Rethinking Restaurant Marketing With Chip Klose

And today's guest is Mr Chip Close . I am so excited to have him on because he is an author , consultant and friend , and I wanted to have him on again because he's working with so many different restaurant brands around the country , helping them to tell the story only they can tell .

He's the host of the Restaurant Strategy podcast and the author of the new book , the Restaurant Marketing Mindset a really cool , great book . Had a chance to go over it before our call today , excited to chat a little bit about it , but how ?

The Restaurant Strategy Podcast was an extension of the work I was doing with restaurant owners all over the city at the time back in New York City , and this book really stems from the work that I was doing with restaurant owners all over the world .

It's called the Restaurant Marketing Mindset because I think there's a specific way you've got to frame it in your head about how we market . It really stems from having this same exchange over and over and over again . Hey , tell me a little bit about your marketing . And it goes one of two ways . Either one .

They say no , we don't do marketing , we're not a big company . We can't afford to do marketing , which , of course , we know to be absolutely wrong . If you sell things to other human beings , you need to figure out which human beings would be most apt to buy your things . So either they say no , we can't afford to do it , we're only a small company .

I thought you knew that about us . Or I say , tell me about your marketing . And they say well , we do at least two stories a day and we post four times on Facebook every week and we do at least one reel , and our hostess is really good with social media and so that's what we're doing . Their entire marketing is social media .

And I just thought , no , no , no , no , no , no . They fundamentally misunderstand what marketing is .

They fundamentally misunderstand that the point , the reason we market , is to identify a market , to figure out who needs something , to figure out who might want what we are prepared to serve them with , which goes to the heart of what we do in the restaurant industry .

And yet all these clients , all these restaurants , over and over and over again , we're sort of missing that step and going right to like the stuff that everyone else told them they're supposed to do , rather than thinking for themselves and going like huh , how do we really market Meaning ? How do we find people to serve ?

How do we find people to sell things to ?

I think one of the things that you talk about in the book that I found fascinating was this concept that the restaurant budget when families go out to eat , that money is not coming from the grocery budget , it's coming from the entertainment budget , and how that fundamentally makes us we should be thinking of our restaurant different as a result of that .

Talk to me a little bit about that .

They go to the supermarket , get you know can of beans , rice and chicken , and it might not be a particularly inspired meal , but you could feed a family of four for under $20 with all that stuff .

And I think most of the restaurants at least I'm guessing a lot of them listening here couldn't serve one person for less than $20 , certainly a full service restaurant , right ? So that let's agree that when they walk in the front door , they're not starving , they're not just in survival mode .

If they were in survival mode , they would have gotten something that would take them much further , that would be much cheaper than what they get in our restaurant . So then it begs the question we got to ask ourselves then what are we serving ?

And , like you said when I make the point in the book is that we're providing an experience , we are an entertainment , we are , we are a date , right , I would say food is the pretense for a deal getting closed . Food is the pretense for a date . Food is the pretense to celebrate an anniversary .

I think it's amazing that the first thing we go to when we celebrate an anniversary or a birthday it's like well , where do you want , do you want to go out , where do you want to go ? And it's not like do you want to go to a concert ? Do you want to go to a sporting game , do you want to ? It's not , it's nothing .

Except where are we going to go to dinner ? Let's find a really nice restaurant to go celebrate . That's amazing . What a boon for the entire industry , for everybody listening here , is that the meal is the pretense for closing deals , for first dates , for celebrating marking occasions . It's an entertainment . It is not for sustenance .

So let's stop selling it like it's for sustenance , like it's a commodity product . It just gave this talk down in New Zealand , of all places , and it was about adopting the luxury mindset and it really says hey , listen , what we sell is not a commodity and we don't want to be in that commodity game . What we sell is a luxury , it is an indulgence , it is .

It is something we don't need . We don't need someone to go shop for us and prepare for us and serve us and clean up afterwards . All of those things are a luxury that many of us have the great fortune to be able to buy once a week , twice a week , once a month . It's an indulgence , so let's not pretend that it's not .

We have to over deliver , right , it's the whole point of hospitality is under promise , over deliver , exceed the guest expectations , take them further than they thought they would go , serve them in ways that they didn't think were gonna happen

. That nowadays there's so many great restaurants out there , we don't have the luxury to just be okay , to just do a good job . We have to blow people away . I mean , listen , you were on a company . That's all about guest feedback .

It's all about making sure we take the temperature of the water to make sure that they really did leave , wow , that they're excited enough to talk about it . They're excited enough to share pictures , to text people , to talk about it the next day at work and to hopefully come back later and to leave us reviews and all of that . That hasn't changed .

Word of mouth is still the most powerful tool we have . We just have to find new ways of sparking it . We have to make sure that we're making it easy , effortless , frictionless to be able to do it , and that we're inspiring people to do it .

famous for their voodoo sauce , right , I don't know if you know Neighborhood Services and the whole collection of restaurants with that , but to have that nostalgia of like I remember how the server made me feel as he explained the voodoo sauce and as he brought it out to me and as he came up and checked on me after I tasted it for the first time .

