Yesterday, I posted a blog directed to restaurant owners and their availability. After re-reading the post, I've removed it. It's a bit naive and out of context. Here is the anonymous comment that really made me think about it:
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "
Restaurant Decision Makers - are you out there?": "As a
multi-concept restaurant owner, my immediate reaction to your hypothetical question is - you must not understand the restaurant business. If owners even thought about doing what you are suggesting, it would consume their entire schedule. A conservative estimate is that I get salespeople like you selling (and promising) miracles at the rate of about 20 per day. When an owner does decide to review the contacts, we find just what we have here on this blog. Nothing new and even less about the person's background, experience or references.If you do have something different to offer, use your skills to market it different than the multitude of other "consultants". Good luck - you will need it!"
So, with his comment, I'd like like to provide the information that this person would like to now.
My background: I've worked in the New England restaurant industry for a total of about 5 years at varying levels including operations manager for a start-up pizza delivery company. I worked in fine dining seafood restaurants on Boston's North Shore and a pizza company in a town that had 33 other pizza companies and the town only had a population of 39,538. We knew a lot about competition and how to live in the same city with them. It really only came down to delivering a quality product. After I left, the product quality went down and so did the company. As the anonymous person said in his/her post, nothing new.
I also have significant Operations experience at the Director Level, I have a Bachelors degree in Business Administration with a focus on Marketing and Accounting. Since my college days, I've since worked for two fortune 500 companies, an experiential education company, a propane gas company,
Las Vegas show ticket company, the
Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, a non-profit fundraising company, a Nevada-based job board and I decided (with urging from friends) to launch
MenuSearch.Net. I also do consulting on the side for websites (mainly
SEO and
SEM) and the occasional updates as needed. As you can see, I have a diverse background where I've learned a lot.
I love the restaurant industry and I want to help. With a failure rate of about 61 percent among independent restaurants (over three years), I'd like to see if I can help. I also understand that many of failed restaurant owners attribute their failure partly to family issues such as divorce, poor health or simply a desire to retire.
There is a great quote sitting on my desk:
"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge but rather a lack of will".I've been in positions where I get 20 requests for meetings each day and I will honestly say that I didn't take all of them. What I did do was ask them to send me information and then to call me in a weeks time and at that point, if I'm interested or not, I advise the person of my decision.
I've talked to many people about
MenuSearch.Net. They always say "What a great idea" or ask "Why hasn't someone else thought of this?". The idea isn't new but restaurants rarely give new concepts a chance and many people would give up.
The one reason I continue to really make MenuSearch.Net work is simple: YOUR CUSTOMERS WANT AND LIKE IT!!In all honesty, can you (restaurant owners/managers) go back 15 years ago and if someone told you that you'd be spending $600-2000 for a website, you'd say "Great idea, sign me up!"? I don't think you can.
MenuSearch.Net is affordable to any size restaurant and we're willing to work with you to find the right solution. Think about how many of the 20 per day are asking for $500-1000 per month for ad space or monthly fees (with pay-per-click fees on top) or would like 30-50% of your revenue for a gift certificate program. We are less than $1 per day!
As for "Nothing new", we've got plenty that is "new" but we want to keep our proprietary information just that. Sometimes you need to have a conversation to learn about new things.
Sincerely,
Erik Foubert
President
MenuSearch.Net
PS: I'm going to post an open-ended blog to restaurants and the floor will be yours.
Labels: Intent of this Blog, My Background, Why we're different
