Restaurant Start Up Consultants - MODERNFOODARTS.COM

Restaurant Consultants For My New Restaurant

Building the Best Restaurant

Modern Food Arts

The Essential Business Success Tools That Every Food Business Must Have!

Have you given your soon to be developed or existing restaurant business the most essential edge for success that is available to all, but few take advantage of? Whether you’re a start-up, profitable or not currently making a profit, the following two elements will accelerate your businesses success by two to three times (and much more for some) simply by executing these simple success elements in tandem. Building the best restaurant is defined not by the décor, but by your traffic and ultimately, by your financial success! You see, restaurant starts up consultants are typically very one-dimensional. The vast majority of restaurant consultants will tell you how they’re going to help you with your restaurant; the Modern Food Arts team will transform every aspect of your business!

The following are the two points of differentiation and competitive advantages that 95% of competitors aren’t even aware of, much less practice!

The Two Critical Pillars of Business Awareness & Optimization:

Becoming Intimately Aware of Local Market, Demographics & Competition:

Obtaining the key data in the market you operate in shows you in clear data and numbers, what businesses and competitors operate in your space; their sales, check average, number of units, menus, price points to name a few. Rest assured that only the top 5% of brands and operators (your competitors) understand their market at this level. How would you operate, brand, price, promote and market differently, if you knew this information. The irony is that as long as you’re not aware, you’ll never be aware of numerous potential advantages that are right in front of your eyes! As I explain to clients that they can drive greater levels of success by simply understanding the trends within the industry, they typically seem surprised. To build the best restaurant in your category, you must understand the competitive market forces that you will face before you begin.

Understanding menu-pricing trends during 2014 for example would provide some operators with the comfort that they had the ability to increase prices with little or no objection from their guests. See data set below. What if you knew that your main competitor does most of its business during a day-part where you’re not even open for business? What if they’re sales are heavily comprised of catering or carryout sales, which your business doesn’t offer? What if you’re losing sales because you don’t offer a specific product or product category? Understanding the performance metrics of competitors businesses and how you can take advantage of this is a massive opportunity that you can (and should) drive and weight your decision making in terms of the direction most effective in marketing, promotion and menu development.

When I go on to advise clients to begin our restaurant start up consulting process with this recommendation, the first question is always….”how much does it cost; and how long it takes to collect and analyze the data.” Great questions to be sure, but the reality is that you can’t afford not to know this information. Would you buy a house in any neighborhood for $500,000 for example without knowing recent sales data, property valuation, median price levels and trends in house values over the past 3-5 years and the projection for the coming years? Of course not. The average restaurant does $1.5 million per annum in sales. That number however is 2 to 3X in markets like Manhattan New York, or San Francisco California; and half the $1.5 number (or less) in markets such as Berkeley Springs West Virginia, or Toledo Ohio.

The point is, that when you do the research, you’ll understand market potential with far more clarity than you every have before and far more than you competitors likely ever will! Further, when I tell clients that the cost of producing this extremely valuable data is $5,000 to $10,000, this initially seems costly, but when relative to your annual sales, this cost is typically 1% of annual sales or less! Would it be worth 1% of sales to understand your local market intimately, the trends, sales, cost pressures and competition that’s impacting your business? The answer of course is absolutely!

Build Your Online Presence & Social Media Platform to Outperform Your Competition Every Time:

I’m constantly amazed that more than 90% of clients and network colleagues that I work with and that are a seasoned restaurateur and hospitality professionals don’t understand how Internet Marketing works. Moreover, 99% don’t understand the massive power and positive impact that a page-one Google ranked website would have on businesses. Internet Marketing and technology in general is changing the way the world works.

More importantly, it’s transformed the way consumers look at, and engage with the hospitality industry! From mobile apps, to online ordering, third-party delivery services to Living Social and Groupon, technology is driving the way our business operates! Additionally, internal operational technologies such as Open Table (reservations) engaged POS systemization (consumer tracking, big-data protocols); smart systems that turn equipment on and off, and 3D design and build platforms have changed our industry at its core.

The greatest change however in building the best restaurant in your competitive space is that your brand website and social media platform by itself can power your business, brand awareness, traffic and exposure unlike anything else. Simply view how many people search each month for “Best Italian Restaurant in Washington DC”, (just under THREE MILLION searches each month) and you’ll begin to understand the power that the Internet has to transform your business! Layer this with the power of Social Media outreach and national directory exposure, and you’ll also understand why the web savvy brands succeed almost anywhere they open.

