HotOperator and Laux recently started working with Country House Restaurants in Clarendon Hills and Geneva Illinois. Dean Timson, one of the partners in the restaurants came to us for advice on what Country House Restaurants could do to sell more drinks. At the moment, their business tends to drop off rapidly after the dinner hour. Dean told me that the food to drink ratio was nearing 80/20, and he would prefer to reach closer to 60/40. 

Because HotOperator has started working with Jessie Ott with f n b Innovation, we decided to ask Jessie what she might recommend. She is a renowned expert in the wine and spirit industry, so who better, right? I had expected a couple of comments in an email, but what I got back was way more than I had imagined. Not that I’m surprised, Jessie is intelligent, energetic and extremely knowledgeable when it comes to the wine and spirit industry.

Jessie Ott’s Recommendations on How Country House can Sell More Drinks

Direct from Jessie’s email to me: 

“If you are a restaurant operator like Country House and you want to increase your beverage percentages, follow these crucial steps.”

Have a Great Drink Menu (you can why see I’m already in love with her advice, since we make a lot of menus)

1.) Make sure you have a well designed drink menu printed out and on the tables and easy reach at the bar. And make sure it’s separate. It’s important to have a list ready and available to encourage your customer to go on the journey you want them to experience. Not everyone walks into a restaurant and knows exactly what they want. Guide them to try what’s new as part of your participation in making them happy. It will elevate their experience and help you sell more profitable items.

Say No to QR Codes

2.) If you are using a QR Code, it’s not enough. Offering a QR code just encourages more heads in phones and fewer people engaging with your servers and bartenders. This is not the experience you want for your guests. Plus if they are older, like myself, they can’t read what’s on their little screen. It’s been proven that when you have drink menus or specials on the table you can increase your beverage sales by up to 12%.

Make the Offering Fit the Crowd

3.) If you are a high volume concept, consider a limited cocktail and BTG (by the glass) menu. The key is volume, and getting drinks in front of your guests as quickly as possible. You want your staff to get drinks served quickly instead of your guests reading and waiting. Spending too much time mixing cocktails with too many ingredients, or making them look too fancy will not allow this to happen either. It will take customers longer to order and frustration could set in. Plus, getting drinks in front of consumers quickly can help you get a 2nd or 3rd round order which increases your check average and beverage sales.

Mix and Match with Food

4.) Offer food and beverage pairings to simplify things for your customers. If you can give them a proven experience combining both food and drinks, the experience is elevated and customers will take less time than trying to decide on their own.

Short and Sweet

 5.) Offer short, simple descriptions next to your beverage options. That way it’s not dependent on your waitstaff to relay the same message to every table. It will increase customer satisfaction and streamline your process for both your staff and the consumer. For example, a Chardonnay lists out best this way: Dry, Crisp and no Oak Aging.

Features and Specials Win

6.) Offer something special for your guests either throughout the week or a specific night of the week. This can be in the form of a daily or weekly happy hour, or discounts on beverages such as half priced wine nights. And to draw in crowds during sports seasons, offer beer and snack specials on big sports nights. Cater to your audience and encourage people to come in on your slow nights by offering deals no one can refuse, especially on a big game night.

Ready to Drink

7.) Have alternative beverages available and let guests know you have them! RTD’s (ready to drink) and no and low alcohol options are here to stay. More and more restaurants are offering these alternatives, and while some are not yet onboard, use that as a selling point to bring consumers into your restaurant. It will encourage more people to visit and create a loyal consumer base for years to come. As a bonus, they spend more per outing which increases your check average and beverage sales. Spending money on a non alcoholic beverage costs more than water, soda or juice, and elevates your customer’s experience. You MUST be sure your customers know these offerings are available via your menus and social media.

We took her advice, so should you

In working with Country House Restaurants, we used many of Jessie’s ideas along with some late night Happy Hours and free Jukebox to get people in later and to stay longer. If you’re looking for a great drink menu, or social media and marketing ideas on how to increase your drink business, reach out to HotOperator here, or Jessie Ott here.

Mark@hotoperator.com

jessieo@fnbinnovation.com

The post Recent Advice: How Country House Restaurants can Sell More Drinks appeared first on Laux.

123Foodies and M+K Laux Launch Super Dairy Blends

M+K Laux along with HotOperator® and 123Foodies in Long Island, New York working to launch shelf stable super dairy blends.

Reuben and Jasmine BenJehuda, co-owners of 123Foodies™ brand of shelf-stable, super dairy blends in Long Island, NY have come together with M+K Laux to introduce this revolutionary new product exclusively to the foodservice industry. Together, M+K Laux along with 123Foodies Launch Super Dairy Blends.

