Restaurant Marketing – The decision to become a customer from a passer-by.

When you look at most restaurants, what do you see?

Think about this – are your competitors making more of opportunities out there than you are?

When you have a half hour spare, take a stroll around a busy area that has several restaurants. Forget that you are a restaurateur and put yourself in the shoes of a customer. Look through the eyes of a customer and imagine that you are looking for somewhere to eat. Take some paper with you and make notes,

in fact makes two lists. The first list will be about what you found attractive in each of the places you see. The second list will be about the things that put you off each of the restaurants you came across and what caused you to dismiss it from your list of choices.

Take a moment to analyze several points regarding the outside area of the restaurants.

Are the windows clean?

Is there garbage or dirt on or around the sidewalk outside the restaurant?

If there are tables and chairs outside the restaurant, are they clean and inviting?

These are the things that may or may not have been picked up by you consciously, but unconsciously they will definitely have been noticed and registered in your brain. What’s more your brain would have received a signal to either investigate further or bypass this establishment. The point here is that we don’t always consciously know why we ‘don’t fancy eating there’ and yet we have formed that opinion from somewhere.

Notice other things like:

Is there an A board outside?

If so, does it tell us something worthwhile, interesting or enticing?

Will what the a board says have a positive effect on you entering this restaurant?

Or are you indifferent to the message?

Does this restaurant display a menu/price list outside, that gives passers-by an idea of what to expect?

What does the menu say to you, note the layout, design and attractiveness of the menu as well as the contents.

Are there posters in the window?

Do they entice you to want to try this particular experience?

Does the restaurant look interesting?

What is the lighting like, the decor and furniture?

Are you drawn to it like a magnet or repulsed like a bad smell?

These things and more are all the characteristics of a restaurant that will get new customers through your doors or not.

Now, go back to your restaurant and check it out with new eyes, would you walk into your establishment, if you were a passer-by on the lookout for somewhere to eat?

Remember this, if they walk in your door, they have already made a buying decision. It’s not like an ordinary store, these are not browsers! For them not to buy now means you have to somehow screw it up!

Now it’s up to you to delight or disappoint them with your service and your offering. Delight them and you may have a quality repeat customer. Disappoint them, they will not come back and they will probably decide to tell 100,000 other potential customers on Social Media platforms, like their Facebook page or their twitter page.

If you want to master the art of reaching out to the passer-by and drawing them through your door, then check out what you are currently offering and see if you can improve upon it. Don’t waste time, do this now, because all the time you wait, more people are just walking on by!