If you own and operate your own restaurant chain or series of franchises, it can be an exciting time when you open a new chain. After all, expanding your restaurant group’s footprint can be an invaluable way to boost your revenue and continue getting your name out there in front of other potential customers. This can ultimately help you expand into new markets and compete with other restaurants in your specific niche or cuisine.
While expansion is a thrilling time for any restaurant owner, it comes with it a few things that need to be done in order to accomplish your expansion without stretching your resources too thin. For example, it’s important that you do everything you can to get traffic at your new business without taking away too much from your current restaurants’ advertising presence. It’s also important to stay on budget for newer restaurants until you have a better idea of how profitable you’ll be in the market you moved into. Here are a few key concepts to keep in mind when it comes to increasing the visibility of new chains.
Get the word out with a media blitz.
The fastest and most cost-efficient way to build buzz about your new chain is with marketing dollars. In some cities and towns, it may be possible to get a local news station to cover your opening; however, it’s best to be comfortable creating your own marketing materials, since not every business owner can guarantee a story in the press. When it comes to creating engaging digital materials for marketing on social media and television, the production quality is key if you want to make a good first impression. Finding a local post production studio can thus be incredibly helpful when it comes to creating marketing assets that are up-to-snuff for the web and television.
The benefits of hiring professionals with years of experience creating high-quality videos are myriad. For starters, you don’t have to source a crew, come up with a shooting schedule, worry about sound editing, or even rent equipment when you go with a full-featured production studio. The right companies can even offer you creative direction and walk you through the production process to help ensure a consistent branded experience across multiple channels. Take a few meetings prior to launching your new chain, and you should be able to hit the ground running when it comes time to launch.
Save money in other areas in order to maintain your profit margins.
It’s crucial to stick to a budget, especially when you’re expanding your business into different areas or markets. Any time you can come in under budget is important since you’ll inevitably need to adapt your budget on the fly over the first few months of operating. One way to cut costs is to finance your restaurant equipment, like a pizza prep table, refrigerator, or freezer, rather than buying new equipment outright.
Financing items like restaurant equipment can be a major boon for keeping costs manageable, especially if you’re concerned about profit margins and sustainability over the first few quarters of business Google “Seattle restaurant equipment financing” (or whatever city your new chain is in) to see what sort of options might be available to you in terms of restaurant equipment loan vendors.
Consider a grand opening weekend.
Another easy way to build buzz is to host a grand opening weekend when you launch your new chain. You can send out coupons to various zip codes ahead of time in order to build anticipation and entice people to come to check out your new restaurant. Make sure that you’ve had a soft opening prior to your grand opening so that your employees bring their A-game and make a great first impression.
