarkably well done. One of the best of these is the Redwood Drive-In in Brentwood, Mo. The cover showing chuck-burgers in "the flaming pit" is enough to set off the taste buds. Needless to point out, such a color menu is expensive.

Balance the layout of the menu: Many menus are cluttered and lack any semblance of plan making them most difficult to read.

The menu, no matter how well the items are selected, described, placed and displayed in color, will not make a restaurant. It cannot overcome poor location, mediocre food, preparation and service. Even so, it is part of the food service personality and sales face which has helped change many an operation into something outstanding.

Give the Children Something Special

If children are an important part of the business, give them some­thing special. A few restaurants have set aside a Kiddies Korner. The Korner may have small seats and a kiddie-size soda bar or it may be just a corner with individual decorations. A Fairytale Nook could be decorated with animals and fairytale characters. Needless to say, carpeting would not be part of this Nook and washable furnishings would be a requisite. A drive-in could feature a Clown Corner with a carhop dressed as a clown.

The Clean Plate Club has been used by many restaurants. Children who eat everything on their plates get a certificate to the Clean Plate Club. In some places this can be turned into the cashier for a grab in the treasure chest, which contains assorted prizes with an average cost of less than 5 cents.

Children's menus in the form of face masks, animals, or clowns are good if there are enough children customers to warrant the extra expense. Menu items on these are named after animals or well known children's characters. "Please order by picture," says one such menu. The menu itself is in the form of a donkey and the food items are the Polar Bear, Zebra, Lion, Elephant and Giraffe. As an example, the Zebra turns out to be a peanut butter or raspberry jam sandwich, ice cream cone, and chocolate milk.

Other children's menus feature such characters as The Davy Crockett or The Rough Rider.

Writing to children directly pleases them as well as the parents. One restaurant has a fictitious character "Speedy" on all of their children's menus who directs the Speedy Clean Plate Club and sends the kids periodic messages. Here's one of them—

Master Peter Wilson:

Speedy is busy and asked me to remind you of Washington's. Birth­day and, of course, the juicy cherry pie that always goes with Washing­ton's Birthday. You know, George Washington was supposed to have cut down

a cherry tree and then like a good boy confessed everything to his Daddy.

Speedy is busy baking lots of cherry pies and he wants you to come down to Jerry's Drive-in and have a big piece. Or better yet, get Mom to take a whole pie home so that the whole family may enjoy it.

(signed)
Rumpelstiltskin
Secretary to Speedy

Contests for children have a great appeal and what is more interest­ing to a child than a Shetland pony as an animal prize? Bikes as prizes come in for a lot of interest, too.

Hot Shoppes in Washington, D.C., has a contest in which the win­ners plus their mothers and fathers are guests at a nearby ranch for a day. Everyone is picked up at a designated spot downtown by a chartered bus and taken to the farm. A tour and steak picnic follows. For city children who have never been on a farm, the trip is a real thriller.

One restaurant created considerable attention and extra business by suggesting a "steak and beans" contest to large auto dealers, insur­ance companies and department stores in the area. A No. 10 can of pork and beans was sent to the manager of each firm with a letter suggesting that the can of beans be a gimmick for a sales contest. The sales force, the letter suggested, should be divided into two teams and a sales contest held. The can of beans was to be prominently displayed as being the prize for the losers. The losers ate the beans and paid for "steaks for the winners." The steaks, of course, were served at the restaurant that conceived the contest idea.

Another idea is to tie in with a local movie theater to give compli­mentary tickets on nights that normally have little business for both the drive-in and the theater. The tickets cost the theater manager nothing and he can be sold on the idea of establishing the "supper-theater" habit. Also, the restaurant can give the movie some publicity in the newspaper advertisement.

To introduce a new food item or to push the sales of an old one, try waitress badges reading—

It's The Greatest.
Everybody's Talking!

When the curious customer naturally asks "What's the greatest?" the waitress responds "Why, the new Barbecued Pig Sandwich we're featuring. Would you like to try one?"