Reuben and Jasmine choose M+K Laux because of HotOperator®

Reuben and Jasmine decided to work with M+K Laux and HotOperator because of their extensive experience in the food industry. They have worked in both foodservice and retail and have been involved with a large number of brands including Hershey’s Foodservice, Anchor Food Products, Otis Spunkmeyer, General Mills Foodservice among others, along with restaurants operators in every state in the United States including Alaska and Hawaii; along with Canada, Mexico, Australia and the UK.

Looking for high quality, shelf stable gelato

123Foodies is the idea of the BenJehuda’s who were looking for a better way to make a high quality gelato for their ice cream parlor chain Popbar. Popbar is a traditional Italian gelateria with a twist of modern dessert fun. Specializing in all-natural, handcrafted gelato on a stick, their menu includes 60+ flavors, and endless ways to customize. Their tagline is “choose a pop, dip it, top it and enjoy!”

Looking for a way to save freezer space while not jeopardizing flavor and quality, Reuben and Jasmine came up with 123Foodies Super Dairy Blend. These speed-scratch blends are perfect for today’s hottest (and frozen) foodservice menu trends. The flavor is rich, smooth, creamy and delicious. Adding Super Dairy Blends to your favorite offerings will make your menu items more unique and desirable. It’s an easy way to increase the value of your best sellers, and increase profits to your business.

Add Super Dairy to Your Restaurant!

If you have a soft serve machine, or an ice cream maker, or make mocktails and cocktails, this is a product you are going to want to try. To find out more about this great new product, reach out to 123Foodies here.

M+K Laux and HotOperator offer foodservice marketing campaigns for clients looking for rapid growth. According to a managing partner: “The best comment anyone has ever made about our business is that everything we do offers progress towards growth. That’s why 123Foodies came to us, and that’s what we’re delivering.”

Contact M+K Laux to build a better brand!

To learn more, contact Mark@HotOperator.com, or visit their websites: HotOperator.com or Laux.com

The post 123Foodies along with M+K Laux Launch Super Dairy Blends appeared first on Laux.

Why I Started HotOperator®

Rereading Simon Sinek’s book “Start With Why” got me thinking about why I started HotOperator all those years ago. At the base of the idea was a new product that wasn’t selling well in foodservice. The product was Stuffed Jalapeño Poppers, and the client was Anchor Food Products. This was back in the late 1980’s. One of the owners of Anchor Food Products and I went to the National Restaurant Show in Chicago together. He had never been to a trade show before, and I will never forget the look on his face. His eyes got real big, and he said: “Did you know there were going to be customers here?”

At the show Leon’s Texas Cuisine, a small Texas appetizer company, was selling stuffed jalapeños called Jalitos. We loved the product along with the idea of a stuffed pepper and my client offered to buy the company. The owners of Leon’s didn’t want to sell, so we came up with the Stuffed Jalapeño Popper. Shortly after, Anchor Food Products started selling them to restaurants across the country. The name Poppers was launched because in our initial research we discovered that consumers initially thought the product was Mexican and that it would be hot. That made them reluctant to order the product. The name Poppers in consumer studies proved to be more ‘white bread American’, and consumers were much more likely to try the product. It made the product seem mild, not hot.

Why Poppers were slow to take off.

The problem we faced was, the product was a dog in most restaurants. A dog means the product didn’t sell well, and it offered a lower than average profit for the restaurant. So, while the initial sales of the product did pretty well, repeat business was not what we had hoped for. Restaurant operators weren’t putting the product on their menus. And once the table talkers we offered ran their course (on average in about 10 days), consumers stopped ordering them. 

In interviews with restaurant operators, we discovered that consumers liked Poppers. But anything that wasn’t on the menu didn’t sell. When we inquired about how to get Poppers on menus, almost all of the respondents told us that they only changed their menus about once per year. So we would have to wait to make that happen.

The answer, free appetizer menus.

To get the Anchor Jalapeño Poppers to sell, we approached Anchor Food Products to allow us to build a website that offered restaurant operators an appetizer menu for free. All they needed to do was place two Anchor appetizers on their menu, one of which had to be Jalapeño Poppers. After we launched the website in 1993, we printed menus for more than 60,000 restaurants across the country.

Not just any menus, Design-Engineered Menus.

While we were designing the stock menus for the Anchor menu website, we started to research how to build a better menu. We came across information about menu engineering developed by Michael Kasavana and Donald Smith in 1982. Professors from Michigan State University School of Hospitality, they found it was possible to influence customer’s decision towards menu items that have more significant benefits for the business. We applied their science along with our creativity to help sell more Poppers.

The results are in.

During the second year of offering free, well engineered restaurant menus, we found that the program was very successful. At the peak of their performance, Anchor sold more than 2.5 billion Stuffed Jalapeño Poppers per year. You read that right, that’s 2.5 Billion, with a ‘B’, making the Poppers brand nearly $100 million in sales. The menus, and especially the menu engineering, along with a number of promotions worked wonders to launch the brand and make it a household name.

