Marketing

Today just like every other day I woke up and jumped in the shower, where I get a lot of my thinking done.  I think about how to drive business, what is it that I can do to fill the holes of time where my chairs in the dining room seem to be empty and how can I grow my out of house income with things such as catering and my notorious BBQ truck.  How can I get more people here for lunch, how can I get more people here between 5 and 6pm and all the other times that we are not packed to capacity.  Then the ideas begin to roll, some of which are good and some of which, admit-tingly, are horrible.  I try to differentiate the two and bring the good ones to my partners and they do the same to me and eventually we come up with an idea that the three of us agree will work.  Now comes the hard part, how are we going to let the world know about this incredible offer, event or idea ?  That is where the world of marketing comes in.  This is a world I am not familiar with, I have a great idea, why is it not working?  The easy answer to that is, nobody knows about it, I have not successfully spread the word.  In a world of social networking all over the internet, I am lost.  I go to my younger staff to find out how to use all that the web has to offer, but, I feel a little overwhelmed.  I am 32 years old and feel like a technical dinosaur, when did this happen?  When did I become obsolete in the ability to get my word out.  Then there is the other options, all of which are dying breeds from what I hear, magazines, newspapers, mailers and countless other marketing tools that I get bombarded with attempts to sell me everyday.  I hear on daily basis, “wouldn’t you like to fill all your seats all the time?”  Which is a hillarious question, like my answer is going to be “no I think I would rather sweat every time a bill comes and let my family starve.”  Then they go on with showing me a restaurant magazine that I could have a business card size add for the small price of $2000.00.  My god, I got in the wrong business, $2000.00 for what?  Typically it is a tiny blurb about the restaurant or a picture of  food placed in the corner of the back of a page in the “How To Dress Your Dog For The Winter” Section because the bigger, wealthier restaurants have already taken up all the ad space(of which I couldn’t afford any way) for the “Restaurant Guide” section.  So everyday, a long with coming up with ideas we have to come up with ideas on how to get the word out.  I am working on this everyday and seem to be learning.  I just need to learn a little faster because everyday it’s a war out there in this business and one step backwards while all the others step forward could mean a long decent off the top of the successful restaurant mountain and into to the pool of the huge percentage of start up restaurants that never make it.  This brings the importance of marketing the good old fashion-affordable way, just to go out and tell someone.  Run your mouth the way you did in high school when you were hosting Friday night’s big party.  Just walk up and tell someone.  I come from an era before email, cell phones and social networking websites.  Grant it, we did have pagers, but, if you had one you were always under suspicion of being a drug dealer, that is a hole other blog.  When we wanted to let people know about whatever we had going on, we simply started telling people, everybody.  Passing out fliers is a thing of the past, I don’t think so.  So if you see any of my staff running around Bethesda passing out fliers and talking to people take a minute to listen, we got great things going on and we want everyone to know about it!  My partner is a pretty successful business man and a man that has been “getting the word out” for a while and the guy can barley turn on a computer, as I try to learn more about the virtual world on the web we will not lose the roots of marketing and the core of this people business, talking to people and spreading our ideas through basic conversation because not only do we want your business we want to know you.  Come  in to Nest and find out what we have going on, visit the website or just look for us around town because as my business partner always says “Don’t take your foot of the pedal” and we won’t.  Look for info on our Xmas Party, if you were here for the Halloween, then you know not to miss this one.

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