Most salesgirls can profit from a "charm" course. Such courses sug­gest improvements in posture, walking, make-up and conversation. Why not get the local restaurant association to sponsor a charm course and send the salesgirls at no cost to them? Many times the local news­paper or electric power company will co-operate or even finance com­pletely such courses. A girl who can be made more attractive likes herself better and she also likes other people and the world in general better.

Successful Promotion Ideas

Here are some successful promotion ideas used in actual operations. Some may not be entirely suitable for a particular operation, and others may have to be changed to go with your restaurant, but each should be considered as a possibility in your promotion program.

Let's start with guest relations. Waitresses and carhops can be informed and cheerfully answer commonly asked questions about such items as the population of your town, the reason for the town's name, name and location of a good department store, men's store, women's shop and drug store, location of the nearest post office, mileage to nearby towns and cities and highways to travel in getting to them, and current movies.

In other words, guest-contact employees thus appear informed and can make intelligent conversation. Part of personality is interest and knowledge. Help employees to develop theirs.

Holiday greetings to regular customers are another promotion idea. For this, try something different. Send a line cut of your restaurant with Season's Greetings "From Jerry and the Staff at the Bonny Charlie." Send a "We are thankful for you" note at Thanksgiving time.

Special customers deserve something. Dale's Steakhouse in Birming­ham sends something useful and different each Christmas. One year it was a cocktail glass with ounce marks and recipes engraved on the outside. Another year it was a tile pot holder. Another time it was a catsup dispenser in the form of a giant tomato.

The idea which goes with the gift is often more important than the gift or card itself. You may want to include a message like this one—

Tomatoes + Spice = Catsup
Catsup + Bonny Hamburgers =
Something Nice Hope
to see you often
The Bonny Charlie Staff

Effective Advertising

Eating is an emotional process and therefore advertising must appeal to the emotions. Radio is very effective for advertising restaurants pro­vided the advertising is repeated. Since TV has offered radio so much competition, radio advertising rates have come down and today some mass rates are obtainable in blocks of as many as two thousand spot announcements on the radio. Black and white TV is not too effective for selling restaurants but color TV should be an excellent medium. Radio and TV advertising can hit people when they are "ready" to eat if timed properly. Dining out is often "impulse buying."

A classified ad in the telephone book which describes the restaurant carefully is an effective advertising medium—tourists and local people often select restaurants from the phone book.

Word of mouth advertising is, of course, the best of all advertising and it may be necessary to produce such a fine product that all of your advertising money is spent on the product itself.

Have a definite advertising budget and stick to it. Most restaurants cannot afford professional guidance through advertising agencies, but would do well to employ one if the restaurant is being changed over in style of operation or is just being opened.

Limit your advertising objective: Do not try to be all things to all men. Keep your message simple and hammer away at a single idea. Do a few things superbly and be consistent in the advertising.

Never forget that advertising is but one phase of a promotion pro­gram. A full-page ad in the local newspaper will bring dozens, maybe hundreds, of people to the restaurant. They come once, but unless the atmosphere and food is right, they do not come again.

Capitalize on Publicity

Few restaurants capitalize on publicity—that is, getting the name and idea of their restaurant before the public at no cost to the restau­rant. Radio stations and newspapers are eager to broadcast or publish anything that is newsworthy. It's up to you to slant what happens at your restaurant so it will be newsworthy. Have your chef work up a special dish for the winning high school or college team. Call it "The Victory Sandwich." Serve it to the first string eleven and see that the newspapers are there to photograph the event.

Or develop a specialty featuring a local food product, such as a shrimpburger, a crabburger, a new ice cream float featuring local cran­

 berries—there is no end to what can be done by making a minor change in a well established recipe. Food editors are looking for just such news.

You must view the problem objectively and realize that an editor cannot use your material just because you sent it. Give the editor a hook on which to hang his hat, something that will interest his readers. Make it as easy as possible for the newspaper man to help you. Remem­ber that the editor is a very busy man, always racing the clock. Forget the small talk—be polite, brief, considerate—and get out.

