A restaurant is a business like any other, You are providing a product to a paying customer. Therefore to keep the customer happy, the product has to be exactly what they ordered and it must live up to their expectations.

The difference with a restauraunt though is that the customer is buying into a perception when they order a meal, it is an experience, not just a product, it is theatre and entertainment and for most people often a treat. From the time they step over the threshold to the time they pay the bill and walk out the door. In the main, restaurant visits are planned, anticipated, and very much looked forward to. You only have to watch someone’s face as they start to browse the menu, they are often smiling and their taste buds start to tingle. If your restaurant can keep that smile on their face with the ambience, the service and the food, even when paying the bill, you have mastered the art of keeping the customer happy which is the most important aspect of success in the restaurant business.

If you can get that part right and make a profit on each meal you sell, then all you have to worry about is getting enough people through the door and keep yourself from falling into one of the biggest traps of all – spending too much on advertising.

In general, advertising has a limited success rate. It has been estimated that as much as 50% of all money spent on advertising is a complete waste, that isn't to say it doesn't work at all but being very particular about where and when you advertise is crucial. By doing your research you will increase your chances of making that advertsing cost an investment rather than a waste. A sort of phallacy is that word of mouth recommendations are the best but think about it, how long do you think it would take to fill a restaurant with 100 covers six nights a week from word of mouth advertising or recommendations alone? Lets be honest, you would be bust long before it happened. Word of mouth is valuable but not by any means everything.

For a 100 cover restaurant to achieve an average weekly bum on seat rate of 60% you need a client base running into 1000’s, get that client base and you are really on your way, neglect it at your peril.

You can hire people to look after every other aspect of your business, whether its the cooking, front of house, accounting, waiting or whatever but no one can market your restaurant like you. Its you who has to bring new and repeat customers in the door and if you can’t do it then you need to learn, it’s the most important aspect of any business.

The next thing to remember is just when you think you have it right, evolve it, all businesses have to evolve or they stagnate and die. That doesn’t mean change for the sake of it or just going out and starting up another site. My old boss from many years ago had a saying ‘never expand till you can feel the space sweating’, in other words until your kitchen is bursting at the seams and your staff are working to the maximum possible limit without the service or quality of the product being affected.