Hey, everybody. Ryan Gromfin here – author, speaker, chef, restaurateur,
and founder of TheRestaurantBoss.com.
And I want to welcome you to my video blog series.
Today, I want to talk about what is your brand?
What is it? What's the definition of your brand?
If someone were to… (god, I hate the cliché) but if someone were to look up your brand in the dictionary,
what would it say?
So, I want to tell you about something that happened to me last night.
We ordered Chinese food, my wife and I, from a local restaurant here in town
and we eat there all the time, they have one great dish, amazing dish.
They have the absolute best dumplings
I've ever had. Now, I live in a very small town and
when we grew up in LA, we would go downtown LA for Dim Sum
just about every Sunday, we loved going to Dim Sum and you know, with the cart that comes by
and we would get some great dumplings, some really great Dims,
actually, my favorite thing to get on that cart,
if you've never been to authentic Chinese Dim Sum, go.
It is not what we're here talking about, but that shrimp noodle thing,
I don't know what it’s called, just ask them for the shrimp noodle, it's so good.
Put a little soy sauce and… forget it. Moving on,
the point is I've had some great dumplings in New York at Dim Sum,
in San Francisco, in LA,
but this restaurant in this small town that I live in makes
amazing potstickers or dumplings. I mean they are incredible
and so we go to this restaurant just for the dumplings and the foods kind of okay
and the rest of the food I should say. We've kind of navigated through the menu to find
the one or two dishes that we like, but last night, we felt like something different.
I had a lot of work to do, my wife wasn't feeling great.
She ran out and picked up food and brought at home.
We got dumplings, we got soup and we got two different dishes
and they were not good. Let me just tell you, they were not good at all.
I actually turned the leftovers into fried rice this morning
and the leftover fried rice was
ten times better than the dinner we had last night. The dumplings were incredible,
but the point of the story is that we didn't really know what to do,
like if we weren't at the restaurant, I might have sent them back, maybe or maybe not.
You know, we definitely, this wasn't the kind of restaurant that we were going to call them from home and send it back.
Unfortunately, we're probably not going to eat there again.
And this particular restaurant just doesn't have
the kind of culture or the brand of
letting us know when things are wrong,
of being overly friendly and overly courteous and overly welcoming,
and so you know like to me, if I look up this restaurant,
their brand in the dictionary is great dumplings, like that's it,
that's all I think of with this restaurant.
What do people think of with your restaurant?
You know, how many people have had an average or a bad experience in your restaurant
and haven't felt comfortable saying something to you, so you can fix it?
You know, earlier in another blog post, I talked about
Keith Cunningham, how he says if every customer of ours
was still a customer, how different what our business look today?
If everyone who tried our product was a return and repeat customer,
how different would our business look today?
1) You wouldn't be spending any money on marketing if
everyone who ever tried your restaurant was still a customer,
you wouldn't spend any money on marketing.
You'd be so busy you couldn't even keep up.
So, do you have the kind of place that is a trustworthy brand,
that is a brand of longevity,
or are you just in it for the quick buck? You know either one I guess is okay.
There's some places that are in it for the quick buck
and you know that's all right, we all have that,
we all do our shopping at different discounters because we know it's cheap
and we're not really there for service,
but have you noticed that even the discounters,
the Walmarts and the Targets of the world have really stepped up their game?
I mean, Target, I feel like I'm shopping at a Nordstrom's or Macy's sometimes,
they are incredible and Walmart is getting a lot
better too. I mean Walmart is cheap.
You don't expect to have quality service
when you go to a discount wholesaler or retailer like that.
Oh my God! You go to a Walmart these days; you get great service.
So again, what does your brand mean to you?
Really take some time or I should say what is your brand means to the other people?
What brand image are you putting out there? What do you want your brand to be?
Do you want to be discount with no frills?
Do you want to be discount with good service?
Do you want to be right in the middle here?
Do you want to be high-end? Do you want to be ultra-high-end?
And then not only that, where is your service level,
and are you expressing it? You know, so many of us say,
oh, we want to be the best of this and the best of that and we have the best service, you know.
You read these mission statements and all total BS.
You know, you may say that you have great customer service,
but do you really?
Do you have the kind of place that a customer would call you an hour
after their meal or a week after their meal
and not have any fear or trepidation or all of calling you to tell you that they didn't
have an A-plus perfect experience at your restaurant,
and they know that when they call, you're going to make it right no matter what?
That's a lot of times what we say we are, but we don't practice that.
So figure out what your brand is to you,
really live it, express it to your people,
make sure they understand what the brand is, and take the actions that you have to take
to be consistent with what you want your brand to be
and how your brand is perceived in the market.
Go do a survey, send out an email to your list. I love these market surveys.
Go to SurveyMonkey.com, or wahoofood.com,
which is a great website that I use to create surveys and such,
and send out a quick email - two or three questions.
What is our brand, what is our restaurant brand mean to you?
Do you feel comfortable coming to us with complaints?
What's your favorite thing about our restaurant?
How would you rate our customer service? Just those four,
I don't know four or five question…I just made those up right now.
Those can tell you a ton about your restaurant and where you need to be and where you need to work.
As usual, please leave your comments below this video, like this video,
share it, get involved in the conversation.
The real conversation is happening over at The Restaurant Boss.
If you head over the restaurant boss calm and then go to the video blog section,
that's where the restauranteurs and your peers are hanging out,
and we get into this great conversation there.
If you ask a question, I'll be sure to answer and leave some comments or head over to Facebook,
anywhere you like, anywhere you're comfortable. I'd love to hear from you.
Again, Ryan Gromfin with The Restaurant Boss saying have a great day.