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RESTAURANT STRATEGY
The Smartest Restaurant Marketer I Know, Rev Ciancio
00:42:30
#402 - The Smartest Restaurant Marketer I Know, Rev Ciancio ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: MARQII MARQII is your one-stop-shop for listings management and reputation management. Collect reviews in one place to make responding easy and effortless and win the SEO game to land at the top of more search results. Win back guests and put more butts in the seats with Marqii. VISIT: https://marqii.com/ ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: INKIND To the over 1,800 U.S. restaurant owners who have been funded by INKIND, it is the source of capital that takes a lot of the pain out of starting and running a restaurant, ultimately helping their dreams come true. VISIT: https://www.inkind.vip/restaurantstrategy ***** Join us for the P3 MARKETING SUMMIT, January 26-28, 2025 in Salt Lake City, UT. This 3-day event will teach you everything you need to know about how to successfully market your restaurant. Best of all, it's capped at 100 attendees. GET YOUR TICKETS:...
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- [00:01]
Chip Close
Hey, what's going on, everybody? Chip Close here, host of the Restaurant Strategy podcast. I am recording this episode in early December 2024. We are less than two months away from the P3 Marketing Summit. So if you don't know, I host two in person events every single year. Every July and every January, we move to different cities. Every time we do it, the next one happens January 26th, 27th and 28th. It's a two and a half day event. This one's being hosted in Salt Lake City, Utah. All about marketing. I'm co hosting the event with my good friend and colleague, guy named Rev Ciancio. He's hands down the smartest restaurant marketer I know. If you want to know how to market your restaurant, you got to listen to this episode. If you want to dive even deeper, you need to be at that event. Tickets to the event are nearly sold out. You can find the link in the show notes. So listen to this conversation today and then if you're even on the fence, I want to urge you to come be a part of that event. Come hang out with me, my team, Rev, his team, a whole bunch of other restaurant owners from all around the country. I promise you will not regret it. We throw a couple of great parties, open bar food. Those are included with your ticket. Two full days of panel discussions, speaker sessions, Q and A, everything, everything positioned to help you better market your restaurant. This episode is all about it. And the and the P3 marketing summit happens at the end of January. Link is in the show notes to get your tickets. Do not mess around, come on back, listen to the episode and go get your tickets. There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking. Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close and this is episode number 400 of the restaurant Strategy podcast. For those of you who don't know, we do two new episodes every single week. Monday focuses on operations, Every Thursday focuses on marketing. The exception is this week because we got to mark 400. So it's going to be sort of a grab bag talking about so, so, so much. If you don't know me, I run something called the P3 mastermind. I'm the founder of a company called Restaurant Strategy. Yes, the host of the podcast, but also founder of the company. We have an agency, we have a coaching program, we have an Online community. There's so much we do to serve this community and you are part of that now. If you ever want to learn more about what we do, then go check out our website, restaurantstrategypodcast.com specifically, if you want to learn more about the coaching program, we run the P3 mastermind. On that page, restaurantstrategypodcast.com you click the button that says schedule a call. That's how you learn more about what we do. So specifically, that Mastermind is focused on profitability. If you got a busy restaurant, you're generating a lot of revenue, but not seeing enough of that. Drop to the bottom line. Specifically, a consistent, predictable 20%. Totally cool. That's what we are really good at fixing. We want to chat with you, grab time in the calendar. You talk with me or either someone from my team. We'll get to learn more about you and your restaurant. You'll get to ask questions of us. Let's see if you're a good fit. Calls totally free. You will come out the other end understanding more about each other. And let's see, let's see if it makes sense for you to join the program. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Click the button that says schedule a call. You'll grab time on the calendar and we'll have a conversation. That link, as always, is in the show notes. Avi, you love to go out to eat. So as a guest, what's your biggest pet peeve when you're trying to choose a place to eat?
- [03:45]
Avi
Yeah, as the father of two children, I can't leave the house for less than $30 an hour. My wife has celiac. So when we're going to make a dining decision, I live and die by that menu. I'm in there researching what's available. What can my wife eat? What can we share? What do I get to eat off of her plate? And so that menu is just a crucial part of all decision making for me as a consumer. It's why at Marquee, we focus so much on our menus, our menu integration, so that as operators, your menu that lives in your point of sale that you want customers to see is available and up to date everywhere.
- [04:18]
Chip Close
To learn more about Marquee, go to marquee.commarquis.com to learn more about this and all of the incredible features. Features they have. All right, so today we're prepping for the P3 Marketing Summit. As you know, I do two live events every single year. The Marketing Summit happens every January. And I got a co Host for the event. I got my co host here. Rev, introduce yourself.