So, why I started HotOperator.

After looking at the results of the success of Poppers, I began to notice that restaurant operators were not using the engineering techniques that so clearly worked. Because the excitement of the restaurant industry is based on independent restaurant operators, I set out to help restaurant operators become more profitable with better menus. 

Back then, and even today, most restaurant operators make decisions for their businesses based on trying to save money. The thinking is, the less I spend, the more I make. Except, that thinking never works. The restaurant business isn’t about what you save, it’s what you take to the bank. The idea behind HotOperator was, and still is, to change the minds of restaurant operators to focus on their return on investment. In other words, get more restaurant operators to focus on the number of dollars they take to the bank.

At HotOperator, we have a passion for building menus that are not only beautiful, but also effective at making money for our clients. They are well written, engineered properly, and they look great. They are an expression of the brand of the restaurant, and make a fantastic first impression for the business.

Why you should use a HotOperator Menu.

So often today you see simple, generic menus that do not use the basic techniques offered by Michael Kasavana and Donald Smith. The resulting menus are not only unattractive, but insulting to their guests. This in turn makes unhappy customers, lower profits and an unstable kitchen.

You should have HotOperator design-engineer your menu because you will get a much better menu. Your guests will be happier. You will make more money in the long run. Your kitchen will run more smoothly. And your guests will like the food better. I imagine that’s hard to believe, but it’s true. There are techniques we use to get your guests to actually love your food more.

More importantly, you will be working with a restaurant marketing team that is dedicated to making beautiful and effective custom menus. We love this stuff, and we love the food industry. We love working with restaurant operators, and coaching our clients on how to better position themselves in their markets.

These are not just my opinions. These are facts, proven time and again over years of practice and research.

The post Why I Started HotOperator® appeared first on Laux.

Logo Brand Development

A Complete Step-By-Step Guide on How to Write a Brand Story In 6 Steps

Every brand works in a different way. Whether your brand is a product, service, event, or experience, you’ll have to determine the voice and style that best represents what you’re offering. Once this is established, the brand story can evolve, grow and learn, but like a person, it cannot change abruptly. Here’s How to Write a Brand Story In 6 Steps!

Step 1: Determine Your Setting

The environment is an enormously useful element in brand-building. You should treat it as you would treat a character, allowing it to convey mood and letting it reveal more of itself over time. What you’re looking for is a setting that emulates the brand in the perfect consumer/brand moment.

• What human touch moment is your brand best experienced? 
• What are the human emotions you’re looking for to best describe your connection? 
• Does yourbrand center around a specific moment, or is it more generalized? 
• What cultural details belong to your brand? Consider music, literature, entertainment, clothing styles, food trends, lifestyle trends, and big lifetime events that help shape consumer sentiments.

Step 2: Make Your Brand Memorable

Character and personality are inseparable, because a brand is defined by how a consumer relates to it. Your job as a brand owner, director or innovator is to express your brand’s character by helping determine how it interacts with the consumer world around it. Brands—a little like real people—have personalities that build relationships with the people they serve. It’s essential to your brand success that you understand these aspects of your brand’s character so that you are equipped to understand how consumers may react under various circumstances.

Step 3: Understand the 2 Types of Drama

Every brand is made up of both experiences and situations. A connection is made because an established pattern is interrupted. In order for the brand to connect with someone new, or even be remembered by a long-term buyer, something has to happen. The brand needs to be a part of the plot of the consumer’s life story. 

There are two types of drama: 

1. Internal drama (an internal experience) 
2. External drama (an external experience) 

Both types of drama create emotional connections with a brand and help move the relationship forward. Drama (in a positive sense) drives brand relationship development as well as interrupting normal purchase behavior. Drama also adds personal depth to your brand. It is a good idea to test out any type of dramatic storytelling before you settle on any one of them. This will help you make sure you will get the results you’re looking for.

No matter what combination of dramatic events you knit together to support your brand’s personality, each should be compelling and significant enough to pull your consumer into the story and make them imagine their own relationship with the brand.

Step 4: Give Your Brand Plot a Twist

Any good story will include a few plot twists and red herrings. Read on to find out more.

• Include at least two or three twists in your brand story every year. These help keep consumers engaged, especially in an off season where your brand might otherwise start to drag. Keeping your consumers and fans connected can be challenging, and there needs to be enough excitement to keep them interested enough to buy your products and services.
• Indulge your consumers by planting “funny false leads.” Also known as “red herrings,” these are details added to surprise consumers and get them to want to pay close attention. These plot twists will also help them tell other people about your business. 
• A “cliffhanger” is a new idea, flavor, profile, service or event that will keep your fans wondering what’s next.

