A couple weeks ago, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, a chef I have never met posted a link on my personal Facebook page. No hello or howya doing, no nothing but a link. Curious, I clicked on it.  It was an ad. A bad one, at that.

If the point of sharing the link with me was to turn my Facebook wall into his own personal billboard while simultaneously confirming my belief that he is an egomaniacal crazy person, it worked.  If it was an attempt to connect with me via social media, it didn't.

But it did get me thinking about what would have engaged me. And how insanely simple it would have been. "Hello, we haven't met but I am really excited about this video and you seemed like someone who might enjoy it." Or even, "I'm gonna be on TV and wanted to tell everyone because I am that excited." Or even, "Hey, you've never been in my restaurant so I thought I would bring a piece of it to you, hope you like it and hope you'll come in soon."  Anything, anything that told me he actually gave a crap about me as a person and wasn't just posting on my wall because I have a lot of foodie friends who would likely then see it.

So, what does this mean for restaurants?

Social media is about sharing and the restaurants whose Facebook Pages I actually visit from time to time are the ones that make a little effort to post something beyond the old "come in for our new menu items" or "buy tickets to our event." The ones that go beyond just advertising. 

I don't think I am alone in that I love to look at pictures of events that the restaurant holds or maybe snapshots from out-of-house charity events or out-of-town chef events. I would love to hear about a chef going to a photo shoot, just a note saying "getting ready for my close-up." How about a mention of a favorite farming bringing in an order. I love seeing short/tiny posts from chefs about dishes they are working on, especially with a picture of dishes in progress, or about wines they discovered.

Over time, my favorite posts have been those that featured the best customer order of the night, lauding the brave soul who ordered the brains -- not the insufferable kind bashing the person with dietary restrictions who ordered sauce on the side. And the chef who got some fancy fish in the doors he was so excited about he told his followers to come in and try some.

But it doesn't all have to be about work. I loved one post from a restaurant that announced a staffer who had a baby.  Another that celebrated a server who got the lead in a play. And yet another that posted the latest track from a server who plays in a band.

We are all, I think, fanning the restaurants we like because we want to be let into the restaurants' world. We want to feel we are a part of what is going on, let into the little inner circle, a part of the club. Unfortunately, some restaurants are just using their Facebook fans as another form of mailing list, blasting out invites to events all the livelong day.

For the restaurant, of course, the best part about taking a little time every day to put some good 10 minutes worth of effort into a restaurant Facebook page is that you then don't have to spend time trying to get new fans. They'll come to you, because you are interesting and you are trying.

You won't have to sell as many tickets to events because their is an army of people who have gotten to know you a little as a person and believe enough in what you are doing to want to see you again. Actually, I am going to one such event tonight, because I got to know the chef's style from Facebook and I think he is pretty cool.

With just 10 minutes a day, you put a little savings into the pot every day and when you need it, the bounty is there. You've spent time giving to a group of people who, over time, get wrapped up in the excitement of being part of the restaurant family. 

Which is to say, in the end, that social media is about selling after all.

It is the kind of selling that builds solid business, incrementally, with real, devoted customers. Customers who enjoy what you are doing, will pay full price for it, and who will be your greatest tools for getting more customers just like them.

Wanna know how to reach out to new audiences? Get media coverage? Sell events a little easier?  Share on Facebook, on Twitter, post your photos on Flickr. Try your hand at marketing a little every day yourself, instead of looking for some magic bullet to do it for you.

Which is why I am posting this post this week.  Because with 10 minutes a day of actual effort -- not just dialing-it-in effort -- I'd venture that a restaurant would discover the single best marketing tool around. One that is free, doesn't devalue your brand and won't, by any stretch of the imagination, eat into your bottom line.

I was never a Deadhead when I was younger. I am not sure why, actually, since I am perfectly aged and, back in high school and college, tended toward going to a lot of concerts in a somewhat altered state. But The Dead, for some reason, passed right on by me and my friends. 

But that is not to say that I can't be a connoisseur of their marketing prowess, as I was reminded by Joshua Green in a fantastic article in this month's Atlantic Monthly.

The Dead were the originators of true viral marketing and their guerrilla tactics were, many believe, a preview of the possibilities of social media. By allowing their fans to record and share concert tapes, they taught us all the value of sharing.  And through that, they became larger than life.