- [04:43]
Rev Ciancio
Oh my goodness, Chip, I'm so excited. Thank you for having me. You know, if you asked my mom what I do, she would tell you that I put pictures of pizza on the Internet. She's not entirely wrong, but professionally, I oversee all things marketing for Salad House and Crazy Pita. I'm also the co founder and CMO of Handcraft Burgers and Brew. But by trade, I help restaurants with their marketing. I'm a consultant. And for sure my mom's not wrong. If you follow me on social media, I do point out a lot of food.
- [05:08]
Chip Close
Yes, we will be sure to include the link to your social handles because you do. You travel all over the country and you point at all different kinds of food. Ostensibly then you eat it, which I would guess I appointed with food, pointed at food with you in many a restaurant. Okay, so we're doing this marketing summit. You and I have known each other now for a few years, and I attend a bunch of events. You attend all of the events. And we came, we really found common ground where I think we really hit it off. Because you were like, there's no event where you go to that will take you from A to Z. We'll walk you through the entire thing. You can go sit on, on this panel, you can go watch this talk, you can go do a demo of this thing, et cetera, et cetera, but no one's walking you through A to Z, beginning to end. And I basically said, I want to do this. And you were like, no, I want to do this. And so we decided to do it. So last January, we hosted the very first one of these, the very first P3 Marketing Summit. And the whole idea was to get people into the room for two days and we just show them everything they actually, actually need to do. What was the best part about the event last year? Having been in that room, run that room.
- [06:28]
Rev Ciancio
You know, I'm. I'm a marketer. So a little bit we were, we were kind of talking to ourselves. I was definitely on stage talking to me. You know what I mean? And for sure, I feel like there's no instruction manual for this. And even like me who does this every day, even I don't have an instruction manual. But for sure there's like, there's no resource. Like, there's nowhere for independent restaurant owners to go and be like, okay, show me the marketing playbook. Give me the frameworks. Like, there's lots of blogs from POS companies that are like, well, you need this thing and that thing, but, like, nobody tells you how to do it. So my favorite thing was what people coming up to us afterwards and saying, oh, my God, this was incredibly useful. And I'm not trying to pat us on the back and I'm not trying to stroke my ego, but like, my goal and your goal for that room was to show people how to do something they don't know how to do. And for them to walk away with the confidence of going, I can do this. And so that was the moment that my goal was met, was when somebody came to me and was like, thank you. I get it. I'm gonna go do it.
- [07:27]
Chip Close
Yeah. So for everybody who doesn't know, in case this is news to you, the P3 Marketing Summit again happens once a year. It's in January. We cap the room at 100. As I'm recording this now, tickets have been on sale for 11 days and we've sold roughly 93 tickets.
- [07:42]
Rev Ciancio
Bonkers.
- [07:43]
Chip Close
Up to this point. It's insane. So we are undoubtedly going to have to open it up to more people. Probably going to have to. I think the room fits max, 120. We're going to. We're going to try to get 120 in there. But the whole point is to gather a bunch of restaurant owners and it's capped. It's small, it's intimate. To get everybody descending upon a city because we move this party every single time we do it. It was in South Carolina last time. It's going to in Salt Lake City, Utah, this upcoming time. And we get them in a room and just say, this is how you need to think about your marketing and this is how you do it. And you don't have to take our word for it, but like, here's great brands and what they do. We just have to look at what they're doing. And so you fly in Sunday nights, a welcome party, and then you go get dinner somewhere cool. Monday, all day, 10 to 6, just workshops, panel discussions, Q and A. We're just showing you stuff. It's an insane amount of information. And then we have another party. And then Tuesday, we wake up 10 to 6 again, we finish all the educational content. Over two and a half days, you will have met a ton of people. You have heard a ton. You will have filled a notebook of stuff that you know what to do. Like, when I get back home, I'm going to do these five things first and I'm going to take a deep breath and then look at the next five and that was the idea that we wanted to. Number one, we throw a couple of great parties, give everybody a chance to get to know each other, but give them an insane amount of information and make it very tactical, very actionable. So if you're listening to this and you're like, wow, that sounds crazy, it actually is crazy. There are frameworks, there are templates, there are downloads. We literally just give you everything. I have never been to an event where somebody which is why I wanted to do it, which is why Rev and I put this thing together. I've never been there been an event where somebody literally just says, here's all my secrets. Here's exactly what I do. Here's my templates. Here's actually just steal it. Here are the cheat codes.
