Our same-store sales have dropped at Handcraft Burgers and Brew this summer. Typically, we get a lift in May, June and July that didn’t show up this year.
I’m not one to wait around for magic to happen because I know you have to make it happen. So we’ve dug into all of the things we normally do to see what’s changed. We’ve been paying attention to media and news sites to see what’s working for restaurants out there, and we’re testing new strategies.
If one thing is constant in the restaurant business, it’s change. And being that I am a fractional Chief Marketing Officer for restaurants, I get the vantage point of experiencing what’s happening and trying new things across multiple brands.
So what’s working right now?
Two things: protecting your margins and increasing retention performance.
Since I’m a Marketing guy, I’m definitely better suited to share some thoughts and advice on the retention piece, but yeah, don’t purposely do things that lose you money! 😎
If you’re looking for some excellent retention tactics that are working right now, check out my framework for how to get your good guests to be more like your best guests.
And if you’re coming to QSR Evolution in Atlanta, put my Rewards panel discussion on your calendar. We’ve got a banger lineup of some really incredible thought leaders in the discussion.
In the meantime, taking a macro look at the industry, I can see three strategies that are definitely working across brands and service models right now. Two of them you could activate today. The third one, good luck.
What’s working to draw traffic right now?
EXPERIENCE
In a down market, it’s not that people stop spending at restaurants. It’s that they become more selective about how they spend. Typically, one of the core deciding factors is experience. “Do I like ordering from or dining with this restaurant?”
That comes in the form of convenience, like proximity to where somebody lives or works. It comes in the form of how easy it is to order or make a reservation. It could be about your packaging, your decor, your staff friendliness, or it can come in the “it’s Friday night and I wanna take my family out to dinner and have some fun” flavor.
All of these require a playbook of execution excellence by Operations, but often knowing what to do and knowing if it’s working is something Marketing oversees in partnership.
Start by analyzing your reviews on Google and Yelp or any first-party feedback you’re getting.
What do customers say they like?
What do they say they want more of?
What are customers talking about that you’re not?
Where else do your customers go, and what do they say about those restaurants?
If you have a tool like Ovation, they have a really great dashboard that will show you a summary of insights into what your guests are saying about the business.
If you have a tool like Marqii, it’s easy to organize and analyze your reviews, especially if you leverage their MCP with AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT.
Pro tip: If you know the other restaurants or brands that your guests frequent, go scrape 90 days’ worth of reviews on Google and/or Yelp for the competitor, put them into your favorite LLM and ask it to come up with a list of the trending positive and negative things guests are saying about that business.
And just like that, you’ve got a starter pack of ideas to choose from and where to focus on improving your experience.
VALUE
If you look at the multi-unit restaurant brands that are really thriving right now, you’ll see one common thread: value.
Some of them are working an everyday value angle by having always-on offers. Some are putting out promos and discounts. And the really smart ones are running big retention plays through personalized offers and rewards.
We’ve done a lot of analysis at Salad House, understanding that our best guests are not necessarily motivated by discounts, so we are digging deeper and deeper into better segmentation and Rewards.
At Roggenart, we understand that our most engaged and frequent guests are there to get coffee every day, but not always pastries. Therefore, we’re looking at ways to encourage coffee habits.
At Handcraft Burgers & Brew, our retention is up, AOV is up and our sentiment is trending more positive. So we realized we need to drive overall traffic.
Something interesting I learned this week is that guests who receive an incentive on their first visit are worth 2.2x LTV compared to guests who pay full price. So we are thinking about how to get guests through the door, so long as we capture their contact data!
So if you’re down, what do you understand about your best guests that you can leverage to make more of them?
GOING VIRAL
There is a third thing that’s working right now, and unfortunately, it’s not something you can program. Brands that are capturing viral moments are seeing a lift.
However, it’s not like you can say, “Hey, how about next Tuesday we go viral?” and then boom, you’re off to the races.
Yes, you can program moments that have the potential to go viral, and you can set yourself up for the best success around them, but the factor of luck and timing is barely leverage-able.
You’ve got three choices right now:
Improve your experience
Work on your value perception
Create a five-layer gummy shark burger that gets shared around the Internet by 6 million people
Which path do you choose?
If you need some help, reach out. I’ve got lots of experience, tactics and frameworks that I know can help you!
PS: Kudos to Wade Allen for sharing this thought.
And kudos to you if you’re doing what I’m doing, which is sharing what’s working with the rest of us so that we can be successful too!
Do you need help with your restaurant marketing or maximizing how you use AI to make it stronger and faster? Send me an email at [email protected].
- Rev Ciancio
WHAT DOES REV DO?
I help restaurants build guest marketing programs.
I help hospitality tech companies with lead generation and content marketing.