Step 5: Establish a Natural Dialogue 

In real life, speech has lots of padding or “stuffing”: words like umms and yeahs. But brand dialogue must be both more incisive and selective. It is shorn down to reveal what people want from the brand, to reveal the brands ‘personality’, and dramatize an emotional connection with consumers.

• As you draft each post or ad, ask yourself what your consumers are trying to get from you. It’s never the product or service itself, but what the brand represents to them.  
• There are often wide gaps between what consumers say and what they are thinking, between what one understands and what one refuses to hear. These gaps can collectively be referred to as subtext, and they are valuable territory for the brand to fill in with an offer. Stay alert to a consumer’s thoughts, and let them generate some of your content, even if it’s not what you had in mind. 
• To get dialogue right, you must understand how your brand would speak if it were a person. Our recommendation is to use a movie or TV character as a role model for your brand, and imagine that person speaking for your brand.
• Make sure your brand dialog fits the consumer mindset.

Step 6: Articulate Brand-Voice Through a Specific Point of View

One way to determine your brand’s point of view strategy is to ask: whose voice is telling the story? To whom are they telling it to, and why? Common point of view strategies include:

• First person point of view. This is the “I.” “I wanna come home with you to help you…” 
• Third person limited point of view. This is the “he” or “she.” “Hey, he took me home for her, and she loved him for it.” 
• Third person omniscient point of view, in which a narrator who is not a character and who knows more than the characters relays the events to the reader. “Molly went out to dinner and got…” 
• Second person point of view, which is structured around the “you” pronoun, and is common in brand work and can work well in many cases. “You’re going to love it, here’s why!” 

My dear grandpappy always used to say: “Know what you’re good at, and what you’re bad at, and be smart enough to get help for what you’re bad at. There’s no shame in asking for help.”

The question for you: Are you smart enough to ask for help with your brand story? If yes, contact us here!

The post How to Write a Brand Story In 6 Steps appeared first on Laux.

Can you make a strong business making a better world?

With rising fuel prices, food prices, employment issues, not to mention a war, there’s a lot to complain about.

Can you make a better world and build a strong business at the same time?

Talking to the CEO of a meat packing company the other day, he told me his biggest pain point is that he needs to hire about 400 people to start fulfilling orders. He said: “I have about 2,500 employees at the moment, a stack of orders for my products, and I need at least 400 more people to make good on those orders.”

He went on to say that he didn’t believe people wanted to work anymore. He said people would rather stay at home and collect money from the government than work. He also said we should do away with any support for those ‘freeloaders’. He was obviously frustrated. But also a little narrow minded in my view. And perhaps trying to hold onto a business world that no longer exists.

But here’s the real question: Can you make a better world and build a strong business at the same time?

IMO: The Truth About Workers

I have two thoughts about the employment issues we are all facing, despite what this CEO thinks. One, people do want to work, but there are real reasons why some are finding it difficult to take a job. Two, workers in the United States are finding themselves in a unique position at the moment: there are fewer of them than there are jobs. This won’t last forever, probably, but at the moment, with less than 4% unemployment, most people in our country can be choosy when it comes to where they work.

When I asked this CEO if he would take a job in his company for fifteen bucks an hour to package meat when he could just as easily take a job at Target for twenty-four bucks per hour packing shopping bags, rather than answer, he swore at me and hung up. The question must have hit a sore spot. But my question wasn’t meant as an insult, it was meant to look at the employment question differently.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against making a lot of money (I do that myself), but I am against complaining about how nobody wants to work when I’m not willing to look at the job I’m offering and at what price I’m willing to pay.

BTW: The CEO of Otis Said It First

Years ago I was in a planning meeting with the CEO of Otis Spunkmeyer and his sales and marketing team. He said: “If you’re flying on autopilot and the ground changes, you are not likely to survive.” He was trying to get his sales and marketing team to think about the business differently. At the time, Otis Spunkmeyer was a DSD business, and he was trying to pivot the business to sell through standard distribution. His sales team wasn’t moving very quickly in that direction, so he decided to be direct in his request for his team to get on board.

Like then for otis, this moment in history is pivotal for business and politically. The landscape in business, politics, and human nature is changing rapidly. Prices are rising, the world is at war (maybe not directly, but certainly world war three has already begun in spirit at least), and we are entering into the slowest population growth rate since the early 1950’s.  According to Pew Research, over a third of the workforce, or around 41 million workers, come from the Baby Boom Generation, born from 1946 to 1964. As the end of the Boomer Generation retires, there is going to be a real problem getting people to work for you.