- [09:39]
Rev Ciancio
Yeah. I mean, and look, it sounds like a lot. It is a lot. It's not overwhelming. If you walk in the door and be like, okay, I look at it like this. We've all seen the Matrix, right? You know the part where, like, she needs to learn how to fly a helicopter and they just, like, zap the download into her brain and like, Carrie Ann Moss, like, minutes later is like, ready to fly the helicopter. Like, that's what this is. Except it's two days. We don't have the 30 second upload. But if you're looking, if you're trying to figure out, like, what do I need to do with my marketing for my restaurant, like, don't. You're going to walk away with no questions. Right? And the reason why it's so long and the reason why it's structured like a structured is like, yeah, we've tested these things, we've worked them out. We want to show them to you, but we also want to give you the opportunity to ask questions so you can be like, hey, I don't get that. Can you explain it? Or we tried it and got this other result, or we even get things. I mean, you and I both saw this where somebody is like, oh, we tried this other thing that you didn't mention. And that also worked. So it's collaborative. And that's why it's too two days. Because we want time for, like, feedback, questions, thinking. You know, we want you to sleep on it for a night and come back, be like, you know, I was thinking about this all night. Here's my question. You know, we want you to go home and be like, I am ready for battle.
- [10:51]
Chip Close
Yeah. So anybody who's listened to this podcast for a while knows that I think this stuff is simpler than it has to be. It's simpler than a lot of people would make it out to be, and especially when it comes to marketing. Now, easy. No, absolutely. There's sophistication, there's nuance, there's shades of gray, all of that. But simple is something we have to agree on. And so the way that I think about marketing is there's really three things we need to do. So I talk about this triangle, this marketing triangle. You got to get people in the front door. That's customer acquisitions. So what do you do to raise awareness, build trust, and ultimately convince them to try you out? Right. And then customer retention. What do you do to get them back? What do you do to get all your people back with greater frequency? If they're used to coming to you once a month, let's get them back twice a month. Month. That changes your business. And then finally, evangelism. Evangelism for me, is my fancy word for word of mouth. What do we do to get people to go talk about us, to go take pictures and videos and review us and tell their mom and upload really cool, you know, content that they've created in our restaurants? That's the only thing we have to do, in my experience. We got to get people in the front door. We got to do something to get them back, and then we got to make sure that everybody goes and talks about us. And so we structure all of the educational content like that. So saying, okay, we need to get people in the front door. Are we all in agreement? Everybody in the room knows that we need to acquire new customers. We need to constantly be introducing ourselves to new people. Great. Then what are we going to do to accomplish that goal? What out there is working? What are the tools you can use? What are the ways you can use it? How do we measure that so we can actually. And this is. I'm really big on this. I know you're really big on this. What do we do and how do we measure it so I can actually prove that it works? Because when I can prove it works, I'll just do more of that. I'll put more resources behind that, either more people, more money, et cetera. And everything we accomplish, whether it's to get people in to get people back or to get people going to talk, there are things we can do to make those things happen. So we structure the event in that way. So again, this idea that we're taking you from A to Z, we're walking you through it, you really don't have to have any prior knowledge about Marketing. In fact, it's great if you come in and say, yeah, I don't really know how to market my restaurant. Great, we will show you.
- [13:05]
Rev Ciancio
Yeah. And look, I'm gonna. I'm gonna throw a bomb out here. I get this all the time. You know, I'm pretty public on my social media, so I get restaurants sending me DMs all the time. Be like, hey, what should we be doing with Instagram? What should we doing with Instagram? What should we do with Instagram? What should we do with Instagram? And it's like, you know, Instagram isn't a really. It's not a great channel. Like, it's really hard to do. It takes a ton of work. It takes a ton of creative. And, like, honest to God, Kim Kardashian is not walking through your door tomorrow, and neither is the Rock. Like, sorry. So, like, you have this channel that's really, really hard to manage, that looks really, really amazing and cool, but, like, has very little return. And then restaurants get focused there. And, like, I know you and I talk about this, but it's actually not a good channel. You have to do it. But there's other channels that you can do that run on more of, like, an automated, you know, not set it and forget it. But, like, you can run email. That's way easier and has way bigger retention than social media. And you can run acquisition plays where it goes on in the background. Like, you can do that. And then from the evangelism thing, like, you know, I know a lot of restaurants, like, well, my food's good, and my services are good. Great. So does everybody. But there are things that you can do that are somewhat automated that make word of mouth happen. Right. And so, like, that's what we're talking about. Like, yes, you're gonna have good food. Yes, you're gonna have good service. Yes, you're gonna have a clean amen. But we're gonna show little knobs and bells and whistles and things and levers that you can pull to make sure that the acquisition, the retention, and the evangelism happen. Because that's where people get tripped up. They don't know what to do. We do, you know, we want to share.