Like these are things that it's not that we have to spend a lot of money to create these experiences . It's about that . We have to make people feel important because at the end of the day Think about it that is what we need to do in hospitality , right .

We need them to keep coming back and spending their money with us . It's funny there's an idea in the book later in the book , when we sort of put it all together and I talk about something I call the triangle principle . I talk about this a lot , I take the stage and talk about it . I talk about it on the podcast .

The triangle principle basically says right , once we learn a lot in the book , we finally get to the point and say , okay , great , then how do we actually market ?

And I say we always have to start with the end in mind , rather than focusing on all the things you need to do right , cause there are plenty of marketing books out there that say you have to do this and this and then you've got to do two stories a day and four posts a week and one email every week .

And rather than that , let's focus on actually what we need to happen to be successful and for the life of me , as long as I've been marketing restaurants , there are only three things we need to do . We need to focus on customer acquisition . I call that attraction . How do we raise awareness , inspire people to come in ?

Right , there's that inspire word again , but customer acquisition , customer retention . We need people to come back and come back with greater frequency . And then , finally , what I call evangelism . Right In the book we talk about evangelism .

When I take the stage all over the country , do all these trade shows and conventions , and I always say what's the most powerful marketing tool we have ? It's always a resounding Hundreds of people in the audience come back and they say they say word of mouth . What's the most powerful marketing we have is word of mouth .

It's been the same for a couple of thousand years . But then I always ask I say what's your word of mouth strategy ? No , really , let me hear it . What's your word of mouth plan ? Everybody looks sheepish and they blush and they say well , we just make sure they have great food and a great experience and then they'll tell their friends .

I said that sounds like a hope and a prayer Rather than actually moving someone and making it obvious and easy for them to go talk about us . I chose evangelism for a very specific reason . Restaurants grow the same way that a church grows .

No church grew because a pastor walked through the center of town and shook enough hands and invited people to the service on Sunday . That's not how it works . The way it works is the minister stands up there , the pastor stands up there , delivers a sermon , moves the 50 people in the congregation and some of them leave and say I'm so moved by what I heard .

I have to tell someone . You know what . They framed something in a way that I never thought . This made me think differently . And then somebody hears that and says that's amazing , maybe I'll come next week . That's how a church grows , which we know . Right , that's how a church really goes .

Somebody's moved , they're moved enough to tell the story , to recount the story , right , and it grows organically like that . It doesn't happen by accident . The pastor , the minister , right , they map out a sermon that they know has a punch to it . They know we'll get people to repeat it . They say this is , and that's how it happens .

It's the same thing with the restaurants . So in the book we talk about this triangle principle . We need a plan , a strategy , for customer acquisition . We need a plan for customer retention , and then we need a plan for what I call evangelism Inspiring people to go spread the good word about what you're doing right To say , hey , this is so great , this is .

I'm gonna make it really easy for you to leave a review . This is something worth taking a picture of . This is something worth taking a video of and sharing . This is worth talking about tomorrow when you go back to work . Right , just like the sermon you heard , the great meal is no different .

And when we start doing that , we get intentional about accomplishing the goals right . So I always talk about in my Mastermind program . I work with restaurant owners all over the world and I say everything's results oriented . It's all about systems and goals . We set proper goals . What do we want to happen ? And then a system .

System is just a repeatable set of actions . What are we going to do to make that thing happen Right Now ? Listen , we can pull this back to Ovation . This is the same thing . We want the following thing to happen . Well , here's a system . Ovation is a perfect example . You're going to do this to achieve the following result .

It's very easy to then come to a restaurant owner , to come to an operator , to go to a manager , say why does this thing matter ? This thing matters because we want to achieve the following result . In order to achieve the following result , we're going to do the following things .

And then we're going to track that , we're going to measure that , we're going to see if that thing happens or not . Ultimately , that's how great marketing happens . We figure out what we want to happen and then we do things that will make that thing happen and then we measure to see if the things we did made the thing happen .

If it made a thing happen , we do more of it . If it didn't make the thing happen , we scrap it , we go back to the drawing board and we figure out something else .

This is why the book is called the Restaurant Marketing Mindset because I believe it requires a mindset shift on the part of the restaurant owner is I want them to think differently , rather than doing all the stuff that someone tells you to do , make sure you understand what you're trying to accomplish .

Then , when you're at a trade show and you're dealing with all these different software platforms , when you're hearing somebody talk and they come up with a bunch of good ideas , you can then throw it to the filter and say is it going to help me achieve the stated goal ? The thing I want to happen . Is this going to help me get new people in the door ?

Is this going to make it easier to get the people who came in and had a great meal to come back ? How is it going to help them leave reviews ? It's going to help them evangelize for us . When you start throwing it through those filters , it changes everything everything in the way that we market our restaurants .

Walk any trade show floor . Are you doing this ? Oh , you really should do that . Talk to any other restaurant owner . Oh , are you on TikTok ? You really should be on TikTok . Well , I don't know . I don't know that that's true . I don't know that any of that's true .

But when you throw it through that filter , it helps the decision-making process become a lot easier .

If you'd like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience , visit us at ovationupcom .