Q: Can you make a better world and build a strong business at the same time?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is also yes, but not the way we’re headed at the moment. The problem is, most business leaders think in a two-dimensional way. They tend to look at the world through the eyes of a business owner from the 1960’s. When I speak with CEO’s like the one at the meat packing company, they think their workers should be grateful for anything they get. The incentive for that line of thinking is the same as it was decades ago. As the CEO, I should be paid lots of money, and you, as a worker, should not.

But, what if we changed our minds and our business incentives?

An idea I have been thinking about is one of incentives. What if, as a board of directors, and even as a nation, we didn’t look for a minimum wage at all. What if, instead, we tied the wages of management to the rest of the workforce. Hear me out. What if companies simply put a cap on how much more anyone in a company can make when compared to anyone else in their entire system. This would include any forign suppliers as well as those who actually work for the company in any capacity.

The argument against this idea would be that we can’t be expected to control how much a supplier pays their employees, and if we did pay everyone more, prices would go up and up and up. But that simply isn’t true. You may not want to control what is being paid in association with how much you make, but you certainly can. It wouldn’t even be difficult. Just tell your CEO, business owner, COO, etc. that from now on, they are going to make 250% more than the lowest paid employee in our entire system and not a penny more. And if they want a raise, great. Find a way for everyone else to make more as well. And not just the people working for your company, but any company you buy from. 

Keep in mind, these people are brilliant. And they will find a way to make fortunes even with those incentives.

GOAT: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth paying for.

My brother is a very conservative person. He’s a good guy, too. Funny, hard working, and a good father. But he also has some very strong opinions about ‘other people’s jobs’. As an example, not long ago he was telling me that people who work in quick service restaurants are “just flippin’ burgers, and don’t deserve to make more than they do.” As a side note, he also complained that it has been taking too long to get his burger lately, without drawing any connection between the two thoughts.

Here’s the question: is he right? Do burger flippers, or janitors, or meat packers deserve less money than truck drivers, sales people or CEOs? Maybe. But how much less? I mean, if it’s a job worth doing, isn’t it a job worth being paid a living wage? My brother, and a lot of my restaurant and food company clients, would argue that if we pay low-skill workers more money, the price of everything will go up and up and up. They narrow mindedly think those workers are all tied to keeping prices low. So the answer in their minds is, no, we can’t afford to pay them a living wage. They will argue that these are temporary jobs, a place to ‘step’ on your way to something better up the ladder of success.

Except when you think that way about a job you’re offering, you suddenly project yourself and your job as not worth doing in the first place. Instead, what if, just for the sake of argument, we decided to change our minds about what people are worth. What if we tied the incentives of our CEOs, human resources directors, company presidents, and anyone with any authority for that matter, to the success of their co-workers? If the CEO, COO, president, owner and all the rest in any company were told the only way to make a higher wage was to get more money for everyone that worked in the company. What do you suppose would happen?

Here’s what I think. People would start to make more money, and our society would start to change. CEOs like the meat packer who hung up on me would not be bitching about his workers, and he would no longer be embarrassed about the jobs he is offering.

What do you think?

I would love to hear your view. Leave me a message, even if it’s just to bitch about what a fool I am to think that the wages of workers and the income of business leaders should be connected. I can be reached here: mlaux@laux.com 

And thanks for coming to work today.

The post Can you make a better world and build a strong business at the same time? appeared first on Laux.

With restaurant menu price inflation hitting a 39-year high this past fall, it may be time to take a look at offsetting your food and labor costs. Even if you just took a price increase this past November or December, it still may be time to take another bump.

The food-away-from-home index rose 0.6% his past November, and 5.8% over the same period a year ago, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. By the way, that was the highest annual rate of increase for that index since 1982.

Here are 7 tips to help offset rising costs without losing any customers.

1 – Figure out your theoretical food costs.

Before you do anything with your prices, check the price on the menu against the actual cost of goods. Simply take the price per ounce and multiply it by your portion size in ounces. Add in other plate costs and simply divide the selling price with the food cost to get to the food cost percentage.

Before you take a price increase, however, make sure the food contribution (margin) is still strong enough to support the product on the menu. Just because the price increased on beef, as an example, that doesn’t necessarily mean the product is no longer profitable. So be careful with percentages, and always make your decision on how much actual money you make, and not the overall percentages.

2 – Use mental anchoring on your menu to bring in price comparisons.

The most expensive item on a menu is always the hardest item to sell. Which just means you need something more expensive on the menu to make the higher priced items look less expensive by comparison. Remember, the one time in a person’s life they are most likely to buy the most expensive item on a menu is the day they sign on their house (and housing sales are at their peak right now). The thinking is: “I’m $300,000.00 in debt, what’s another $100.00?”

When we redesign a menu, we always add a higher priced combination to offset the price points of the higher priced items with some other item you already have on the menu. So if you have a shrimp scampi on the menu, use that together with the steak for a steak and shrimp item that can be a higher price than the steak.