- [14:40]
Chip Close
So the whole point of the event is that it's a series of playbooks. Just, you know, if you want to accomplish this, do the following things in the following ways, and here is why it will work. So I want to make sure we're providing value for people on this as they're listening to this. Yeah. I'd like to get them excited about the event. I'd obviously love for a bunch of people to go and get tickets to this event. But in case you still need to be convinced, I want to share something. So I want to. I want each of us to share something on the acquisition side, each of us to share something on the retention side, each of us to share something on the evangelism side. When it comes to acquisition, what's the number one thing, the easy button. Right. Simplest thing. Right. Lowest effort, highest impact that you see restaurants should be doing?
- [15:26]
Rev Ciancio
What is the easiest thing for restaurants.
- [15:28]
Chip Close
Due to affect acquisition on the acquisition side.
- [15:32]
Rev Ciancio
On the acquisition side. I mean, people do not realize how easy this is. But Google search ads, right? Somebody has, first of all, go check your website analytics. I guarantee 60 to 70% of your traffic from your website is Google Organic and Google direct, which means people are coming to you from Google. Right. Somebody is going into Google and saying, hot wings near me, salad near me, pizza near me, whatever is on your menu. I say this to people all the time. Would you spend a dollar to get somebody who's already gone on to Google and said hot wings near me to click to your website? If you have hot wings like you would. Right. And the thing is you can automate that to run in the background and maintain that on like five minutes a week. You know, we got restaurants that. And here's the other thing is people think it's expensive. Chip, man, we got, we got a $5 a day plan. If you can't spend $5 a day to get five to 10 people who've already told Google they want to eat what's at your restaurant to click to your website.
- [16:31]
Chip Close
Yep.
- [16:32]
Rev Ciancio
But it's a simple playbook.
- [16:35]
Chip Close
Yeah. So I totally, I totally agree. I think it's one of the biggest missed opportunities. And for all brick and mortar businesses, it's absolutely crucial. Google search ads, if you're not doing them yet, you have to figure out how to do them. You can go and Google it. You can watch some, some guy from copenhagen is on YouTube who's going to show you exactly how to do it. Or this is something we will go into much greater depth and it's something that be easier to show you. We can show you exactly how it works, all of that, but you don't take our word for it. You can go figure it out. But Google search ads is an incredible opportunity. My thing is going to hook right into that. Is that optimizing your website? Right. Simplifying the website. So if there's one thing we can do from the acquisition piece is that Facebook sends people to your, to your website. Instagram sends people there. Google, Yelp, they all send the Google search ads, they all send traffic to your website. Answer the following question. This will clean up your traffic, right? We talk about traffic. Traffic is dollars. Right. So when you're sending users to your website, be really clear on what you want them to do. And is it absolutely crystal clear what they're supposed to do. They know what they're supposed to do. So number one, you have to get clear on what you want them to do and you have to make sure it's obvious that they know what they're supposed to do. Really, really easy. There have to be really clear call to action buttons. If you are a fast, casual, quick service, meaning if you do most of your business through takeout and delivery, your call to action should be order online or order now. And if you are a full service restaurant that takes reservations that makes most of your money. When people come to the restaurant, sit there and eat, you should say reserve now. Right? It should be either order now or reserve now. That should be your call to action. And if your website is not optimized for that, that's the, that's the other thing you can do to make all of this come together.
- [18:24]
Rev Ciancio
Can I, can I take that one more step further?
- [18:26]
Chip Close
Sure.
- [18:27]
Rev Ciancio
So let's go back to social media. I said it's really difficult channel but it is worth doing when you do it right. What I would do is take each one of those actions that somebody's going to do on your website. Make a reservation, join loyalty, place an online order, whatever they are, take that URL and I would put it in the link in the bio on my social media. So when I create social media that says make reservation, join loyalty, join our E Club, buy a ticket, order Thanksgiving dinner, that when they, and then I would say click the link in bio. Then when you get to link in bio, they don't have to go to your website and find that page, they just go right to Lincoln Bio. They go right to the page they want. Shorten the journey.
- [19:05]
Chip Close
I love it. I love it. We will go over exactly those link in bio apps, which ones I think are the best, which brands do it really well, which brands totally misuse that tool. We will talk about that. But you can be using Google search ads to drive more traffic to your website. If you can optimize your website and then optimize your channels so that you're sending the traffic Directly there. That will be huge on your acquisition side. Then you will actually turn all those users into dollars.
- [19:35]
Rev Ciancio
I can tell you without a doubt exactly how many people click the link in the bio for my restaurant any single day of the week. And what they clicked when they went there. Yeah, like that's pretty, that's pretty good information.
