Never a Lack of Ideas

In case you missed it, there’s a real-life pop-up restaurant modeled after “The Max” — the fictional restaurant featured in 90s sitcom   Saved by the Bell.   What a cool idea, and a great example of a concept playing on both of the   most powerful forces in marketing .  Taking inspiration from   Saved by the Max , I brainstormed five TV restaurants in which I’d pay to dine in real life:   1. Monk’s Diner —  Seinfeld   The outside of Monk’s Diner from Seinfeld is real-life   Tom’s Restaurant   in New York. However, the inside of the restaurant was shot on a sound stage. While   Hulu built a real-life version of Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment   to promote its deal with the show, nobody has built a replica of the inside of Monk’s Diner. I’d do just about anything for a chance to talk about nothing while eating chicken salad, on rye, untoasted, and drinking a cup of tea.   2. Café Nervosa —  Frasier ...

So you want to be a marketer? Then you better develop thick skin because critics are everywhere. Recently, a restaurant chain with which I'm quite familiar started a new Birthday Club. The premise is very simple: register online with your birthdate and email address and you will receive a voucher for a free piece of chocolate cake on your birthday. Here were two of my favorite responses on Facebook about the Birthday Club: "Pass. If I wanted to donate to the GOP, I'll do it directly. I'm not interested in funding the GOP via your restaurant's deep campaign pockets. Or at all. You keep your cake and I'll keep my conscience." "Takes such little imagination to please people nowadays! Cake will bring me to your restaurant? Please I have integrity." Add This To Your To-Do List You can't please everyone, so don't even try. Critics are everywhere and let's be honest — some people are just crazy. Develop thick skin and ignore the ha...

Have Fun with It A car drove through the front of our local Chinese takeout restaurant. After boarding up the windows, the owner of the restaurant could have wallowed in his misfortune, but instead, he chose to have fun with it. Check out the sign he posted on the front door: "We are open! Come in and enjoy delicious Chinese food (food was so good that car had to come in as well). Thank you!" I love this attitude. I told the owner that to really take advantage of this unfortunate situation, he should create a food special called the Runaway Car Special. That would have closed the loop and made this event good enough for every customer to tell their friends. "A car drove through our restaurant to get this specific item -- that's how good it is." Wouldn't you try that item? I would. Add This To Your To-Do List When things happen outside of our control, the most important thing is how we react. Sometimes bad luck, bad press, or a bad decision gives us the op...

No Receipt, No Problem Stores should no longer offer $5 for failing to issue a receipt. Instead, they should offer $5 if customers have to stand in line for more than five minutes. When a store offers to pay me if I don't get a receipt, I secretly hope that they don't give me one. I don't mind asking for a receipt if I don't receive one, and I'd like to have the $5. However, I would never hope to wait in a line for more than five minutes. Even if the store offered to compensate me for waiting, I would rather move through the line quickly than have the $5. Add This to Your To-Do List If you're going to compensate customers when your business fails to do something, make sure you're compensating them for something they don't want to happen. There's never a lack of ideas.

Have We Met Before? The quick-service sandwich and salad restaurant near my office launched two new salads several weeks ago. I have ordered both new salads via the restaurant's online ordering system several times since the salads debuted. So why did I receive an email just yesterday that introduced me to their new salads? I've already met them — many times — and I like them a lot. The store should know this since my online ordering account uses my email address as my username and stores all of my previous orders. I know exactly how this happened: The marketing team at this restaurant decided that it would be a good idea to announce to their customers the arrival of their new salads. So, they whipped up a nice email, gathered all of their email addresses, and clicked "send." Nobody stopped for a minute and asked, "but what if someone regularly orders our new salads? Shouldn't we send that person a different email?" This restaurant should have sent me an...