May/June, 2009

By Shira Miller, Shira Miller Communications

From martini Thursdays to loyalty cards and dating disaster contests, Blue Moon Pizza owners Mandy and Kelvin Slater know a thing or two about restaurant promotions and what makes them successful.

Last year alone, both of Blue Moon Pizza’s Atlanta locations have experienced more than a 20% growth in sales, and they plan to open a third location this spring. The two found that their constant and often quirky promotions have helped them develop a loyal customer base and repeat business – and they’re not alone. Restaurant owners across Georgia are coming up with a variety of clever promotions to help them succeed in today’s economy.

“Creating something unique for the customer, whether it’s a discounted meal or a night of trivia and martinis, tends to intrigue people,” says Mandy. “They’re experiencing something special, and if you provide great customer service on top of a great deal, it’s likely customers will keep coming back.”

Toasting Tips

Standing out in a crowded industry, especially in the current economy, can be tough. The restaurant owners behind these success stories have offered a few tips for creating promotions that are worth your time

1. Keep it simple. Slater says that over complicating a promotion or deal tends to turn customers away.
2. Take a risk. You don’t want to give your services away, but you have to be willing to jump out there and try something new if it has the potential to increase business.
3. Stick to your roots. While Slater says she’s seen many restaurants lower their food quality and shrink their portions to cope with slow business, she urges restaurants to avoid this at all costs. “This is sort of a slow death,” Slater says. “Not only will new customers be less impressed, your regulars will notice and stop coming as often, too.”

Focus on creating a memorable experience

Atlanta’s Dogwood restaurant faced challenges from the beginning, after opening their doors in August in the middle of what owner Shane Touhy refers to as “the disaster that is the economy.” With pockets growing tighter, Touhy and his team spent the last six months coming up with a variety of promotions that have helped them experience tremendous growth despite the economic situation.

One of Dogwood’s most successful promotions has been their “all-you-can-eat mussels.” The upscale restaurant, which boasts a variety of southern culinary offerings, noticed a drop in sales in their bar area. In a direct response, they created the mussels promotion – $20 gets you endless mussels and a glass of wine – but only if you’re eating at the bar. Bar sales skyrocketed and a new group of “regulars” started dining at Dogwood.

“This really worked because it is centered on the entire restaurant experience our customers get for the value,” Touhy says. “Anyone can offer a cheap meal, but to give the customer a memorable night out at a trendy, fine-dining spot is what it’s really about.”

The same goes for the crowd at Blue Moon Pizza. Their lunch special, which stays in the $5 to $6 range, gets customers two slices of pizza, a salad and a drink. To keep the value high, the owners make portions the same size as dinner.

They also offer a loyalty card, where customers get one point for every dollar they spend. Once they reach 100 points, they get a $10 gift card. The combination has drawn an extremely large base of regular customers from local businesses, some of which have started dining there five days a week.

Be aware of your surroundings

It’s all about location. Whether your restaurant is located in the business district or the theater district, there’s always a way to leverage a successful promotion.

For Dogwood, this meant honing in on the theater crowd. Located just blocks from the Fox Theater, they’ve done everything from giving a free glass of wine to customers with a Fox ticket stub to offering a three-course meal for $35 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. to draw in the theater goers.

“The 5:30 time slot wasn’t a busy one for us. Tailoring our promotions to times when we need a boom in business has been great, and leveraging the Fox has been even better,” Touhy says.

Shira Miller Communications is a boutique public relations firm specializing in Atlanta restaurants and national food companies. It is based in Atlanta and is a member of the GRA. Shira Miller can be contacted at (678) 392-1795.

May/June 2009

By Michael Wall, Georgia Organics

Procuring local food is a hot trend in quality restaurants these days, and for good reason.

Many patrons look for local food offerings because they’re interested in many of the social, environmental and economic benefits that eating local food provides.

For restaurant operators, one-on-one relationships with farmers is one of the best ways to attend to quality control, and chefs in the know use as much locally grown food they can get their hands on for the most important reason of all – taste.

In a weeklong (or more) delay from harvest to dinner table, sugars turn to starches, plant cells shrink and produce loses its vitality.

Now, a handful of chefs and restaurant operators have taken local procurement to a whole new level.