- [19:49]
Chip Close
It's incredible. It's incredible that we now, you know, we're 25 years removed from still running print ads in newspapers and magazines. Like, I don't know, did anybody open it? Did anybody open it to page 122? Did anybody read what was on 122? Did anybody go to the link that was maybe like, did anybody tear it out and bring it? Like, I don't know. And now we can see, we can see exactly who saw it, how many people clicked it, how many people, you know, raised their hand, in essence, which is so much what, what marketing is about getting people to raise their hands. Hey, who likes, who likes burgers? Bunch of people raise their hands. You go, great, now you know your burger people. Now you know who to sell cheeseburgers to.
- [20:26]
Rev Ciancio
Yeah. By example I can tell you that we had 205 clicks in the last seven days to our bio at the burger shop and 146 of them came from desktop, which we're a quick service restaurant. That's interesting. Most quick service restaurant people are looking at Instagram on their phone.
- [20:43]
Chip Close
Yeah.
- [20:44]
Rev Ciancio
So what does that tell me about my audience? Let's not get into that here, but like that tells me things that I can now make decisions about.
- [20:51]
Chip Close
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- [22:34]
Rev Ciancio
I feel like this is a loaded question because I know you know the answer, but it's email. Like every restaurant on the planet should be sending one email to all of their guests on average seven to every seven to ten days. Now I get if you're Jean Georges and you're some super fancy fine dining place, like an email every Monday about what's for lunch, maybe not as valuable, but you know, if you're a quick service restaurant, you're a local place and you have specials and you know, things happening on Friday nights, like there's enough going on in the restaurant that you can send one email a week that's going to take you 30 minutes to put together. If you have the right template. If you come to the P3, we'll give you the templates. You don't even have to think through that and send an email. I mean, I can tell you at the burger shop, again, I use the burger shop as an example all day. I can tell you actually how much money we make every time we send an email. Every time. And when I show that to people and I'm like, yeah, every email we Send makes US$5 to $800. If you knew you could spend 30 minutes to make five to $800 per location for your restaurant, like wouldn't you do it? You know what I mean?
- [23:38]
Chip Close
I would. The number one thing I always talk about is four walls cost you nothing except just being better at hospitality. That's getting good at identifying who your first time diners are. So from a retention perspective, we can identify who our first time diners are, which is something as simple as, hey, my name is Chip, I'll be taking care of you. Have you been here before? Have you dined with us before? And then when they say, no, it's our first time, then you put a plan into place to jam something in their hand that will get them back. That's a simple bounce back program. That's a. There's so many, so much we can do when we know we should be doing something. And I'll give you an example here. I extrapolated out. This was not a client of mine. I was at a burger place. It was kiosk. It reminded me of your place. And when you go over to the kiosk, what's that?
- [24:29]
Rev Ciancio
Are you cheating on me?
- [24:30]
Chip Close
Different. Different city. I went in, and when I go to wake up the kiosk, the first question they ask, it says, hey, is this your first time dining here? Yes or no? Right? So no, you click no. And it says. In fact, we tested this. You hit no, it says, great, welcome back. When you hit yes, it says, oh, my God, that's. And it goes into a different funnel. We do the thing, we place our order. And then what happened is the computer did the first part, just the identification part. And then when they brought us our food, because we placed the order, we picked up our number, we put it on our table. Somebody came over and says, hey, guys, here's your food. Can I just ask you, is it really your first time here? We say, yeah, we don't. We don't live here. We just. We're just in from out of town. She's amazing. I don't know how long you're here for, but I'm going to give you. And she gave us bounce back cards. She gave us, like a little coupon that said, this gives you. And they delivered to us. And she literally said she looked great, but she had a human conversation. Is it really your first time here? And we said, yeah, it is. She said, okay, are you in from out of town? We said, we are in from out of town. And then she said, like a human being. Well, listen, I don't know how long you're in town for, but if you're going to dine again, if you're going to have another meal here in town, we hope you consider it with us. This gives you a free. Right, A free dessert. I think it was for. It was like, oh, like, my wife and I both got a dessert. We were like, I don't know, maybe. Maybe we'll come back. Like, I don't. I don't know. In fact, we did, because I'm a sucker for that kind of crap. But it works in a full service capacity. And it's the first time I really watched it work in a quick service capacity. And I was literally, like. I said, is the owner here today? And she was like, no, no, he's not here. And I said, okay, I. I wish I could have. I wish I could have just kissed him on the forehead because it's so simple. So if you could just identify first time diners and put something in their hand that would just again, put your thumb on the scale that would maybe tip the balance in your favor to come back. It'd be a huge thing.