In writing a news release tell your entire story in the first paragraph. The rest of the story is trimming. Give yourself three chances on a story by leaving aspects of the story for other news releases.

In sending in news stories, type them double spaced and do not try to blow them up unrealistically. "Pufflicity" is no longer fashionable. Realize that a publicity program is like building a house out of blocks. Each block is necessary and adds to the final effect. Keep your pro­gram fluid and be ready to change your objectives when necessary.

The Fontainebleau has built up the word fabulous to such an extent that many people are afraid to stop there. Now an effort is being made to make the public aware that twelve-dollar rooms are available just as are the two-hundred-a-day suites.

Timing in publicity is important. Christmas week, for example, is a poor time to publicize a hotel since most people are preoccupied with Christmas events of their own.

Put Motivation Research to Work

Why do your customers eat at a particular restaurant? Is it actually because of the good food in pleasant surroundings?

The "MR" people—psychologists doing motivation research—tell us that people buy things for more impelling reasons and your food is probably no exception. If you know the reasons, you have a key for unlocking greater sales. As the MR people say, you can trigger the emotions which will cause people to buy your product.

What is MR and what has it done? Motivation research is an attempt to learn the underlying reasons why we buy the things we do, to uncover the "unconscious" forces which steer our decisions. Psychologists use so-called depth interviews, word association and projective techniques to take a look below the surface of the mind. And what do they find?

Are one drive-in's hamburgers really any better than primeburgers or another drive-in's hamburgers? Maybe not. Maybe all three burgers have been made with buns from the same bakery, the same grade of meat and the same cuts using similar patty machines. What then is different? Only the image that each hamburger creates in the mind of the buyer. We may be willing to pay more for the image than for the product itself.

Our egos, our pictures of ourselves, are our most important posses­sions. Consciously and sub-consciously we try to do the things which preserve that picture. We buy the kind of car we think fits us, the kind of beer which goes with our personality, the hamburger with which we would like to be associated.

So we are really not selling just hamburgers, steaks and barbecued beef, but what goes with them. Anyone can buy hamburger and buns, take them home and grill them for less than half what they cost in a drive-in. But a drive-in represents excitement and being served by others. It presents light, color and social life. Sell this image, not hamburger.

Many restaurants still sell that tired old idea, "the best hamburger in town." This theme and all the rest that harp on taste have no real appeal. However, the associations that go with the item and its mean­ing are very important. The restaurant and the people are, in a sense, part of the hamburger.

How many persons have you met that you can't remember because they are pretty much like every other person? Most restaurants and most restaurant items are pretty much alike—no personality, nothing that sets them apart. Advertising builds the difference and develops the personality. So, too, does design and service. Give your ham­burgers and steaks personality. Create a personality to set them apart. Establish an identity and build it up. "Sell the sizzle, not the steak."

Food is loaded with psychological implications. Milk means com­fort, security and return to the safety of mother. Ice cream is a reward food and should be advertised as such—"Reward yourself with a heap­ing dish of ice cream" or "Today you deserve ice cream." Ice cream often symbolizes self-indulgence and ads should show the overflowing cone or dish.

Restaurants that cater to a weight-conscious crowd should use the 4 to 6 percent butterfat soft-serve product and emphasize that "it has all of the nutrition with a minimum of fat." Dairy Queen has done well with these ideas.

Motivation researchers tell us that most people have guilt feelings about indulging themselves in food, especially candy, beer or any other extra fattening foods. Candy companies raised sales by telling us that candy is nutritious and full of energy and by putting two or three smaller pieces in a wrapper so that the buyer can sin a little less if he eats the candy in parts. Eating out comes under the heading of self-indulgence for many. The "you owe it to yourself to eat out" is a way of wiping out the guilt feeling.

Another psychological clincher is the one that dramatizes eating out as a way of increasing one's efficiency. "Have more time for doing the things you should do by eating at the Chicken House" is one way to say it, or "A quick supper at the Chicken House will give you the time you need."