Dana Oshiro wrote a great blog about The Dead's marketing prowess as it pertains to today on ReadWriteStart, quoting John Perry Barlow,

"What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then--the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value. Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it becomes...The Internet doesn't behave that way...If I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced."

This is why blogs work, sharing recipes, posting behind-the-scenes photos and commentary from a busy night of service, even sharing a new, almost-on-the-menu dish with a regular customer to try out and give some feedback.  Because by sharing, which is what social media is all about, you tap into what The Dead already knew -- that when you give customers something for free, they tend to drive sales.

When was the last time you gave away anything for free?

My dislike of discounting at chef-driven restaurants is by now well-known in my tiny little corner of the world (which is chef-driven restaurants, only, really).

Restaurants, so I am told, discount in order to bring in new audiences. Sometimes they do this because they are desperate. Other times because they are just interested in seeing who else is out there.

But on the whole, they feel they need to reach out beyond their target audience and find people who wouldn't normally try them out because the restaurant is perceived as "too expensive." I guess the idea is that all these new customers will be so overcome with awe over the food/experience, they will revise their monthly budget to work in fancy dinners on a regular basis.

My issue, of course, is that likely the restaurant hasn't maximized their existing audience or even really attempted a cohesive marketing strategy in the first place. So, even if they do increase the size of their audience, they don't have mechanisms in place to retain these new customers either -- just as they couldn't retain the original customers.

The fact of the matter is, there's an actual problem if a restaurant isn't busy, and by resorting to deep discounts, the problem itself isn't getting solved, it's just getting ignored a little longer.

When you shouldn't
Discounting should never be done to stem the tide of slumping sales. The minute you freak out about your low customer counts and decide to offer a significant discount on your food, create a a cut-price promotion that is off-brand or sign up with a discount program, you are devaluing your brand.

It's of course easier to discount than to figure out how you can be more valuable or more compelling and build your numbers authentically. In fact, Paul Williams, in the post Can your brand afford to discount, said it best:

"The root of the problem is in the lack of creativity by companies. Or at least a lack of being able to think creatively - quickly. Companies are having to do something QUICK and FAST to drive sales, so they turn to the 'low hanging fruit' of marketing tactics - discounting."

Discounting is a lazy way to drive sales.

When you can
That said, there are times when "discounting" can work. A lot of fancy restaurants struggle with customer perceptions -- everyone, it seems, thinks chef-driven restaurants are something to be saved for monumental special occasions.

In fact, many chef-driven restaurants are more affordable than people think.  And many that may be out of range for regular dining do offer affordable options, such as an attractively priced prix fixe, lunch menu or lounge menu that isn't outside the realm of possibility -- if people only knew.

In these cases, one can use "the discount" to make a point. Blackbird did this very well during Restaurant Week, using the media hysteria of the city-wide promotion to drive home the point that their year-round lunch prix fixe is always $22. In doing that, Blackbird communicated to a very large audience that the restaurant can be approachable.

When you might
In more desperate times, likely the best scenario is to look to Steve Jobs. Primary Apple product pricing doesn't swing much but discounts are often to be had on things like refurbished iPhones. So, the value of the brand itself is kept intact while new customers are captured and cash flow is buoyed.

In chef terms, this means not discounting your food -- which is your brand -- but maybe hosting a half-priced wine night because the wine is not uniquely yours. The idea here is to keep your brand intact while creating cash flow -- presumably so you'll save the leaky boat while you figure out how to fix the hole so you can sail on for the long term.

Yesterday's blog post, it seems, caused a bit of a stir.  In it, if you missed it, I did some back-of-the-envelope math based on standard industry calculations to determine if Groupon was good for chef-driven restaurants. The bottom line is that with fees and discounts, a chef sells his food for 25% of the value (not 25% off, 25 percent of).

Groupon feels they are a good marketing tool; I think there's a lot better ideas out there.  Ideas that reach the target audience instead of basically trying to reach everyone on the planet and hoping one of your targets is included.  Ideas that don't get chefs into what I think seems like a legal version of loansharking. Celebrated Chefs is one of those ideas (more will come next week).

No, this in no way gets anyone off the hook on the hard work of being a great restaurant. If you are dead or really anywhere in the vicinity of scrambling, you likely have an actual problem you need to solve and not a marketing program you need to execute. But this, and the few other things like it I'll feature, is my concession that not every restaurant has the magical powers that a few seem to possess and so into their toque a marketing program must fall. 