- [26:30]
Rev Ciancio
Yeah, we do. Yeah, whatever. We can talk about this at the P3, but we have something that I'm doing at the shop and my clients are doing as well that we actually do that in Instagra DMs. So somebody shares a photo of the restaurant. And social media, we have an automated bounce back card that happens. Like, hey, thanks for sharing. Here's this off your next order. But then to what you said before, my restaurants were promoting those in store. So we are sitting there waiting for your food. You'd be like, hey, share your photo on social media. Get five bucks off your next offer. Like, that's why I said retention and evangelism. Like there are things that you can do that move those forward faster. You know what I mean?
- [27:09]
Chip Close
Yep. Yeah, I do know what you mean. So that's one of those things. Again, this is how the pause here before we do the last little section for everybody listening, this is how the event works. It's like, hey, we need to get first time diners back. So here's something that works and here's. And we. And we go much deeper and show you examples and all of that. But like, this is how tactical it is that I hope you see the value of this. Hope you take away some value here and I hope you put it into practice right away. And I hope that for some of you, it moves you to come join us because you join a hundred other people who are in the exact same boat as you are. And we all just share ideas. And like Rev said, other people are like, hey, you know what else we do? Hey, you know we do. Hey, we tried this. Hey, there's another place down the street from us. And they did this. And it works great. Okay, the evangelism side, word of mouth. What's the number one thing you can do to spark word of mouth?
- [27:55]
Rev Ciancio
I was going to talk about word of mouth. There's a popsicle restaurant in Salt Lake City that I'm crazy excited to go to. And that's part of my plan. We go there is go eat at this. It's a fruiteria, but people were talking about it. Now I want to go, but like other. The guy who owns that place turned people into evangelists. I saw it. Now I want a fruit popsicle. But you know, what's a great way to turn people into evangelists? I mean, this is going to sound really, really kind of like high level. And it's intended to be. If you ask every single guest for feedback, you make them feel like you are important to you. And I assume they already are. So it's not like you're manufacturing that energy. You're like, if you literally ask every single guest, how was it? Now, I like to do that in a digital way where I collect their email and I collect their phone number and I'm able to leverage that, but, like, legit. If you ask every single guest, how was it, they're going to feel closer to your business, you know. Now the key is to collect the data, but, you know, ask every single guest, how was it? Every single guest. Online, in store, third party, doesn't matter.
- [28:58]
Chip Close
Yep. Sometimes there's a targeted way. We used to ask that. So when I, I used to do a lot of restaurant openings and instead of asking how was everything? We would ask very targeted. And I got, and I got really good at doing this because I was sort of in charge of the response department. And in a restaurant opening in New York City, high end, those first 60 days are crucial because we have to iterate and evolve really, really quickly because that's when the New York Times comes and starts reviewing you. And within six months you get the Michelin inspectors coming and all of that. But we would ask very specific questions, like, you know, what was the thing you liked best about this? And can you tell me why? And people would say, oh, I like, blah, blah, blah, like, can you just tell me if there's one thing you felt like, you know, didn't stand up to the rest, which hopefully they're saying everything was great. You say if there was something that was sort of below par, all the rest, meaning everything was at a 10, this was at a 9, I want to know because I want to get that up to a 10. You ask it in such a way that says, not like, was there anything you didn't like? Because then they're going to go, no, everything was great because we pounded it with butter and onion and, you know, like, it was delicious. But, like, if you just say if there was one thing that just you felt like wasn't quite where the rest of it is, like, like what comes to mind. They will tell you something because you're asking for, how do I get from a 9 back to a 10? So that everything across the board in that feedback way that that's a There's, There's a. There's ways that we can articulate that question that will get better responses, for sure.
- [30:30]
Rev Ciancio
So what similar thing? One of the questions that I like to ask is, how did you find out about us? Yeah, like, if you can. If you can take. Now, we do it in automatic way. But if you can take that data over time, you now know what to do with your marketing, right? Because everybody says, oh, I know half my marketing is working. I just don't know which half. Like, yeah, that's kind of the restaurant business. But, like, if I ask every single guest for feedback, I know how it was. And then I also asked them how they found out about us over time, even anecdotally. I'm going to have a roadmap of what's working. You know what I mean?
- [31:01]
Chip Close
Yep, yep. 100%. I think there's. I think we're relatively bad at engaging with our guests. And I think we can definitely. I think we can get. Definitely get better about that. The thing that I always talk about, event.
