Hello, You Got My Letter. I “did a glitch!” You’ll get the weekly “tips” in proper order. For now Please Go Here:
Weekly Tip 1, To Get More Customers Into
Your Restaurant Or Café.
(I like to send these via email to stay in touch with you, but if you want a review or to read faster, you’ll find all of these linked here: https://sgshopper2030.com/info-letters-and-traffic-getting-archive/ )
Marketing restaurants has changed dramatically over the years. What worked 10 years ago, or even last year, may not work now.
The concentration on finding new customers is not the top priority. It’s good, of course, and important, but once you have them, you want them to come back repeatedly.
We have modern ways to reach them. Social media, like a facebook following notice, is very helpful. But if every restaurant in town did that no one would follow because they would have too many notices. That’s why it’s better to run your advertising through Singapore Shopper Magazine and when you run any sort of special offer for the week or the weekend it will automatically be seen by all those following the magazine, and that list is growing rapidly!
Buyers like the catalog type format. They can look over perhaps 10 special offers for the weekend, choose one, and they feel satisfied their decision has been made.
1 BETTER PHOTOS
Each week I’ll send another idea. This week find someone with a camera better than what you have in a cell phone. Shoot photos of food. Often white plates look well. However, sometimes if the food is white or light yellow, it looks better on a darker plate and with a darker table cloth or wooden table beneath the plate.
Everything counts in a photo. Beautiful plates, table linens, and dining ware are “must-have items.” Consider anything around or behind the plate, chairs, drinking glasses, anything. It all must look “picture perfect.”
Shooting straight down is not the best idea. Use a bit of an angle just as it looks when you sit at the table and look at the plate.
One food photographer said, “People first eat with their eyes.” The food must look enticing. Food in a delivery box usually looks like it’s ready to be thrown into the trash. Don’t use those photos!
Invest in a local photographer who has access to information about food photography. That information is at YouTube and of course, there are many articles and books about the subject.
Use these images on your website. If you don’t have a website just send them to me and I’ll work up a bigger page for you or I’ll add your photos to the page I’ve already made for your restaurant. You can pay me a small fee to add more photos. Probably in most cases, 3 or 5 more photos can be placed in 20-minutes for $20. Those photos can bring you many more dining patrons.
Usually, a job that takes under 5-minutes is free. If it’s longer I charge a gigantic $20 minimum or about $1/minute and it would be rare to spend 30 minutes on a job like this.
See this link about file sizes:
A bigger file size from 400 to 999 kb is always better because if I enlarge it on the page it will not be fuzzy. If your photos ARE fuzzy it may be your hand is shaking as you press the shutter button. Brace the camera on something solid, even a bag of flour might work and of course you can punch the bag a little to shape it so the camera fits there nicely. You can always raise one edge of the plate with a rolled-up cloth so it tilts a bit if you need that for a better angle.
PHOTOGRAPHS: About Getting and Sending Photos
Send the results to me, be sure your name and the name of the restaurant is included so I won’t get lost. We don’t want photos of gold flakes on duck placed with a coffee shop.
What do we do to get repeat customers? If they’ll give you an email address I can add it to my list and send something weekly. Let them know they’ll get an email notice about weekly or weekend specials.
If you can handle the effort, you can send emails to customers. This allows you to be more personal about it.
For example, you might say, “We have a new stock of a particular wine you liked. Make a reservation for dinner with us soon.”
There’s a lot of competition out there. Mostly we want to get the potential customers’ attention, and then tell them about something special you are offering. That showing of personal interest makes the customer feel you and he, and he and other staff members are friends. Customers deal with business operators they like. Always remember that.
OK, more next week. Thanks for reading. If you have not yet placed your advertising with Singapore Shopper Magazine please look it all over carefully, because it’s proving to be a very successful promotional medium for other restaurants and I’m certain it will bring you profit too! www.SgShopper.me/
Best regards,
Steve Newdell