The Best Restaurant in The World

Here’s a taste of key Internet data:

Consumer Search Engine Statistics–

The #1 Google Listing Receives 42% of Clicks by Those Searching for Anything via the Internet.
The #2 Google Listing Receives 12% of Clicks by Those Searching for Anything via the Internet.
The #3 Google Listing Receives 8% of Clicks by Those Searching for Anything via the Internet.

So in simple math, 62% of all action by those searching for X on the Internet use one of the top-three sites. More than 90% of ALL consumers shopping and browsing the Internet choose from the first two pages of Google, Bing & Yahoo search engines! So if your website isn’t listed on page one, two or three of Google, your website might as well be invisible! It may be beautiful, well constructed, functional and informative, but no one will ever see it unless his or her search is for you and your company specifically.
So the second essential pillar of success for any business in the 21^st Century is to become highly visible on the Internet. Here’s a fact worth reading twice; by 2016, more than half of dollars spent in US retail will be influenced by the web. (Source: Forrester Research ). The days of advertising in Yellow Pages, The Local Circulator Pack, Flyers, Direct Mail Marketing and TV-Radio advertising are dead! If you research the conversion of Internet traffic as compared to “traditional advertising”; the numbers are staggering and dominated by Internet, Mobile and web-based advertising and promotion!

*64% of smartphone owners are using their mobile devices to shop online. (Source: eDigitalResearch )

Smart Phone Revolution

So before you spend too much time on improving your concept design or upgrading your dining room, invest your money where it matters! Building the best restaurant requires that you know the market that you operate in, and become a dominant force on-line to outperform your competitors. Chances are, you’ll begin taking business from them without them understanding what hit them! As restaurant start up consultants and Internet Marketing experts, we specialize in ranking our clients on page one of Google within 120 to 180 days (and we’ve ranked some in as little as 60-days) and can manage the full life cycle of the process, from creating your website, improving the one you already have and optimizing and ranking it through media channels, social directories and local business platforms that will accelerate your business to page one of Google! You see, our ultimate responsibility is in building the best restaurant success platform for you as our client. You won’t care how beautiful your concept and menus are if your dining room is empty!

You will have to have something to offer your new traffic and guests when they do find you and visit of course, but without “butts in seats” as we say, the latter doesn’t matter! Let Modern Food Arts Consultants partner with you to rebuild your business, from new concept design and build, to menu development, purchasing systems and price/cost negotiations, financial controls, theoretical margins, branding, logo’s and graphic arts, we do it all for you! We also have Fortune 500 caliber staff recruitment and training division (The Team Builder Leadership Institute – www.theteambuilderadrc.com) that will reinvent your training programs, employee culture and ensure that your team (s) work in harmony and as a collective team! It’s no secret why “The Best Companies to Work For” are 3.5% more profitable than those not on this list! For any organization with Great Brand Awareness, Great Marketing, a Compelling Concept & Great People is sure to be successful!

Building the best restaurant for every client is our gold standard without question, but as the top restaurant start up consultants, we focus on building your traffic, exposure, brand awareness and long-term success as a critical component and mission of our collective success!

21st Century Culinary Arts

To Your Success,

Knowledge is Power – When Applied – Hospitality Industry Facts at a Glance

$709.2 billion: Restaurant industry sales.
8%: Restaurant industry sales increase in nominal terms.
5%: Restaurant industry sales increase in real (inflation-adjusted) terms.
1 million: Restaurant locations in the United States.
4%: Restaurant industry sales share of U.S. gross domestic product.
$1.9 billion: Restaurant industry sales on a typical day.
14 million: Restaurant industry employees.
7 million: New restaurant jobs created by the year 2025.
10%: Restaurant workforce as part of overall U.S. workforce.
47%: Restaurant industry share of every food dollar.
Nine in 10: Restaurant managers who started at entry level.
Eight in 10: Restaurant owners who started their industry careers in entry-level positions.
Nine in 10: Restaurants with fewer than 50 employees.
Seven in 10: Restaurants that are single-unit operations.

*Source – National Restaurant Association

Modern Food Arts partners with Baltimore SEO TNT – Viral Marketing Amplified! – Viral Marketing Amplified! – Viral Marketing Amplified – where building brand value and marketing your business for success is Viral, Contagious & Amplified! Give us a call at 410.571.4088 for a no obligation collaboration on taking your brand to the next chapter!

If you liked spending time with us today, please like us on Modern Food Arts on Modern Food Arts on Modern Food Arts on Facebook!