- [31:15]
Rev Ciancio
Laugh about this. Right? Okay. This is fun. So anybody that follows me or knows Handcraft Burgers and Brew, we do a burger of the month every single month. It's a new lto. We've been doing it for three years. It's our thing. And every single month, I go in around the 15th of the month and I stand in front of the restaurant and I take pictures of the burger out front. And then 15 days later, it pops up on social. Like, it's a thing right now. People will see me standing on the street, doesn't matter what I'm taking a picture of, and come to me like, is that the burger of the month? And, like, sit, like, because we've been consistent, which is kind of the message I want to get here is like, if you can be consistent about the thing that works and you do it over and over, like, it'll catch. And now, like, people come up like, oh, what's the burger of the month? I'm like, oh, my God. Just for me, standing on the, like, so rev.
- [32:01]
Chip Close
What I was going to say is that I think everyone needs a signature dish, something that gets photographed or whatever. And what I used to do. So I did this at a restaurant, Michelin star, high end. We used to do a drink for two. The drink for two changed every month. It's this limited time offer thing. And we would do it, like I always say, you know, we did our signature Negroni. People like, that sounds great, but I only want it for one it's not available for one. There is a whole table side construction thing and we like the peel on fire and all that. Like, I'm sorry, you can't, like you can't get it. You can only get it. You can only get it if you get the thing for two. And we'd say, and we'd use it, right? You say, listen, somebody here at the table is going to want a Negroni with you, right? Like somebody, this guy wants, it wants this negroni. Somebody help him out. And it would turn into this thing. Like it would already we're breaking down barriers and we're like selling to them. We're selling them something they already want by doing a drink for two. And then it became our shtick. I've seen places that do a punch bowl, right? They do a punch bowl every single month. So it's this beautiful punch bowl and I've done it where it gets served to the table. So it's a drink for six or eight. I've also seen again in a high end restaurant where the punch bowl sits in the middle of the bar and we serve and we literally serve punch. We like literally go in with the, you know, the glass ladle and pour it in the little thing. People are like, what's that say? Oh, that's our punch. We do a different punch bowl every single month. This month it's. You fill in the blank. What happens is we did it because it's really easy to get out to the guest really quickly. It's literally a one touch drink. We literally just pour it in a glass and give it to them so we can get the drink out there faster. Which in a busy restaurant, 6:45 on a Saturday night, we can put out 30 or 40 of those pretty quickly. So it gets, it talked about, it gets its picture taken. Something people look forward to. They're ready for it the next month. It's so easy to do if you just simply say we're going to do it.
- [33:54]
Rev Ciancio
Can I tell you a fun lto story? We could probably do this all day, but can I give you one?
- [33:58]
Chip Close
Yeah.
- [33:58]
Rev Ciancio
I worked with this brand. They were like a burger bistro. So like it was like a, like sit down table service, you know, big burgers, cocktails, whatever. But they also had a really robust to go, really to robust to go business. So it was sort of like fast, casual out the door, you know, casual in the door. Anyway, we were doing a burger of the month every other month. They were much bigger operation. It was kind of hard to turn around every 30 days. But every 60 days we could turn around and we got a call one day from the culinary team. They were like, we're not doing this anymore. We're like, okay, why? Like, it's so much work. We gotta go source this thing and we gotta price it out and we gotta teach it to the team, blah, blah, blah. And last, last week, we sold 112 of these. And I'm like, if that's what it took to sell 112, like, that's what you do. And they were like, no. So me and the marketing team went back and we ran a report. And I said, okay, I want to see every single social media engagement for LTOs for the year. I want to see every single open rate on an email. I want all the marketing metrics, okay? And when we took just the marketing metrics of the marketing of the LTOs versus the normal items, the ltos got more open rates, more clicks, and more engagement than any other content we ran. Other than something that maybe went viral or was a meme. Right. It outperformed all other menu items. So from an engagement perspective, a lonely. The ltos were doing. Here's. This is where it gets crazy, Chip. This is the crazy one. I took a year of ltos and I ran a report and I said, show me each one of these, regardless of how many it sold on average. What did it look like for retention? And we had an item. We sold 43 of this. I'll never forget it. We had, we did french fry ice cream. You know how you go to Wendy's and everybody takes their fries and dips them in the frosty? We tried to do that. Like, you sit at your table, we're going to bring you a chocolate sundae and french fries. But we did like a special thing. We only sold 43. It wasn't that big a deal on a seller. But get this. Of the 43 people who bought it, and it was a July LTO, I'll never forget all 43 of those people. That was their fifth time visiting the restaurant that year. Five times in seven months. And so for that reason alone, it was worth doing the french fries with ice cream. As we went through every lto, it was the same thing. They're a retention item. They get people who, like, might be a little tiredish or boredish or kind of like, eh, I've had it so many times, now I get to go experience your restaurant, this restaurant already love in a new way. They're an incredible tool for engagement. They're an Incredible tool for retention.
