Question

Topic: Other

Sales, Struggling Against Conflicting Owners.

Posted by Anonymous on 1/9/2009 at 11:51 AM ET 50 Points
I am not new to the food service game but new as a GM. For the last six months I have been the GM for a franchised breakfast house and have noticed that because of that, my dinner sales are non-existent. Our menu is quite extensive and offers a lot of great dinner choices but are often over looked. The restaurant is located a block away from the only mall in town, several shopping locations, a community college, and apartment complexes.

I have suggested kids eat free nights to help draw in the parent crowd considering the food cost on most kids items are nothing compared to the increased traffic the restaurant would receive at night. I have suggested printing to-go menus and distributing them to hotels, airport, and businesses in the area. Both ideas have been shot down by one or both of the owners because, "it would cost too much" or "we'd lose too much money giving away food like that". Because we do carry the IHOP logo we do not offer alcohol and can't get too crazy with promotion ideas.

The two owners have a lot of friction between them and often have conflicting views they are unable to work around or resolve. Often they just ignore the views of the other and expect their ideas or ways to be done.

I guess this I'm looking for 2 answers here. Any other suggestions to increase dinner sales that they may go for? Has anyone else been in a situation with conflicting owners like this?

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by michael on 1/9/2009 at 1:49 PM Accepted
    It's your servers. (not totally) It's much easier to take the order and move on than recommend dinner food. Also, insided signage and the outside sign should be promoting dinner.

    Or run...

    Michael
  • Posted by telemoxie on 1/9/2009 at 4:05 PM Accepted
    maybe it's a good time to quit your job, maybe not.

    Let's assume you want to try to make the best of a difficult situation. There is a lot more help here on the marketing prof's forum. Yours is not the first question which has been asked about restaurant marketing.

    You can do a Google search to find prior questions which have been asked about marketing a restaurant. Maybe some of those threads will help you. Go to Google.com, and search on the following:

    Restaurant site:marketingprofs/ea
  • Posted on 1/10/2009 at 9:44 AM Author
    Thank you all for the opinions. Although I would love to find my next stepping stone I'm trying to get a year or two as a GM under my belt. Most places won't look at you these days with less than that from what I've seen. I suppose what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I have managed to drop labor and food cost to the lowest they've been since the stores been open so will just focus on this like that.

    In response to Michael. Corporate does send us signage and in-store advertising materials that are dinner focused so have been utilizing those. Will try to emphasizing the importance of inviting guests back for dinner to my staff and go from there.

    Closing the thread and again, thank you all.
  • Posted by michael on 1/10/2009 at 11:20 AM Member
    Don't just depend on corporate, unless IHOP strictly controls what you can do.

    There's a restaurant (not IHOP) by my house that changes their sign every week. "[Name] from [city] loves our [entree]" I have to admit that I didn't even know they served some of those entrees.

    Michael
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