3 – Place expensive seafood and beef items together in one location on your menu

Then, feature them with highlights to call attention to them. When consumers go into a restaurant, they want to know what you recommend. Because steak and seafood are valuable, people expect to pay more for those items. So, all you need to do is recommend them to give them a boost and sell more of them. And when you do, you will take more money to the bank.

4 – Use a beef temperature ordering guide on your menu.

Consumers believe, and rightly so, that you take beef products seriously when you have a guide to ordering beef by temperature. When you use this chart, you are telling your guests that you know how to cook steak, and they will like the steak more when it’s cooked to their perfect doneness.

5 – Use table talkers to sell your star products.

People respond to photos, but only if the photo looks good enough to eat. So don’t go cheap on photography, but instead, make sure your photos look really terrific. Place the food plated up, and use natural light with a smartphone to get a nice shot. Even upscale restaurants can take advantage of a well designed table tent.

6 – Offer a bonus to your servers.

Restaurant servers are coin operated. They focus on the products that bring the easiest money for them, or that offer an incentive of some kind. And keep in mind, steaks and seafood products often bring an additional $8 or $9 dollars to your plate contribution. So, there is enough money there to share with your servers. When you give them a buck for every steak they sell, they will put their focus on those items, and make a lot more money for your restaurant in the process.

7 – Make sure your menu is design-engineered.

This is essential. A great menu can bring up to 12% to your bottom line. Plus, your menu never takes a day off, never gets sick, or insults a guest. Think about it, if you take in a million dollars in sales with the menu you have, a well engineered menu could bring in an extra $120,000.00 this year alone. Worse, if your menu is not well engineered, you’re losing that much every year you’re in business.

For a business consultation, give Mark Laux a call at 800-316-3198, or contact him through his website here.

The post Here are 7 tips to help offset rising costs without losing any customers. appeared first on Laux.

See if you agree?

According to a recent study in Forbes, these are the top points of interest for clients looking for marketing agency representation. See if you agree.

1. An understanding of your business – and your industry.

It’s not enough to know the business specifically, most clients are looking for experts in their market. For this reason, LAUX focused on the food industry. We’ve been working with food since the 1980’s. We may just know as much about the food business as anyone in the industry (maybe even you). 

2. Media strategy.

Between social media and classic marketing, most businesses see the media industry as a swamp where their money goes to die. LAUX has a map and can bring guidance to your journey through social and classic media. We also know how to negotiate to get the most ‘merchandising’ available for your business.

3. Better creativity.

This can be subjective. But it’s also objective in that the creative needs to produce results. The content must deliver more engagements. The creative must grab your attention and create a moment of happiness and a reason to buy. The call to action needs to be subtle, but effective.

4. More consumer insights.

What’s on your mind and what’s on your customer’s mind may not be in alignment. What we do is help you think like your guest, end user, and consumer. This requires ‘thinking through’ your distribution system to the consumer. The best part is, we are very good at getting inside your consumer’s heads and connecting with them in a positive way.

5. Communicate what you’re best at.

Back in the day,  (maybe before you were born), we called that the unique selling proposition. This is your point of difference. The thing that makes you stand out from the competition. We’re experts at uncovering those points and making them important to your customers. We’re also experts at knowing which points to leave behind.

6. Get more results with less budget.

Making each dollar spent bringing better results is always important. ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) is essential to the growth of any business. You would never spend a dime if you thought that money was being wasted. The average ROAS is about 4 to 1, but there are ways to get a much higher return. Mark Twain put it best when he said: “Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

7. Understanding the power of your brand.

Your brand is your personality. It’s the halo around your products and services. Your brand needs to be nurtured, protected, and expressed properly. This may be, more than anything, the most important part of any marketing agency/client relationship. Pick the wrong group, and they mess up your brand, it can take years to correct (if it can be done at all). At the very least you want to work with brand experts who know enough not to lose sight of your brand personality.

Does any of that interest you?

Working with us opens up a dialog over time and we have a lot of everience with the food industry. We can connect on all 7 of the most important things you want in a marketing partner.

Looking for help? Contact LAUX here. Scroll to the bottom of the page and fill out the form.

The post The Top 7 Things Clients Want From Their Marketing Agency appeared first on Laux.

Social media, like any advertising program works well based on three factors.

“I love your creativity and enjoy your expertise around the restaurant industry. I will be 100% honest, I am very doubtful of Facebook for our specific setting and location only because we have gone with many different companies going back many years ago and results were BLAH. I would LOVE to be shown that I am totally wrong about this.”

My answer contained these three factors. 