- [36:32]
Chip Close
The biggest thing I want to. I want to get across and I want to wrap this up because. Because we could do this all day. The biggest thing that I want to make sure we get across is that it is simpler than people would have you believe. Not always easy. Sometimes there are technical pieces of it. Yes. There's nuance. Yes. Sometimes we can make it very sophisticated. But at its base, it's putting fries in ice cream and just telling people, you can only do this in July. And that will get them back. That will get them to take pictures and tell their friends and be like, dude, they did this weird, like, ice cream french fries sundae. And like, I'm so glad I did it for the 43 people. That really made their. That really made their. Their experience. That's the thing I want people to get across.
- [37:19]
Rev Ciancio
Yeah, it is simpler if all you. Simpler French fries and ice cream to get people to visit five times in seven months. You should put french fries and ice cream every day.
- [37:27]
Chip Close
Yeah, 100%. Rev, I appreciate you taking the time out of this. I want to last. Last words of wisdom. Any last insights you want to share before we shut this down?
- [37:36]
Rev Ciancio
Oh, man. I mean, you know, here's the thing. All marketing should be measured, right? And more important than measuring marketing is putting your mechanics first. So a lot of people, like, are like, oh, I have this creative idea and this wacky thing and we just talked about LTOs and I have this video. I want to do an Instagram, blah, blah. That's all good, but you have to have the mechanics of your marketing set up before you pour in gasoline, which means consistent email, consistent digital ads, optimized website optimized. Like, you need the system of marketing to be laid down and consistent first before you throw gasoline in the top. Otherwise gasoline just shoots out the side, man. Mechanics before magic.
- [38:15]
Chip Close
Yep. I love it. Rev, I appreciate you taking time to do this. I appreciate you doing this event with me because I love, I love doing this thing. We had a blast last time. We learned a ton. It's going to be even better this time. And like I said, proof is in the pudding. It's, you know, we sold a ton of tickets in 11 days. Again, I'm going to.
- [38:34]
Rev Ciancio
Somebody has to go eat popsicles with me in Salt Lake City.
- [38:37]
Chip Close
Yeah, yeah, I will say that. So when you come to the event, there's a welcome party on Sunday nights, two hours, open bar, food. It's going to be great. Full day education, all day Monday, all day Tuesday. It's 10 to 6. There's an enormous amount of information and also enough air in the day for you to ask questions, sort of process, you know, sort of huddle up with your team. We do a big party on Monday night. Again, open bar, food. We're gonna have a blast. All of that is included in the price of your ticket. We luckily have incredible sponsors who are going to be on stage talking about their products, talking about what they see in the industry and the industry changing. Right? Those sponsors help make this thing happen. We couldn't throw these huge part parties. We couldn't get a space as cool as where we're going to be. It is a very cool event and you get to be surrounded with a bunch of people who are going through the exact same thing. Whole idea is, how do we make our restaurant better, how do we market it better, how do we make more money, how do we make our business more sustainable? The link to tickets is in the show notes. If you want to be there, go. I don't know how much longer tickets are going to be available. Again, we're at like 90, give or take, something like that. It's supposed to cap at 100. I think we're going to open up to 120, but I don't know. We're still waiting to see if we can get that many people in safely into the room.
- [39:50]
Rev Ciancio
Here's what I would say. It doesn't matter when you're hearing this show, if you're interested, go see if tickets are available. And if they are, you should act. And again, I always hate to sound like a used car salesman, but like, this is true. Like if you're like, I want this thing. This sounds amazing. And you're like, afraid it's already sold out. Well, you've already second guessed yourself. But if you're curious, click the link and if there's a ticket available, get it. Because either somebody had to cancel or there's one left or like, don't mess around. You should go.
- [40:19]
Chip Close
100%. 100%. Guys, I appreciate taking time out of your day to be here and to listen to this conversation. For all of you guys that are already coming, I can't wait to see you there. For everybody that is in the process of buying tickets right now, thank you so much. You will, you will love the event. It's going to be a blast. It always is. Thank you very much. Appreciate you, Rev. Appreciate all you guys listening in. So again, guys, I gotta thank Rev for taking time to be here with me. I gotta thank him for helping me host this event. The P3 Marketing Summit happens January 26th, 27th, 28th, 2025. It's happening in Salt Lake City, Utah. It's a two and a half day event. We get two parties, two full days of speaker sessions, panel discussions, workshops, everything you need to know to market your restaurant. The link to get tickets is in the show notes and I really mean it. Do not mess around. The event is almost already sold out. Thanks for taking time out of your day to be here and I hope I see many of you in Utah SA.