Hey, restaurant owners and operators.
It's been a long time since we brought you a book report, but I got a great
one for you coming up right now.
It's on this book right here, the Art of Building a Brand.
We will tell you all about it and what it has to do with
your restaurant coming up.
Hey, everybody, Ryan Gromfin here – author, speaker, chef,
restaurateur, founder of TheRestaurantBoss.com, ClickBacon.com,
and ScaleMyRestaurant.com.
Now in the last five to ten years, I don't think there's a brand in
the United States have done a better job building their brand than Duluth
Trading Company, who wrote this book.
I was in one of their stores about a year ago, I saw the book,
I love like nice picture books.
You can see in here um just beautiful artwork.
I love books like this.
I keep them forever, so I picked up a copy and it's phenomenal.
This is not something you want to listen to audio, this is really a
picture book, it's got great stories in here, it's well written, it's
unapologetically honest and you can see I’ve got all these tabs
in here for my favorite spots.
I'm going to tell you about my favorite section in the book later,
but if you don't know or if you're not familiar with Duluth Trading
Company, I'm not going to do them any justice telling you about them,
we've shown some images here on the screen, so you can find out or
you can be a little more familiar with them, but honestly, go to
YouTube, check out their commercials.
You're going to learn a lot about their brand, but what the book really
does is it talks about how they built their brand and tools that you can
use to help you build yours, and it really tells a great journey of
a company that started selling one product at trade shows that then
transitioned into mail order and then transitioned from mail order
into internet, and then transitioned from internet into brick and mortar.
And how this company changed so much over 30-40 years but
how they stayed true to their customer and their brand.
And I can't tell you how important that is is to know who your
customer is and stay true to your customer and your brand.
And again, they're going to tell you how they did it and
there are so many great lessons.
Even though this is a clothing and a lifestyle brand, it doesn't really
have much to do with the restaurant.
every time or every section I was reading of this book was like,
wow, I got to share it with this client, I got to share that with
this client and I’ve told five or ten of my personal clients to read
it and they love the book too.
So, I wanted to share this with you because it's one
of the more obscure books.
It's probably not showing up on your radar, but it's one
you should definitely look at.
Now my favorite part of the book, my biggest takeaway is what they
call a core product strategy, or their core product strategy.
Now your product in the restaurant business is likely
the food that you serve.
Now I've done a video on this in the past called should your
menu be wide or deep, and we're going to put a link in that and
you should go, it's probably annotated somewhere here or here.
You should go watch that video after this one or go watch it,
come back to this one whatever you want, but really what it talks
about is a wide menu would be…
let's say you've identified your target customer as families,
your target guest is a family.
Well families like pizza, families like hamburgers, families like salads,
families like sandwiches, families like they like, they like, they like.
So you could potentially build a very wide menu, a menu that
services families with pretty much anything they want.
Now, this is A] option.
It's not my favorite option but it's, A] option.
My favorite option usually depends on your situation is to go deeper,
a deeper menu which would be more about becoming the best in the world
at one or two things and then letting all different types of demographics
come and enjoy that because you're the best in the world at it.
Again, a wide strategy might be better for you, a deep
strategy might be better for you.
Don't get caught in having a wide and deep menu.
Again, I talk about that more in that video, go check that out,
but really what I want to talk about here is just how this book,
how they built their entire brand on a couple of core products.
There's a couple of products, now when you go into their store or
check out their website, they sell hundreds if not thousands of products,
but they are known for five, maybe six core products, and they market
the heck out of those products.
They go very deep on those products.
They appeal to different types of people with those products,
they’re very specific about how they market those products.
Now one of the things that restaurant operators or anyone who works
with me will hear me say a lot is what's your signature dish?
So, I'm going to ask you right now?
What's your signature dish?
If you don't know what your signature dish is, whether you have a wide
or deep menu, you need to identify your signature dish and you need to
make sure that everyone in the world knows that that's your signature
dish and you need to market that signature dish and that signature dish
should be how you build your brand.
And I’m not going to sit here and explain it to you because
this book does such a great job doing that, so we'll wrap up
there, but check it out again.
We're going to show you some different images, we probably have already
about the book and where you can get it and all that good stuff, if
it's not been annotated up here, then it's in the description below.
If you're watching this video on YouTube, look for the description.
If you're watching this on our website, we'll make sure to have
all the links and everything you need below the video there, but go
ahead and grab yourself a copy of the book and then come back here
and let us know what you think.
I hope you enjoyed this week's video, I hope you enjoyed this book review.
It's been a long time since I’ve done book reviews for you, but I
really hope that you enjoyed it and I want you all to know that
I love every single one of you crazy restaurant people out there.
And remember, systems create freedom, freedom creates
value, and value create scale.
So have an absolutely amazing day and I look forward to seeing you next week
with another great video, bye-bye.
Are you struggling to grow your restaurant business?
Are you failing to find the time to do all the things you
need to do because you're stuck doing everybody else's jobs?
This sucks, I know, I've been there.
You're not alone.
The difference between where you are now and where you want to
be is a plan and some new tools, and that is why I created scale.
It's my newest course for restaurant owners who want
to grow their businesses and build an extraordinary brand.
Learn more at www.ScaleMyRestaurant.com.
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Remember, systems create freedom, freedom creates
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