A restaurant is good example of a company that is dealing with the dynamics of consumer demands. There are 545,000,000 search results (Google) for the term restaurant. Overture provides 100 different occurrences of restaurants that are most related to a location (New York, Washington, Baltimore, etc) or to a Type of Dish like Italian, Greek, etc. There is also a combination of both (Chinese restaurant New York). The keyword for Overture signals nearly 10,000,000 searches per month (for the word "restaurant" only). Once you have started your culinary outlet you have chosen for both the location and the dish. The next question is; what is on the menu? This is a question all sales organizations are dealing with. A restaurant is not a typical sales organization, but sales is an important process. So the question is again; What is on the menu? The type of dish is not the issue. That choice has been made already. But serving the client is the issue. And this is more of a logistics problem. You could leave the choice up to the client. You present separate items on the list and leave the client completely free to choose. This requires that you to cater for all the items on the list which is a costly operation. You could also promote a standard daily menu, for which you will bet that 80% of the clients will go for. In order to pull your clients into this promotional direction you need to do something with the price... If you have organized your restaurant in this way, you have chosen for the internal focus. Your operation is driving the business. The price is driving the clients (hopefully into the right direction) and you can stay in business until another restaurant pops up around the corner. Until that moment you have time to think about a real CRM strategy. 2006 Hans Bool |
