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Lighten Up - Take Time Out of Each Day to Relax Your Mind and Turn on Your Creativity

In his book Don't Sweat the Small Stuff … and It's All Small Stuff, author Richard Carlson offers some sage advice for our current times:

"When you let go of your expectations, when you accept life as it is, you are free. To hold on is to be serious and uptight. To let go is to lighten up."

During this time of unrest, give yourself permission to not hang on to what you thought you were, but instead allow yourself to consider what you might become.

Look, it is impossible to completely free ourselves from stress, particularly right now. Even in the best of times, operating an independent restaurant is challenging. When you give yourself a short break from being serious and uptight about your business, you can free your mind to focus on things that can make your business attractive to prospective guests, and build stronger relationships with your existing guests.

Philosophically, that sounds nice. So, here are a couple of examples of some of my restaurant consulting clients connecting with guests in ways not obvious before they shifted their thinking.

A Cut Above

One of my clients is a sports bar and restaurant. The owners wondered how they might increase their carryout business. They have a pretty diverse offering and so I mentioned that perhaps pizza would work for them. Pizza is doing well in this crazy market, but it is also a pretty crowded field, so it requires differentiation. They agreed to try it, and we set out to position the pizza in a way that made sense for their brand with a crust and list of recipes that would stand out for them in their community.

Offering a new product is a big deal. You need to figure out how to leverage it to increase guest engagement. We decided to ask a simple question to every customer who ordered a pizza. "Do you want the pizza cut or uncut?"

That might seem like a curious thing to ask. When we order pizza, we always expect it to be cut into slices. As we hoped, customers asked why it mattered. The answer: "The best way to get a carryout pizza is to ask for it uncut because the pizza will make it home fresher and with less oil in the bottom of the box. Also, when you get the pizza home, it is easier to pop it into the oven to heat it up."

With a simple question and exchange, the operator was able to instill in the customer two impressions. First, the restaurant understood pizza. Second, the restaurant is interested in the customer's experience, and is willing to offer advice as added value.

Another example is a family restaurant operator that offers meatloaf, a classic comfort food. In this market, comfort foods are popular restaurant items. (See RecipeMapping article here.)

Mama Mia!

The restaurant was calling this menu item "Mama's Meatloaf", without explaining whose mama it referred to and why anyone should care enough to order it. Moreover, it was just meatloaf. There was nothing special about it. You can make meatloaf at home. Or your mama can make it.

We decided to change the recipe in a way that made the meatloaf a product that you would not make at home. Rather than a simple meatloaf, we created a stuffed meatloaf with Portobello mushrooms and provolone cheese drowning in a shallot, mushroom and onion gravy spiked with a shot of burgundy. Then we dressed it up with a side of candied carrots and lumpy mashed red potatoes.

As you can imagine, the description was far sexier than "Mama's Meatloaf" (with no offense to mamas everywhere). The restaurant offered comfort food with a twist. Something that made it stand out.

When you talk about your foods and how you make your best products, make sure you are making the foods sound good, and using ingredients and techniques that people would not use in their homes.

You don't need to overdo it, just make sure what you are selling is not something that someone's mama could make as well or better than you do.

And given the importance of curbside takeout and delivery in this market, you need to find ways to engage guests in these fleeting interactions. Asking a simple yet provocative question that shows you care about their experience is bound to make a lasting impression, which, in turn, can be rewarded with repeat patronage,the lifeblood of this business.