Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

What about a referral program? If your current evening guests bring in a new customer they both get XYZ. Many appartment/condo communities have local papers/news letters, I would try to get ads in there.

You have a challenge ahead of you. High income folks likely won't want to go to a "quick-casual" restaurant for dinner. And you don't get a lot of workers who stick around for dinner sales.

First thought is the same as what Necsipr said - offer incentives (coupons, discounts, etc.) for dinner or take away.

Could you find some way of packaging half prepared dinners that people can grab on their way home and easily finish the preparations for (reheat)? Maybe try to draw on the financial district aspect.

Are there any aspects of the area that draw people in to the district in the evening? Movies, shows, etc? If so, perhaps find a way to work with them (advertise in PlayBills, etc.).

Daniel, maybe it's time for an honest reevaluation of your menu, your service and your kitchen.

There's a restaurant near me here in Houston that serves great breakfasts and has a loyal crowd in the mornings, especially weekends. They have terrific lunch items, too -- mostly NY deli items -- and they seem fairly busy at that hour, seven days a week.

That restaurant's dinner offerings are lousy. Poor choices, and those that I have dared to order were simply awful. And the service was terrible, not like the efficient, friendly staff at breakfast and lunch. I was surprised at how empty the place was at night until I ate there.

Your question made me think of that experience. Something to consider!

~ Shelley

If the 65% number is correct for any time of day, depending on how long you've been open, your evening business should be busy by now.

Direct mail to those addresses is an obvious idea - especially if you're serving food and/or services attractive to those demographics. That will be the key. They may consider you one of those "downtown lunch places", and need some positioning help.

Postcards, professionally done, will help. If you can even come close to 65% repeat when this crowd comes in, you'll do all right.

Shelley may be on target as well. Take an honest look at your menu, appearance, and reputation to see if you have an offering for that crowd.

There are a great many financially successful breakfast/lunch restaurants in downtown areas who don't stand a chance at dinner. Maybe you're one of those. No biggie. Build those up, close at 2:30 p.m., and go to the bank!

hi daniel

great advice by Shelley and other experts. the following are my 2 cents on top the suggestions already mentioned.....

1. develop a priviledge card(loyalty program) for all your regular customers and offer them benefit if they have dinner like free drinks for every person (champagne, wine)

2. your restaurant is in Financial district, u mentioned. is it in Downtown?? usually in Financial districts there are business hotels. try to tap those and place some brochures for the guests of the hotels. most of the business travelers want to taste different restaurants other than their hotels.

3. develop a "Happy Price Menu" of say $15 or $20 for dinner and have multiple food items on that menu to choose from. also have combination menus and be flexible in meeting consumers' wants.

now bringing those 16000 high income households to your restaurant. honestly, people usually dont want to get to a restaurant in financial district for dinner after spending the entire daytime for work. then again rich people are more inclined to taste new and exotic food, they are connossieur of wine, food, muscial events etc. so try to the do the following......

4. try to organize Exotic Dinner Week. during each of these weeks you have Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Brazilian Foods so that the consumers are attracted to taste these new and exotic foods. remember the quality and authencity of the food is imperative to be successful. during these Exotic Dinner Week create the entire atmosphere of the restaurant in that country flavour with native music, decorations etc.

5. also, if possible organize Country wise"Wine Festival" at your restaurant like Australian, Chilean, French, South African, Italian etc. wines. you can do the same event for the Champagne of various countries. this will create attraction for the consumers to have dinner at your place.

6. Organize a Musical Evening (i.e. Jazz, Classical, Pop etc.) on weekends so that people can enjoy an entire evening while having dinner with their loved ones.

now to communicate all these promotions to these families you can try the folloiwing...

- Tie up with the credit card companies and send promotion brochures along with the credit card bills.
- put promotion flyers inside the newspapers and deliver to all the households rather than printing ads in paper which is costly. for this you need to tap the newspaper boys.
- in US all the newspapers are delivered in a rolled form. try to make a cylindrical cover of the rolled newspaper and use that to communicate the promotion. this will make the consumer to read the flyer(the cylinder).
- above all always advertise in and around your restaurant (inner wall and outer wall, doors, glass panes) about your "Today's Dinner Special" just to entice all those who have breakfast and lunch and those who pass by your restaurants.

hope these helps.

cheers!!