Marketing Basics

  • Your menu pricing strategy can help your restaurant get ahead

    September 22, 2022
    As inflation continues to rise and labour shortages persist, it may be time to look at your menu pricing strategy as a way to cut costs and raise profits. As a restaurateur, you know it’s a balancing act to keep customers happy and stay in the green. Understanding how to create a menu pricing strategy can ...
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  • How to use design to make your restaurant stand out – part 3: marketing materials

    September 22, 2022
    By Megan Prevost Designing your restaurant to promote your unique, identifiable brand means looking at more than just artwork and lighting to make your restaurant stand out. You’ll want to ensure that anything that mentions or promotes your restaurant also portrays that stand-out branding. This means everything from the design of your business cards to your ...
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  • How to better understand customer experience (and why it matters)

    September 15, 2022
    By Austin Verner Customers are the lifeblood of any business, and that means delivering an exceptional customer experience is a must to keep your guests coming back. A study conducted by Thanx found that revenue was highly-concentrated among a small number of customers, with the top 25 per cent contributing 64 per cent of revenue. This is ...
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  • How to use design to make your restaurant stand out — part 2: restaurant atmosphere

    September 7, 2022
    By Megan Prevost While the design and content of your menu can certainly help your restaurant stand out, customers think about more than just food when they’re choosing a restaurant to dine at. Restaurant marketing professionals know that restaurants provide customers with an experience, not just dinner. Whether subconsciously or explicitly, diners select restaurants based on ...
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  • How to use design to make your restaurant stand out — part 1: food & menus

    August 22, 2022
    By Megan Prevost Even if your restaurant makes the world’s best food, it won’t survive without a solid marketing strategy in place. Most restaurant marketing experts know that customers aren’t simply seeking something to eat; they’re seeking an experience. If you want to create an experience at your restaurant, you’ll want to design and establish your ...
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  • Why you should solicit more online reviews (and how to do it)

    August 12, 2022
    By Mark Plumlee If you want to capture the attention of would-be guests on the internet, online reviews are of the utmost importance. According to a study by TripAdvisor, 94 per cent of respondents in the U.S. admitted that online reviews influence their dining decisions. Another study by two economists at the University of California, Berkeley, ...
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  • 10 fun back-to-school promos for your restaurant

    August 3, 2022
    By Zach Williams Summer is a lively season for restaurants, overflowing with promotional possibilities. The daylight is long, the weather is fine, kids and teenagers are off school, and the revenue potential is huge. Now that the season is winding down, though, you might feel that you’re running low on marketing ideas. Have no fear, though, because the ...
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  • How to design an awesome summer menu

    July 19, 2022
    By Megan Prevost Thanks to tourism, longer days, and more leisure time, summer is always a busy season for restaurants. The summer season offers numerous opportunities to create an exclusive experience for customers that they won’t find elsewhere. To create a special summer experience, start with your menu.  Your menu isn’t just a piece of paper with ...
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  • Move over unicorn lattes, there’s a new Instagram trend in town: Normal-looking food

    June 17, 2022
    By Matthew Philp, Ethan Pancer, and Jenna Jacobson The past decade has seen the rise of the Instagrammable food trend, where restaurants have altered menus to prioritize visual uniqueness — often at the expense of taste. In a competitive social media landscape where users are inundated with content, the question for restaurateurs has been how to stand ...
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  • 3 tips for maximizing restaurant cross-promotion

    June 14, 2022
    By Megan Prevost There are many different strategies that can help to propel a new business to success, especially in the continually evolving world of digital marketing. Even in the digital age, one piece of old-school wisdom still holds true — word of mouth is one of the most consistently successful forms of advertising. The trick ...
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  • Omni-channel marketing is a cornerstone of restaurants’ future

    May 30, 2022
    By Mark Plumlee Consumers are more fractured than ever before. People receive their information from different channels and different devices, and businesses and brands must compete with a thousand other distractions at any given moment. This makes the job of marketing a restaurant much harder, but it also provides interesting opportunities for omni-channel marketing. Advertising on a ...
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  • Why creating a story with your menu makes a difference

    May 24, 2022
    By Ralph Zoontjens The term “food marketing” may conjure images of billboards or TV ads, but the restaurant menu is one of the most important touchpoints to engage your customers and keep them coming back. For the past two years, food marketing has been dominated by pandemic-related risk management, but now, restaurants have the freedom to focus ...
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  • Heading into summer 2022, where does Canadian foodservice stand?

    May 9, 2022
    By David Hopkins It’s difficult to believe it but we’re already more than a third of the way through 2022. Now, more than two years into the pandemic, Canadian foodservice businesses are continually facing challenges while also experiencing new successes and new innovations. Even as we’re only in the fifth month of the year, there are ...
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  • Loyalty programs: bankable points vs. punch cards

    February 17, 2022
    By Megan Prevost Everyone has their favourite restaurant. The one they go to when they want to celebrate or need a pick-up. The one that they pick when they can’t think of anything else. How do you think these restaurants become such a staple in people’s lives? Oftentimes, delicious food and a great experience keep people coming ...
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  • 3 ways restaurants can navigate pandemic consumer behaviour

    February 8, 2022
    By Mike Wilson The last two years have challenged restaurants with evolving safety concerns, rules, and diner behaviour and preferences. While sales were down 29 per cent entering 2021, they’re expected to increase 21 per cent in 2022, potentially reaching pre-pandemic levels. Restaurants must continue to be nimble, responsive, and creative to survive and thrive. For many, ...
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