What You Say and How You Say What You Say Impacts Results

Mark ‘Z’ is Rich, Here’s Why

Like Everything in Food, Consistency is Key

The post The Three Factors That Make Social Media Work appeared first on Laux.

Just yesterday I was talking to a client about a billboard for his restaurant. He wanted to know if we had ever done the creative for billboards. We have, lots of times, so I dug through our portfolio for a few to share with him. Here are some cool billboard designs from M+K LAUX.

Bull Feathers Lakeside Grill

This was for an introduction of the restaurant. They had not been able to get passing traffic to try them, so we decided to do something that would capture ‘mom and dad’ and make any kids in the car giggle.

Baldino’s Giant Jersey Subs

We worked with Baldino’s for years until they sold the business. These billboards were designed to talk to the local community in a way that would attract their attention, and talk in their language. Most of the local people thought that Baldino was a person, which is wasn’t, but we advised to let them think that. It gave them a connection that we could make into a local legend.

Pine Mountain Grill

‘Praise the Lord and pass the gravy’ was the tagline we used for this family style restaurant. Local to Kentucky, our first thought was they may not like our ‘spiritual’ approach. Instead they loved it, and so did the local community who make a lot of comments. Many of the local community started saying it to their servers.

Napoli’s Italian Restaurant

This is the client who called recently looking for a new billboard. He wanted a very conservative approach, and wanted to let people know that he offers ‘The Best Italian Cuisine’, which is what we did for him.

Connie’s Pizza

These were pitch layouts we offered Connie’s when we were developing their menu a while back. I remember the Marketing Director told the VP of marketing in our meeting: “You’d be a complete fool not to run these.”

We are particularly fond of the line: “Connie’s Always has one in the oven.”

Let us know your thoughts! And if you’re looking for help with your foodservice marketing communications, reach out to M+K LAUX here! We’d love to help if we can. Because if you sell food, we can help you introduce your food to more people.

The post Cool Billboard Designs: M+K LAUX appeared first on Laux.

How Patricia Decides What’s For Dinner (and where to get it)

This is a story about how Patricia decides what’s for dinner and where to get it. It’s a story about a busy life filled with hundreds of other decisions that include friends, maybe some children, her husband or partner, pets, running a household, and working or doing volunteer work. All of this chaos influences her decision about dinner, and the final decision probably isn’t made until late in the day.

6:30 AM Patricia’s first thoughts about food.

Patricia is in her thirties or forties, married with a couple of kids, a dog or a cat, she works and takes care of a modest home. The alarm on her phone goes off at 6:30 in the morning, so she reaches over to her nightstand, picks up her phone and shuts off the alarm. Maybe it’s a Tuesday, or Thursday, at the moment, she can’t remember. But her day is just beginning and she has already had her phone in her hand.

In fact, like many people, she opens her Facebook app on her phone and scrolls to see what’s happening in her extended world before she gets out of bed. She glimpses at her friends and their lives and feels a little jealousy at what looks to her like the perfect life. Along with her friends and extended family, he sees local businesses, and even a little news. Then she switches over to InstaGram and looks at all the photos people have posted. Some of the posts on both sights are from people she knows, others are simply people she follows for various reasons. She also sees some of the local restaurant posts. The restaurants with the nice food photos catch her eye, but she’s not hungry at the moment, so she scrolls on without engaging.

Secretly, she compares her post engagement to other people. I know it sounds silly, but she wants to be popular, even at her age. So when she sees a friend or her sister with more likes and comments than her, she feels even more jealous. As she is thinking about how her posts are being received, she sees more photos of food. The best photos and comments are remembered positively, the poor quality photos are quickly forgotten.

7:15 AM Ready to wake the house and have her first cup of coffee.

After showering and getting dressed, (and not until she has had her first cup of coffee) she starts to wake the rest of the family. Her husband is awake already and looking at his phone, scrolling through the news, and social media. He has not gotten out of bed yet, but he is working toward it. He, too, notices the nice food photos, and his appetite in the morning is stronger than Patricia’s, so his stomach grumbles. He may not engage the posts that stir his appetite, but the photos have made an impression on him. The photos make an impression, either way, good or bad, depending on the image quality and the post text.

11:15 AM Thinking about lunch with her kids.

Because of COVID, Patricia is working from home, and her kids are on a rotating schedule at school, with some days studying at home and other days in class. This has made it difficult for Patricia to stay organized, but she wants her kids to be safe above all else, so she does everything she can to accommodate. Most breakfast and lunches are at home, but Patricia gets tired of cooking and wants a break now and again. She doesn’t feel completely safe taking the kids to a restaurant, so the only food away from home is coming from the deli at the grocery store, or a place with a drive thru window, and the local pizza place every once in a while. From time to time she orders something for delivery or carryout locally, but that has been hit or miss for food quality, and she hates to waste money on food that is much better at the restaurant.

