Magic in Retail: The Restaurant Business

Two things drive the restaurant business.
The first is Word of Mouth. The second is reviews in newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media.
In the case of new restaurants, the speed of getting up to speed is critical, because a new restaurant is
living off its investment, which can be rapidly depleted if enough covers don't materialize quickly.
In the case of a long-established restaurant, it is absolutely necessary to fill the leaky bucket – loyal customers are constantly being lost to relocation, boredom, even death. Attrition is inevitable. Obviously, it takes a lot of new, first-time customers to replace a single regular. And word of mouth and restaurant reviews are less likely for an established restaurant. A new restaurant is news. An old one is old news.
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said it is impossible to step into the same stream twice. Nowhere is this more true than in the restaurant business. Thus, it becomes necessary to recruit new customers to your restaurant by creating news, creating awareness, and communicating the restaurant's uniqueness, its menu, and its very existence. It's been said that the three most important things in retail are location, location, location.
If a restaurant is in an out-of-the-way location, it becomes even more imperative to actively promote it.
The best promotion involves a narrative. After all, the function of a restaurant is far more than providing a nutritious, tasty meal. A restaurant is an experience; it is as much entertainment as food. This is especially true if the restaurant is on the expensive side. It then becomes a "special" place for special events. The risk is that there are not enough special events per customer. No restaurant can survive, much less prosper, on special event business.
This creates the need for a much broader customer base, which, in turn, can result in a much broader loyal repeat customer base.
The other problem for a restaurant is if it appears not to be popular. This can devolve into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Something must be wrong with an almost empty restaurant, the customer reasons.
This was the case with Cafe Between the Bread, a really fine Manhattan, New York City restaurant in what had been an extremely desirable location within a block of City Center and Carnegie Hall.
The disaster occurred when Carnegie Hall was closed down for extensive renovations (which were to take 18 months) and City Center closed down for a couple months. Customers dried up.
Suddenly, the restaurant was all-but-forgotten. Staff outnumbered customers by five to one. Clearly, this situation could not be allowed to continue. Fine restaurants have excellent staff, and very perishable foodstuffs. I was referred to the owner.
After a thorough briefing, I took my wife to the restaurant for dinner. We were the only customers in the place. It was eerie. But in a way, it was very romantic. Candles on the table, and we had the whole place to ourselves, with captain and waiters falling over themselves to cater to our whims. For the owner, it was a lot less romantic.
One rule of life is, when fate sends you lemons, make lemon souffle.
We created two full-page ads positioning the place as the most romantic restaurant in New York City. Great food, great wine, great service, and a truly romantic ambience.
The phones started ringing, and on the day the first ad ran, the restaurant was booked solid. By the second ad, some customers began to complain. The place was too crowded to be romantic!
The Manhattan Ocean Club had a completely different problem. It was owned by the most successful restauranteur on the planet: the owner of Smith & Wollensky, the Post House, and several other big moneymakers. The Manhattan Ocean Club had been in the same location for several years, it was two blocks from Broadway, and a block from the Essex House and St. Moritz. It was across the street from a very popular restaurant frequented by many execs of CBS, which was right down the block.
The restaurant's problem was, ironically, its name. I'd passed it hundreds of times, and thought it was a littoral society, a club for seafarers, sailors, shell collectors, or fishermen. I was truly surprised when the owner told me it was a restaurant. And a really fine one.
I advised this extremely knowledgeable restauranteur to add the word "restaurant" to his marquee.
And we ran a full-page ad in the NY Times Magazine section. The headline read: The Manhattan Ocean Club is a misnomer. That got their attention. The restaurant filled up in no time. And stayed filled, because it was a great restaurant. Elegant, beautiful, lots of fresh flowers, great seafood, fantastic desserts, superb staff.
All it needed was appropriate identification. Who'd of thunk it!