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.

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.

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.

While plant-based sauces, dressings and proteins offer sustainability and nutritional advantages, the best reason to add them to your menu is to increase sales. With younger consumer demand, plant-based sauces, dressings and proteins are growing more rapidly than other more traditional restaurant products.

Many of our restaurant clients are telling us that adding the plant-based menu items have been attracting new customers. This is especially true when they use social media along with server and staff training to promote the items. In many cases, HotOperator has seen substantial increases in incremental sales for our restaurant clients.

The Facts: Plant-Based Is The Future Of Foodservice

According to Nielsen, dollar sales of plant-based alternatives to traditional food items grew 17% in the past year compared to just 2% growth for more traditional items. If your foodservice business isn’t taking advantage of these trends, you may want to rethink your menu options.

Further, according to the same report, plant-based dollar sales growth has accelerated in the past year compared to the prior year. What this tells us is the trend is going to continue. The future of your menu and the products you sell will change with it, or your company will get left behind. You may not survive, especially with the Coronavirus putting a large percentage of full service restaurant operators out of business.

Across key categories, dollar sales of plant-based foods are growing significantly, while dollar sales of conventional animal foods are declining or growing only modestly. As an example, over the past year, dollar sales of conventional milk were flat, while dollar sales of conventional yogurt and conventional eggs decreased by 1% and 10%, respectively.

According to Mintel: Young people are driving food trends to meet their personal values and morals. This is seen by an increased interest in sustainability and traceability practices.

Everything On Your Menu Must Taste Great

Keep this in mind: consumers won’t give up the flavor of the products you are selling just because they are plant-based. So it is essential to have the right resources for the items you put on your menu. Consistency is key, the right recipe is critical and you do not want any manufactured or factory after taste. The only company that HotOperator has found that offers plant-based products that can be taken right out of the package in foodservice and used in recipes is Good Foods.

What HotOperator Recommends: Good Foods (If You Can Get It)

In a recent cutting, HotOperator staff experimented with several products and found that Good Foods tasted the most like products cut in house. In fact, the products were so clean and fresh that we could not tell the difference between Good Foods items and those that were cut in our kitchen. The only downside is, you will have to work with your distributor to bring the products into your business as they are new to foodservice and do not have broad distribution. The upside, of course, is you will have a product that none of your competitors has, which would give you a marketing advantage.

Recipes That Offer Plant-Based Plate Contributions

Here are a few menu ideas for fast-casual and full service restaurant operators that travel well (perfect for carryout and delivery) that also bring badly needed bookend sales for restaurant operators. One of the biggest complaints we’re finding with our clients is they are not getting the additional sales they once enjoyed. Consumers order carryout and delivery foods differently than they do when they dine in. They simply do not order side dishes, appetizers and extras as often. You can change that, however with the right recipe ideas.

Tater Tot Vegan Nachos (VE)
Gold tater tots smothered with plant based queso, a dollop of house-made guacamole, and our own Pico de Gallo relish.

Mrs. Bea’s Dirty Rice Rolls (VE)
Bea’s handmade rolls stuffed with a blend of rice, impossible taco meat, spices and dairy-free queso, then flash-fried and served with our house-made guacamole for dipping.

Artichoke Mustard Greens Dip (VE)
An amazing, diary-free blend of artichoke hearts and mustard greens in creamy plant queso served with house-made Creole seasoned tortilla chips.

Mahi Mahi Tacos
Grilled mahi mahi with thin-sliced cabbage slaw, salsa avocado and dairy-free avocado ranch.

Chopped Mexican Salad (VE)
Mixed greens with roasted peppers, charred corn, black beans, vine-ripe tomato and a side of house-made guacamole and flash-fried chips.

Vegetarian Pita (V)
With stuffed grape leaves, spicy queso blanco, lettuce, tomato, red onion and cucumber.

BLAT
Applewood smoked bacon with vine-ripe tomato, torn leaf lettuce, mayo and our house-made guacamole.

Smoked Turkey and Avocado Spread
On Asiago bread with lettuce, tomato and caramelized onions.

Vegetable Stir Fry (V)
Zucchini, carrots, red bell pepper and onions stir fried with an Asian ginger sauce.

Vegan Protein Bowl (VE)
Plant-based taco protein seasoned with a blend of tomatoes, garlic and chilies. Topped with hand-sliced, sautéed in-house red and green bell peppers, red onion, corn salsa, salsa verde, cilantro lime rice, and seasoned black beans. Served with dairy-free queso, house-made guacamole and salsa.

Chip Trio (VE)
The perfect side or snack, our house-fried chips are served with fresh guacamole, dairy-free queso and avocado salsa for dipping.

How To Sell More Sides, Adds & Plant-Based Foods

Consistency Is Key
First, make sure everything you sell tastes great. This is essential to your overall success. The product must taste great, and you have to be able to make it taste great every time. I go back to Good Foods as really the only source that makes products that taste as good as those made in house.

Use Social Media
When you bring in a new product, tell people you have it. Take photos, post them on social media and boost them so people want to try them. HotOperator does a lot of social media work with our clients. We recommend posting nearly every day. If you would like help with your social media efforts, reach out to HotOperator here.

Offer Samples
We highly recommend offering samples to your customers for free. One of the best ways to do that is to simply add a sample of the new product in each order that comes in. So, if you have a new guacamole recipe with chips, make up a small sample and add it to every carryout and delivery order that comes in. Place a promotional sheet in the bag telling them to try it, and if they like it, think about ordering it next time.

The Mark & Kelly Show
Mark and Kelly Laux are a creative team. They have been working together long enough to be able to answer each other’s sentences. They have experience with every aspect of the foodservice industry. From food manufacturing to distribution to restaurants to consumers, their experience and creativity will help you grow your business. Put simply: if you sell food on planet earth, they can help. Reach out here. Or through HotOperator here.

The post Why Your Foodservice Business Needs Plant Based Menu Items appeared first on Laux.