If You Build It, They Still Might Not Come|Chip Klose (Restaurant Marketing Strategy)|DH118 - a podcast by Shawn Walchef

Marketing Strategist Chip Klose knows you have to promote your business online to make it take off.
The modern restaurant business is not Field of Dreams. If you build it, they won’t necessarily come.“Thirty years ago, you could just be good,” shrugs Chip Klose on the Digital Hospitality podcast. “Pretty place, good food, good service and you could survive. But now every place is great. Every place has interesting dishes, great service, and a cool dining room.”
➤ Watch the full interviewhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_vPkwskBMU

 3 Takeaways From This Interview:
1. Implement Table Ordering – By using digital kiosks instead of standard servers, restaurants can increase their revenue by cutting costs and increasing up-sells. Even better, servers can better assist customers in true hospitality.

2. Pay to Play on Your Posts – Social media is a must for modern restaurants. However, if no one sees your post how can it benefit your restaurant? Be willing to pay social media platforms to promote your post strategically and increase reach.

3. Exceed Operations – Chip shares that in a dream world, most operators don’t actually want to be at their restaurant every day. Implement systems to relieve daily duties through modern technology in an effort to better focus on your customers and yourself.



 Chip Klose has made it.
Starting his career in hospitality as a host in college, Chip has spent the last two decades in New York ascending in the industry he calls home.“I launched multiple brands to rave reviews and great openings in one of the most saturated markets in the world,” Chip Klose notes.

➤ https://www.chipklose.com/As they say, if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere. After storied success in the space, Chip quickly realized that his success was rare in such a crowded space, yet it was easy to identify why.

Marketing.Marketing Restaurants —
While the ‘m’ word can feel like an impossible cost to restaurant operators, it was clear to Chip that marketing was the reason for the success of his multiple brands.“I started looking at marketing,” Chip recalls on his eureka moment and pivot. “I suddenly realized that restaurants really don't do very well because they usually don't do marketing.”

Chip Klose has evolved into a respected coach and consultant in his space.While marketing can sound overwhelming and expensive to operators that are already strapped, Chip sees it as three simple questions.



Marketing Questions:What’s your product?
Who is it for?How can you reach them?




The third question has become all the more important in the modern digital age.“It used to be Craigslist and the Yellow Pages,” said Chip Klose on Digital Hospitality. “Now it's Google, social media and Yelp. It's now on our phones that we walk around glued to."To reach your customers, you have to optimize your social media channels. This means posting, and in 2021, it also means occasionally paying to promote your posts. The algorithms have changed, and restaurants have to adapt.

Now that you’re marketing your restaurant, what’s your next goal? Is it more money?Most will initially say yes, but Chip finds the answer is usually much more holistic.

“Look 12 months in the future,” begins Chip. “What do you want for yourself, your life? Your business? What kind of money do you want to be making? What do you want your day to day to look like?"Through systems, any operator can eventually achieve this point of freedom and success.

What’s a system you can implement now to change your business and free up your time, staff and budget?Table ordering.

“It's becoming very obvious that table ordering really has the power to create a better guest experience and make a more profitable restaurant,” says Chip about technology like Toast Order&Pay, which is used at Cali BBQ and other places like Eats By Sam and many more of our favorite food s...

Further episodes of Digital Hospitality: A Cali BBQ Media Podcast

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Website of Shawn Walchef