Food grown in your own community was probably picked within the past day or two. It’s crisp, sweet and loaded with flavor. Several studies have shown that the average distance food travels from farm to plate is 1,500 miles.

Shipped food is usually chosen for its durability rather than taste. In the modern industrial agricultural system, varieties are chosen for their ability to ripen simultaneously and withstand harvesting equipment, for a tough skin that can survive packing and shipping and for an ability to have a long shelf life in the store. Only a handful of hybrid varieties of each fruit and vegetable meet those rigorous demands, so there is little genetic diversity in the plants grown.

Local food, in contrast, is usually grown in a huge number of varieties to provide a long season of harvest, an array of eye-catching colors and the best flavors. Many varieties are heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation, because they taste good.

Many conscientious chefs care about nutrition, too. A recent study showed that fresh produce loses nutrients quickly. Food that is frozen or canned soon after harvest is actually more nutritious than some “fresh” produce that has been on the truck or supermarket shelf for a week.

Billy and Kristin Allin, the chef and owners of Cakes and Ale in Decatur, are headed into their second year of growing food in their own ½-acre vegetable and herb garden. The size of their garden is much too small to produce all of the restaurant’s needs, but it does provide ingredients for creative specials that keep patrons returning.

It’s also a kind of experiment that fulfills many of their efforts to reduce the restaurant’s carbon footprint – a
worthy goal more and more restaurant operators are striving towards.

“Sustainability and health are related and those are very important things that I’m interested in,” Billy says. “It’s an added bonus that while we are working on those important ideals, we are also improving the taste of our dishes.”

Almost all of the herbs used for seasoning at Cakes and Ale are grown in the attached farm. The Allins are experimenting with crop rotation, and, with the help of hundreds of worms, they turn the food waste from the restaurant into nutrient-rich compost that feeds the farm’s growing vegetables.

This allows the Allins to feed their plants without relying on artificial fertilizers, which are commonly derived from oil and mixed with chemicals that are known carcinogens.

Composting is the most widely used practice for adding nutrients to the soil and combating soil-borne pests and diseases. The time to apply compost is when plants are actively growing, not during late autumn and winter, when long wet spells will wash valuable nutrients deep down into the earth.

Organic gardeners recycle “browns” (leaves, woody mulch, grass clippings, twigs) and “greens” (kitchen scraps, vegetable and fruit peels, coffee grinds, tea leaves, egg shells and torn cardboard) into a compost heap of decaying matter.

Two Urban Licks, Bacchanalia and Floataway Café are some of the other restaurants that are growing for their kitchens.

Summerland Farm, near Cartersville, supplements the excellent dishes produced at Star Provisions, Bacchanalia, Floataway Café and Quinones at Bacchanalia. Chef Anne Stiles Quatrano and Clifford Riley Harrison moved to Summerland 15 years ago to enhance the food quality produced at their beloved restaurants.

Over the past 15 years, the soy bean fields have been nitrogen fixed, cover cropped, turned, fertilized and fenced into 60 acres of pastures, herb gardens, raised bed agriculture and acres of fruit and nut trees – many of which were planted more than 100 years ago.

Harrison oversees the farm with the help of a few restaurant employees who enjoy spending some of their work week in the open air.

The Two Urban Licks garden, about 40 feet by 15 feet in size, is large enough to provide a variety of herbs and many of the seasonal vegetables that go into the chef specials the restaurant is famous for. Garlic, tomatoes and many different types of peppers are just a few of the tasty items that come from its garden. This produce supplements the restaurant’s staples, and is often used in the family meal that’s prepared every night for the staff, which is yet another time-honored custom that keeps the busy world of running a kitchen down to earth, so to speak.

May/June 2009

By Pam Sawyer

Mike Blum, owner of The Real Chow Baby, likes being first. His New American stir-fry concept was a first for the Southeast, and he notes, “Being first in Atlanta is a good thing.”

Before opening the restaurant, Mike traveled the nation seeking ideas for creative trends in the fast-casual concept. The Mongolian-style restaurants with flattop grills he saw in the Midwest struck a chord. He quickly began adapting the idea for the Atlanta urban market with full-service and beverage options.

