Boston Restaurant and Small Business Owners

By: Patrick Maguire

Book Chapter: Human-to-Human Service

Posted: 01/30/2016

Interrupting regularly scheduled programming to promote my PR, Social Media & Hospitality Consulting business for restaurants and small businesses in the Boston area. Stay tuned for another SNS blog post soon. Thank you.

Be humble about your success. Luck, timing, and a lot of other people played a significant role in it.

This advice from Donald Wharton, Plymouth State College president, was included in the shortest graduation speech I ever heard while attending my brother’s graduation from Plymouth State in 1997.

I think about those words often when observing the social media posts from individual chefs and their restaurants. The ill-advised, obnoxious, “look-at-me” marketing that a handful of chef/owners employ can actually undermine their personal ‘brands’ and can be detrimental to their business. Many employees and customers find it off-putting, and can see right through a chef/owner trying too hard to be a “badass,” and not trying hard enough to keep their eye on the ball, mind the store, and do what’s right for their employees, customers, and long-term for their business. Personal chef or staff ‘brands’ impact perception of a business, and impact some diner’s decisions to support or avoid restaurants.

So why do they do it? Ego. And their publicists, PR agencies, marketing firms, (often detached, soulless corporate entities) don’t have the courage, or the perspective and knowledge to tell them it’s a bad strategy. Instead, they are enabling them to ensure they will continue to be paid ridiculous amounts of money. Too many restaurants are paying exorbitant, unnecessary monthly fees to individuals and companies delivering ‘fluff’ instead of strategic, candid, blunt advice. I get the ‘big picture’ strategy, but many of those fees are a huge gamble, and in most cases, a waste of money.

We’ve been very fortunate to have dodged a bullet so far this winter in terms of the weather. Fortunately, the current 10-day forecast has NO SNOW in it, and even calls for a high temperature of 56-degrees on Wednesday! (Fuckin’ A, or fuckin’ oath as my Aussie friends would say.) We’re far from out of the woods, but hopefully Boston area restaurant business will not be hit hard like it was last year. I realize that many of you have been preparing for difficult months financially during the slower winter months. If you’re doing a little better than you thought, and have a little more time, now is the perfect time to re-examine your PR, social media and marketing strategies without spending a lot of money. You will be better positioned to capture even more business during the busier months if you invest the time and effort now to tighten up your game plan.

The strategies that I recommend are the antithesis of the over-priced, over-hyped, “agencies.” Rather than trying to win national popularity contests, I recommend the organic, grass-roots, real strategies that worked for our team during the early years at jm Curley. We gained national attention because of our consistent, sustained effort locally, as we built and nurtured relationships with our employees, customers, neighbors, vendors, community, and industry peers via social media and in-person. No one knows or cares about your business more than you do. Detached, 3rd party, ‘corporate’ entities cannot capture and communicate the spirit, personality, soul, and mission of your restaurant the way you and your staff can. I can work with you and your team to implement effective strategies at a very reasonable cost.

There’s a sweet spot between the extreme of paying a national media firm and spending no money and doing very little social media marketing on you your own. For those of you doing nothing or not enough with social media, can you really afford to ignore the potential benefits to your business? There are so many restaurants that aren’t even in the conversation when customers are deciding on where to dine because the restaurant does nothing to remain current and relevant. They’re not even benefitting from ‘passive’ marketing because they don’t even have active Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts for customers to promote them on. And they’re stuck because they feel it’s a daunting task to get in ‘the game’ at all. If you’re willing to invest the time, it’s really not too difficult.

I’m taking on a few more customers immediately, and welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss the possibility of working together. Please email me at Patrick@servernotservant.com for a list of services I provide. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely-Patrick

PS-Please feel free to forward this to anyone who could benefit. Thank you.


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