One of the things she misses most about her life is meeting up with friends and family at a local restaurant. She dreams about having a couple of glasses of wine, maybe some appetizers and a meal, but it’s the connections that she is missing most. Just sitting in a restaurant with people not in her family and having a break from life.

3:15 PM Patricia peeks at social media.

During her normal day, about every couple of hours, Patricia will log on to Facebook, or Twitter, or InstaGram, or SnapChat, or TikTok and check in. She scrolls through her newsfeed and glances at what everyone is up to. She notices some of the food shots from local restaurants. She even likes a couple of the nicer photos, or the more engaging content. She may even comment, but more important, the food photos have made an impression on her. The best times to catch her are just before lunch, about mid afternoon, late in the afternoon when she is winding down, and then after dinner while she is watching TV and scrolling social media.

Late in the afternoon she starts to think about dinner. If she were well organized, she may have already taken something out of the freezer and is preparing it for the oven, or stove. Maybe she already has something in the slow cooker, but most days are decided after four in the afternoon. She texts her husband and asks what he might want. The answer is frustrating to her: “I dunno, what do you want?” At this moment, she is not consciously remembering the photos from restaurants she saw throughout the day. Those food shots are nothing but a vague memory in the back of her mind. But those restaurants are more top of mind than the restaurants who have not posted in a while.

4:30 PM Patricia starts to decide what’s for dinner (this time for real).

Maybe she decides to have pizza. The kids like it, and it’s filling and easy. It also travels well. Where she orders it from has a lot to do with the social media she has consumed during the day. If there was a nice photo of pizza, she’ll remember it. Or maybe it’s meatloaf from a local place that has that nice provolone cheese and mushrooms in the middle. Or maybe a nice burger with fries would hit the spot. Again, none of these items are going to be purchased from a restaurant that hasn’t been active in her newsfeed in a long while. She simply isn’t carrying them top of mind. Unless she hears from you, she isn’t thinking about you. It is that simple.

Are you thinking like Patricia, or are you thinking like a food company?

Most food companies do not take social media seriously enough. That’s because they don’t see an immediate return on investment. People like Patricia simply don’t tell the restaurant they saw them on Facebook or InstaGram, so food companies don’t always understand the impact of those platforms to influence Patricia’s behavior. Most food companies see their social media through their own eyes, not through the eyes of people like Patricia or her husband. For this reason, the idea of using a professional social media resource seems expensive and disconnected from their business. They think: if only a marketing firm could offer an exact return on investment they might sign up. Tell them, if you spend this, you will get that, down to the first order from Patricia or someone like her.

Except social media, like all advertising, is an influencer. It’s not a gun to Patricia’s head forcing her to buy now or else. It’s a gentle nudge, or a whisper in her ear. It’s a relationship built over time. Social media is about building trust and positive thoughts. When Patricia sees your posts over time, she becomes familiar with your brand and what you offer. When she orders from you and tells you the French fries were soggy and you answer her properly, she forgives you and gives you another try. If you have corrected your fries before her next order, she may even give you a positive review. Patricia’s average number of friends on Facebook is 338 people (brandwatch.com), all of whom may like Patricia and listen to her suggestions. If someone asks where she gets pizza, she may even think to mention your business.

Social media works, but it’s not a cash machine.

Most smart food businesses are posting two or three times per day. They post on a regular basis, and they repeat their posts. Many food companies worry that if they repeat their posts, people will get tired of seeing them and stop following them. But this is not true at all. Again, you have to see social media through the eyes of Patricia. She isn’t looking at your page and scrolling through everything you post. She is looking for her friends, or family, or the latest fashion trend. 

Smart business operators are also using professional help for a couple of reasons. First, professionals will post on a regular basis and not skip any posts because they are paid to be consistent. Secondly, a good marketing firm will be better able to get inside Patricia’s head and make your posts stick. They will get Patricia to think better of you and your products. If they are really good, they will come to you with ideas on your food, what people are saying and how to improve your business.

Open your mind and think like Patricia.

Most food service companies have not thought about Patricia or people like her in any meaningful way. They see the world through their own, narrow view of the world. To reach people like Patricia and get them to buy from you rather than someone else, you will need to open your mind and think differently. Taking social media for granted, or worse, plugging away at it on your own and thinking it isn’t worth a lot of effort is essentially telling people like Patricia that they don’t matter.

Here’s the takeaway: reach out to people like Patricia in a professional manner and grow your brand awareness and your sales. Invest money with skilled professionals who understand how to get into your potential customer’s heads and lives. It’s time to see the world the way Patricia sees it.

Ask for help here!

Contact our sister company HotOperator.com here.

The post How Patricia Decides What’s For Dinner (and where to get it) appeared first on Laux.