How Customers Find Your Restaurant

Hey, what’s up? It’s Matt, Christy’s driving, hopefully we’ll arrive safely because she’s a little bit of a crazy driver, got David on the camera. We are heading down to a new pizza place in Covington, Kentucky. I actually had a friend of mine rave about it a few weeks back, kind of forgotten about it, that’s what happens. And I was looking for something new because we got Luis in town, my sort of [fine 00:00:22] legit friend from Chicago, he loves pizza, and so I went to Yelp. I go there occasionally to see maybe something I don’t know locally. And I’m looking at Covington because that’s in between where he’s at and where we’re at, and I find this pizza place. I’m like, “Oh, The Gruff”. That’s the place my friend said was awesome. We’re going to call down and see if they have seating, called down, and they had a great energetic person answer the phone. And so now we’re heading down to dine in there.

Here’s my question. The restaurant got us there through organic marketing because that’s what stuck out in Yelp was when my friend told me about it. So they did a great job to impress that person who referred me, I found it on Yelp, we’re going down. What a lot of restaurants fail to do though, is capture people like me once we come. Because I might have a great experience, but I’m probably going to forget about it. And I don’t live near, but I can make an effort to go there more often if they invite me.

Sell More Slices, page six, talks about ways to gather people’s information when they come in your restaurant. So, we’re going to drive down there. David will make this camera go really fast, [inaudible 00:01:29], we’ll go down there, and we’re going to have pizza, and we’re going to find out what they do to eliminate hope and pray to get us to come back. We’ll see you down there.

Okay. Look, that was fast. We’re here. We’re at The Gruff. We’re going to go and meet Luis. We’re going to have some pizza. And we’re going to see if they do anything to eliminate the hope and pray of getting us back again. Let’s go.

Okay, we’re here. First step, they’ve got an opportunity, they’ve got QR codes from the table, for the menu, because it [inaudible 00:02:04] order, let’s check it out. So, there’s an opportunity. [inaudible 00:02:09] my info so, we’re getting all our pizza, maybe there’s something else we get this. Okay, we’re back. Number one, pizza’s amazing. Luis?

Certified legit.

That’s my man, Luis, from Chicago. Certified legit. So, excellent reviews, 241, four-star. Facebook, 4.8 out of a bunch of reviews, and then Google, crushing it. 4.5, 808 reviews. Now, I asked the question because you’ll… Where’s everybody at? It’s Friday night, it’s 7:00 we got here, so it’s about 7:30 now. I’d say half the tables are empty. It’s an easy location. It’s a great location [all of 00:03:01] Kentucky. Very clean, very nice atmosphere.

One thing I see as a possible improvement, and this is different from the marketing standpoint, but they make great social media accounts, great picture of pizza, but nine reactions. They’ve got like 4,000 fans, I think, somewhere they were 470? [Look 00:03:21] there’s Tom from our team, he’s a fan. Some great drink pictures, soup, salad got the, sandwich got a great review.

Back early in the year, they were doing some awesome videos. Where was this one video at, there it is. Look at that. That is social media, the bad part is 508 views. They actually have a lot more. So that could lead to maybe why there’s not a lot of people here, but it is also a bad time for you, [Calm me 00:03:48] with COVID, but a lot of restaurants with minimum seating are actually full right now. Like the restaurants where we live in Union, you can’t get a thing. So, let’s wait, we’ll see if there’s a way at the end of the meal that maybe they get our information. If not, we need to get them a copy of Sell More Slices so they can figure out how to gather my information, the customer’s information to create a guarantee revisit. See ya.

Okay. So we just left The Gruff, an amazing restaurant with an amazing view. Look at this, you can see the city of Cincinnati, the Suspension Bridge. We found it from a referral from a friend, I had forgotten about it, this is the recap. Grab the wife, grab Luis, we were going to go to dinner tonight, went on Yelp, was like, “Oh, there’s that Gruff place, it’s supposed to have amazing pizza.” We scoot down here with some Sell More Slices books in hand, have dinner, amazing. Everybody, amazing food?

[Yeah, yeah 00:04:38]

Great pizza, we had pepperoni, we had a cheese, then we had one that was a brisket pizza, and we had their tots with some dipping sauce. The restaurant Friday night, 7:00, 8:00, half full, a great atmosphere, everything was nice. The problem is, they didn’t do anything to get my information to ensure we come back, I’m always talking about restaurants rely on hope and pray marketing, meaning Matt Plapp had a great meal, Matt Plapp might come back again. I’m more of a fan of eliminated hope and pray. They could have did a couple of things in there to get my information, incentivize me to come back, so they have my phone number, my email, maybe my birthday. That’s what you need to do. And if you’re interested in marketing like that, get ahold of me, Matt@MattPlapp.com, (859) 743-2408, my team of 20 plus marketers only work with restaurants nationwide, and of course, we have a lot of pizza places. Let’s go check the city out.

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