By ANN  SHEPHERD

Email Print

(July  16, 2007) As restaurants look to boost business during slower months, restaurant week promotions have become wildly popular, springing up in cities across the country. Typically organized by the local tourism board or restaurant association, these fixed-price promotions generate tens of millions of dollars in restaurant revenue each year. They also attract hundreds of thousands of diners, many of whom see restaurant week as an opportunity to try an establishment for the first time.

What makes restaurant weeks so popular and how can organizers ensure their success?

The power is in the numbers

Individual restaurateurs long have leveraged the power of the discount to fill empty tables. Restaurant weeks concentrate and magnify that power by promoting the same offer simultaneously across a critical mass of local restaurants. This universal offer—the same price on the same days—is essential to the ability of a restaurant week promotion to generate new demand.

In cities like New York and Washington, D.C., semiannual restaurant weeks pack participating restaurants full of guests eager to try the local offerings. Because each of the roughly 200 participating restaurants offer the same fixed price—for example, $30 for a three-course dinner in D.C.—guests turn out in droves to get a great deal. In fact, these events have developed a cultlike following, with diners gobbling up restaurant week reservations as soon as they become available.

Cut-rate prices shouldn’t mean cut-rate menus

It’s tempting to pare the menu during these discount-dining events, but restaurateurs are wise to woo diners with their best offerings. With a level playing field in terms of price and number of courses, restaurants have an outstanding opportunity to define themselves in the eyes of their patrons.

Many guests try restaurants for the first time during restaurant week, and a great experience can turn these first-time diners into valuable repeat customers.

In fact, in a recent OpenTable survey, 88 percent of diners who had taken advantage of a restaurant week offer said they tried a restaurant for the first time because of the promotion. Of those, 92 percent said they either had or probably would return to that restaurant again after the promotion.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors and management at Nation’s Restaurant News.

By ANN  SHEPHERD

Email Print

Less is more

If a restaurant week is good, then wouldn’t a restaurant month be better? Not necessarily. As with any marketing promotion, the most successful events motivate consumers by creating a sense of urgency.

Protracted events don’t capitalize on their demand-creation potential because they fail to spur diners to action—in this case, booking the reservation. In fact, the human tendency to procrastinate probably explains why many shorter events generate more total meals served than their lengthier counterparts.

The other benefit of shorter events is that they require a shorter commitment from participating restaurants, which must offer a discounted menu for the duration.

Requiring 100 restaurateurs to offer a cost-reduced menu over one weekend is a challenge. Doing so over a month’s worth of weekends is nearly impossible. With longer events, restaurants tend to carve out restrictions, limiting their participation to certain days of the week based on their own business needs.

With the loss of the uniform offer, the promotion starts to appear to consumers like a loose affiliation of individual restaurant specials rather than a cohesive, local dining event.

Restaurants that can’t get enough of a good thing can consider extending their offering after the conclusion of the official event. However, they shouldn’t publicize their extensions until the promotion is well under way lest they undermine the sense of urgency created by the original offer.

Leverage the Internet

Restaurant weeks require the dissemination of time-sensitive information about a large number of participating businesses, and the Internet is particularly well-suited to that task. While print media can be subject to long lead times and is unable to accommodate last-minute changes in restaurant listings, the flexibility of the Internet makes it an essential component, if not the cornerstone, of any restaurant week promotion.

Successful restaurant weeks have an official website dedicated to providing diners with essential information pertaining to the event. This includes the event duration, the offer, the list of participating restaurants, the meals offered, special menus where available, and a strong call to action—in other words, a call to make a reservation.

With the wealth of online information available about individual restaurants, Web designers may be tempted to embellish their restaurant week sites with additional information. However, the effective site converts online visitors into guests by guiding them through a streamlined series of relevant choices.

Ancillary information or link paths can distract users from finalizing their dining plans.

By contrast, well-organized, easy-to-use websites can fill more tables for the participating restaurants by converting a much higher percentage of site visitors into diners.

Like any successful marketing campaign, restaurant weeks require thoughtful planning, good execution and steady focus on the business goals.

That investment will pay off for everyone involved by filling local restaurants during seasonal downturns when restaurateurs need the business most.

Ann Shepherd is senior director of consumer marketing at OpenTable Inc., which provides restaurants and their guests with computerized reservation solutions.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors and management at Nation’s Restaurant News.