Suppose you would like to attract a higher income bracket to your place, people who may not feel quite sure of their social standing at a drive-in. The "Mrs. Vandersnob appeal" is a tried and true approach. Where the social leaders go, so follow those who must psychologically associate with the "best people." Invite Mrs. Vandersnob to your place. Get her comments on the food and atmosphere. Tape them and put them on radio. Follow her with the Highnoses and the Gotmoneys and you will find matrons of the community changing their tune about "the drive-ins" and falling right in line, just as they do when a new dress fashion is presented. If your place caters to a younger crowd, get the high school leaders and the offspring of the social leaders to "say a few words for the radio audience."

Know your clientele. Are they local people or tourists? Underneath it all, why do they choose your place? If you cater to tourists, be sure to emphasize cleanliness on the outside with fresh paint and clean signs. The menu should include the familiar popular items, because anyone who is in strange country or is tired from traveling wants something he can feel secure with—he will not venture anything new or something of which he is not certain.

In Copenhagen, Denmark, there is a popular restaurant called the Seven Houses. It consists of seven different dining rooms, each dec­orated to represent a different style of home, each in a different period. The patron is free to wander from one home to another until he finds the one that fits his mood for the day—"the one that reflects his image of himself." This is good salesmanship.

Thousands of people are willing to pay a higher price for the better image of themselves eating the same hamburger but in a more glamor­ous spot. Howard Johnson, for another example, has built a restaurant empire on sanitation, familiarity and the accepted menu items.

Every restaurant should know its market. The restaurant market is located geographically and psychologically. The geographic market is more easily identified than the psychological, but even it is not always clearly defined.

Some restaurants appeal to patrons from as far away as 50 miles. A few name restaurants such as The Forum of the Twelve Caesars in New York City can be said to have a national market. Most restaurants have local, restricted markets. Many markets are restricted to the area of one office building.

Geographical markets can be identified by asking the patrons of a restaurant where they live. Plot the areas on a local map and show the percentage of patrons coming from each section. See example on next page.

The circles are drawn to show where the large percentage of the patrons live or work. The map can be drawn in any way which is meaningful to the operator. In the example shown it is seen that 75% of the patronage comes from two well defined areas. This might suggest that newspaper, television, and radio advertising would not be efficient media for advertising this restaurant. Advertising using such media reaches too many people who are not potential customers, and the advertising rates are based on the wide coverage. In this case, direct mail to the places of work and to residences would pinpoint the market and gain the most results for the advertising dollar.

The location, decor, menu and price structure determine the market to a large extent. A cafeteria with carpets attracts a higher income group than a cafeteria with tile floors. A drive-in featuring a 21 cent hamburger attracts a different crowd than a restaurant featuring, as some do, a 95 cent hamburger. Most cities are divided according to income bracket, some areas being on the right side of the tracks, others on the wrong side. Sociologists divide cities more precisely by separat­ing families into socio-economic classes.

The median (or middle point) income of all U. S. families is about $4900. Every restaurant operator should be aware of the class of persons he attracts. Most operators are vaguely aware of their socio-economic market; few understand it well. The management of a cafe­teria believed that they were catering to the lower middle class. After a study it was learned that upper middle class persons were their patrons. So what? A restaurant that was believed to cater to the upper middle class found that it was catering to lower middle and lower class patrons who instead of wanting heavy drapes and carpeting, quiet and dignity, preferred plain floors and jazz. A cafeteria operator wishing to attract a younger crowd introduced a combo on certain nights. A candle-light dinner proved effective on a slow Thursday. The candle­light and the combo changed the market. Is the image created for the public eye masculine or feminine? Is it sedate or gay? Is it informal or formal? The creation of an image begins with the name itself. If a restaurant wants a little snob appeal it uses a snob name. Something French helps. A new cafeteria in California serves caviar on its line, not because it is a profitable, popular item but because it is good for the image.

Summing up, know your patrons and the real reasons they patronize your restaurant. Appeal to these basic, underlying needs of people by establishing a personality or identity for your restaurant and your best sellers. Sell the "image," the associations that go with the item, rather than the item itself. Create a personality—a difference—through advertising.

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