The Real Chow Baby at Howell Mill in west Midtown opened in April 2005 with approximately 3,500 square feet. The second location opened in August 2008 with almost 10,000 square feet, catering abilities and 80 dedicated parking spots at Cobb Galleria.

Although his operating and revenue model did not factor in the convention business for the Cobb Galleria, he’s found that as an added boost to the bottom line and welcomes those patrons as much as the locals.

Mike learned that size matters when searching for the second location and recommends that other restaurateurs looking to open a second operation remember the level of detail and attention paid during the opening of the first. Most important, he says, is “value engineering” the kitchens.

One of Blum’s strengths in growing his customer base has been the creation and use of innovative marketing strategies. Blum admits that he loves “doing out-of-the-box thinking on marketing.” He focused on reaching customers in other noncompeting lifestyle centers such as clubs, hair salons and clothing boutiques, and then created marketing opportunities within these segments.

Mike, a former operations director at Fratelli di Napoli, finds the biggest difference between fine dining and The Real Chow Baby is the customer interaction. With The Real Chow Baby, he is able to increase the number of table visits in a day and get firsthand and immediate feedback from customers.

In fact, customers’ input contributed to the design for the Cobb Galleria store. Customers at the original location noted they wanted less wait time and more options for beverages. The Cobb Galleria store reflects these two desires with an expanded full-service bar and a second stir-fry line. The Cobb Galleria location will also become the flagship store for the chain as it expands.

Because of its size, expanded stir-fry lines and full-service bars, the launch of Cobb Galleria location was naturally more expensive than Howell Mill. Howell Mill cost approximately $600,000 to build out, whereas the Cobb Galleria location cost about $2.2 million. While the menus are identical, Mike add catering options to Cobb Galleria. And as of December 2008, Cobb Galleria was on track to generate the same revenue as Howell Mill – approximately $2.8 million – although Mike adjusted his original forecasts down for 2008 from $4 million+. Weekly revenue for 2008 averaged basically $42,000-$45,000 a week.

While Mike’s vision for both restaurants was to create an appealing concept for people in Cobb, Smyrna and Marietta, Mike has learned that a great restaurant will attract customers from more than 30 miles away.

One of Mike’s strengths in growing his customer base has been the creation and use of innovative marketing strategies. Mike admits that he loves “doing out of- the-box thinking on marketing.” He focused on reaching customers in other noncompeting lifestyle centers such as clubs, hair salons and clothing boutiques, then created marketing opportunities within these segments.

For example, he put “chow boxes” in the bathrooms of clubs like Halo and provided club coupons for those wanting late-night dining. Another marketing idea included providing cobranded water spray bottles to hair salons.

At our price point of $10 for lunch and $15 for dinner, we are a nice spot and niche that will probably get better in 2009 with the economy as it is. The food quality and the service standards are in place, and we’ll maintain growth, although dialed back. For example, Howell Mill was up 7% in 2007, and 2% in 2008.

One of the more traditional marketing approaches that The Real Chow Baby employed to great success is building a database of engaged and loyal customers. He offered financial incentives to his team members for collecting patron e-mails, and one staff member collected 500 e-mails in one week. As a result of such efforts, The Real Chow Baby has collected a list of 30,000 e-mails through which The Real Chow Baby studies and interacts with its customers.

“We did a lot of work with our 30,000 e-mail profiles, and surprisingly found that our top demographic was start-up families’ first and urban professionals second. That was a big surprise for us. We also realized that we are a destination restaurant, too. We have people driving from Gwinnett and the Mall of America area for our Howell Mill store.”

Mike’s predictions for the fast-casual segment are cautiously optimistic. “At our price point of $10 for lunch and $15 for dinner, we are a nice spot and niche that will probably get better in 2009 with the economy as it is. The food quality and the service standards are in place, and we’ll maintain growth, although dialed back. For example, Howell Mill was up 7% in 2007, and 2% in 2008.”

Growth and expansion plans include Chow Baby Express for airports, strip malls and centers. Mike is also looking at the old downtown Macy’s currently being redeveloped for the first location with a early 2010 opening target date. He and his leadership team are also working through a first franchise opportunity targeted for the new Emory Village scheduled to open in summer 2009.

Through a unique concept coupled with a sound business model, The Real Chow Baby has found the magic formula for the quick casual segment in Atlanta.