Podcast Summary: RESTAURANT STRATEGY

Episode: Understanding Personas and Pain Points (ENCORE)

Host: Chip Klose
Date: November 27, 2025

Overview

In this episode, Chip Klose explores the fundamental marketing concept of empathy and how it relates to understanding your restaurant's Personas and their pain points. Through a detailed case study of Gotham, an iconic New York City restaurant, Chip illustrates practical steps for restaurant owners to intentionally identify, segment, and market to their core guests, moving from broad, unfocused strategies to more specific, actionable solutions.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Role of Empathy in Restaurant Marketing

• Empathy as a Foundation:
  • Chip opens by describing empathy as the "ability to put yourself in another person's shoes" to better meet guests’ needs (00:00).
  • Lack of empathy and specificity often leads to ineffective marketing, with most restaurants falling into this trap.
  • Quote:
    • "Most of the marketing that we get wrong in our industry, we get wrong because we lack intention and we lack specificity." – Chip Klose [00:57]

Three Fundamental Questions of Marketing

• The Three Questions:

  • What’s the product?
  • Who is it for?
  • How do we reach those people?
  • These are repeated “like a mantra” for restaurant marketing (04:25).
  • Marketing is about solving a problem for a specific group, not just creating a product and hoping people show up.

• Quote:

  • "If you've been listening to this for a while, you know the framework that I talk about a lot, the ABCDs of marketing. A stands for audience. The who, right? Who is a problem we could solve?" – Chip Klose [06:46]

The Fallacy of Building First, Then Seeking Customers

• Most restaurants adopt the backwards approach: they create what they want, then search for diners—instead of finding an unmet need and crafting the restaurant as a solution for it (06:06).
• Advice: Reverse engineer the process: find the pain point, then build the experience.

Segmentation: The Power of Personas

• Personas Defined:

  • Personas are “buckets” representing core types of diners, each with common pain points (14:44).
  • Not everyone fits perfectly, but 90% should fall into 3-5 segments.

• Segmentation Variables:

  • Demographics, psychographics, buying behaviors, and geography.

• Quote:

  • "We’re segmenting a population because we’re saying, hey, we can’t possibly convince everyone to come here. We’re just trying to find the people who are most apt to dine here, the people who need what we have." – Chip Klose [12:30]

Case Study: Gotham Restaurant (NYC)

Four Core Personas (18:01)

• 1. Locals:

  • Wealthy residents seeking relaxed, straightforward, approachable fine dining.
  • Frequent guests who want a simple, reliable experience after work or before local events.
  • Pain Point: Craving simplicity and comfort in their own neighborhood.

• 2. Special Occasion Diners:

  • Celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, graduations.
  • Dine out a few times per year—want to ensure a memorable, worthwhile experience.
  • Pain Point: Need assurance their rare splurge will be worth it.

• 3. Business People:

  • Entertaining clients, closing deals
  • Seek impressive yet comfortable venues—not overly quirky or pretentious.
  • Pain Point: Want to impress without intimidation or discomfort.

• 4. Tourists:

  • Out-of-towners willing to pay for a “sure thing.”
  • Pain Point: Need confidence their limited restaurant nights are spent wisely.

  Quote:

  • "...All of our four Personas had pain points, had separate pain points that were closely aligned. But the locals wanted something really easy, straightforward... business people... wanted to impress them, they wanted to take them out, but they also wanted to make their clients... comfortable. So again, an approachable kind of meal was right what they were looking for." – Chip Klose [21:46]

Moving from Personas to Marketing Action

Why Just Great Food Isn’t Enough

• “Nobody goes to restaurants for delicious food ... all restaurants these days pretty much have delicious food” (29:10).
• Successful marketing identifies and directly speaks to a Persona’s pain point, not just posting tantalizing photos.

Persona-Specific Tactics (36:16)

1. Tourists

• Concierge Program: Build relationships with hotel concierge teams (don’t need them for locals/business people).

• Tactics:

  • Invite concierges for dinner, provide materials (menus, snacks), so they know the experience.
  • Concierge can accurately recommend Gotham to nervous, high-spend tourists seeking a ‘sure thing.’

• Advertising:

  • Use travel magazines, airline magazines for both paid/earned PR.
  • Digital ads geotargeted to airports (JFK, LGA, Newark) catch tourists as they enter the city.

  Notable Quote:

  • “We are trying to show them the experience so that they send us the right people. Because it’s going to be a win-win...” – Chip Klose [39:35]

2. Locals

• Digital Ads: Localized campaigns on Google, Facebook, Instagram.
• Four Walls Marketing: Personal hospitality, building relationships, addressing repeat regulars by name, remembering preferences.
• Hospitality as Marketing: “Getting to know our people better is the best possible marketing.” [44:30]
• Action:
  • Make standing reservations, offer to set the table, pre-order if needed.

3 & 4. (Business People & Special Occasion)

• Not detailed in full, but listeners are encouraged to create similarly specific tactics for each Persona’s unique pain point.

Implementing Specificity, Systems, and Goals

• Intentional Marketing Requires:

  • Specific Persona identification
  • Custom tactics for each group
  • Systematic implementation and measurement

• “Everything in your operation has to be based on systems and goals. Proper goal setting and then putting a system in place to help you accomplish that goal. And then finally analyzing, tracking the results.” [54:30]

• Iterative Approach:

  • Analyze results, double down if tactics work, adjust if they don’t.

  Quote:

  • "You will never get better, though, if you don't bring specificity and intentionality to what you're doing." – Chip Klose [55:42]

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Empathy:

  • “Seth Godin… said a marketer loses when they have to convince the consumer of two things.” [10:22]

• On Segmenting:

  • “When we look at a city... my restaurant is not for everyone.” [11:32]

• On Marketing Action:

  • “Just showing great pictures of your food, cool pictures of your cocktails is not enough. Just sort of posting into the ether and hoping that the right people will see it is not enough.” [29:58]

• On Execution:

  • “It's an iterative process. And as your operation evolves, you will get better and better and better.” [55:19]

Key Takeaways for Restaurant Owners

• Start with Empathy: Always put yourself in your guests’ shoes—identify not just who they are, but what problem they want solved.
• Define Your Personas: Segment your guest base into clear groups (3–5), each with distinct pain points.
• Tailor Your Marketing: Stop broadcasting generically—pick specific tactics to reach each Persona where they are, with messaging that speaks to their pain.
• Track & Iterate: Set goals, implement with systems, measure, and adjust continuously.

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Empathy and the Marketing Foundation: [00:00–05:15]
• The Three Questions of Marketing: [04:25–07:10]
• Case Study Setup – Gotham Personas: [14:44–25:50]
• Specific Pain Points for Each Persona: [18:01–25:50]
• From Personas to Tactics: [29:35–42:00]
• Tourist Persona and Concierge Strategy: [36:16–42:00]
• Locals Persona Approach: [44:30–46:20]
• Importance of Systems and Iteration: [54:00–56:00]

This episode is a must-listen for restaurant owners who want to move past broad, generic marketing and toward a targeted, effective, and empathetic approach that truly speaks to the distinct needs of their guests.