Here's the rundown from the Celebrated Chefs people. They're in Seattle now, rolling into Chicago and methinks they'll be in other cities soon, because it's a solid program, easy to understand, does a little good for the world and doesn't devalue the hard work of a chef.

Here's the topline:

• Celebrated Chefs publishes an upscale recipe book with an associated marketing program featuring the area's top restaurants and chefs in support of local non-profit organizations.
• Celebrated Chefs drives business to restaurant partners by targeting affluent, philanthropic-minded individuals who like to dine out. So, Celebrated Chefs is already ahead of Groupon because, well, it actually targets the market -- line-caught fish rather than industrial trawling.
  
• No upfront costs -- production and distribution of our book, as well as our marketing program, are paid for by Celebrated Chefs. Restaurants only contribute when we deliver results.  This is one of the key selling points of Groupon, per Groupon. Here, you've got that same offer without devaluing your food with a discount.

Here's how it works:

• Every time a Celebrated Chefs diner visits any of our participating restaurants, a donation is made to the customer's designated charity. I guess the rub here is that if the customer wanted to donate to Glenn Beck for President, you'd have to honor that.
  
• Celebrated Chefs supporters enroll their Visa/MasterCard/American Express into the program. When supporters pay their bill with their enrolled credit card, the restaurant makes a donation to the supporter's cause.
• The process is seamless and automatic -- we work with credit card processing technology to administer the funds so there are no special cards or coupons, no new equipment, and ... no employee training.
• 100% Trackable -- A detailed statement is sent on a monthly basis summarizing the previous month's activity. So, you'll know if your 10% cost is actually bringing in full-paying customers the whole time. Not a year later when you've hoped the Grouponistas have come back 6-8 times to convert to profitability.
  
• Celebrated Chefs is not a "discount program" -- nothing happens at the point of sale and nothing is returned or credited back to the consumer.
• The only cost is 10% of the Celebrated Chefs customer's adjusted bill. The adjustment is tax and gratuity -- which is an important point; there are rewards programs that charge restaurants on the full bill, including tax and gratuity. Celebrated Chefs collects the 10% on a monthly basis after sending the billing statement.  Of the 10 percent, half (5%) is donated to the customer's designated charity, the other half (5%) goes to Celebrated Chefs to foot the bill for the book, running the program, etc.

If you have any other programs you'd like RIA to drill down for you, send them along!  We are happy to share our thoughts and math about anything out there.

I read an article yesterday that made my blood boil. It was the blog post Julia Kramer wrote about the Groupon Lawsuit.  Personally, I am neither here nor there on the lawsuit. What really rankled me was the Mephistophelean comment from the Groupon Guy about restaurants.

"If Groupon didn't work for restaurants, they wouldn't use us (We're not the cable company)."

So, their top-line net is $369,408. If I were Groupon Guy, that is the number I would use to sell the concept to a restaurant. That's more intoxicating than an Adam Seger drink. 

The sales may stop there, the numbers don't.

According to the article, the restaurant pays Groupon for the privilege of participation. So let's just use the numbers that Groupon reported in the article, which the PR Manager said was "about half," so $20. That comes to a $115,440 fee.

So they gross, $253,968 (for those actually crunching these numbers, I am including the 60 percent bump).
Wow, tons o' cash. At this point, I would do a Groupon for RIA if someone facilitated me getting that kind of cash into my flow, which is right now more of a trickle.

But, OH! Craptacular! Everyone forgot the Cost of Goods Sold. Because unlike a tech company that was built to scale monumentally, restaurants have massive COGS to manage.

Let's just back-of-the-envelope this scenario.

• Say their food cost is 30% of the full-price, plus the 24 tacked on (that 60 percent of the value). $180,086
• Labor.  I'll toss that in at 25%, so that comes to $150,072.
• Rent -- I don't even wanna guess the rent and heck, don't need to because... 

We are at, um, -$76,190. (Please note, there is a negative there).
Before electric, ice, heat, breakage, everything else. Like, uh, rent.

Which means that, dang it, that restaurant has to do another Groupon because by the time they are done, they need cash and man alive, getting nearly $400,000 would really solve their problems, wouldn't it?

Which is why, Andrew Mason, 98% of the businesses you feature do it again -- they don't really have a choice if they wanna stay in business.

Every day, I feel like I cajole chefs to get busy with their social media marketing and every day the message back is: I am too busy.

Seriously, I feel that pain. Right now, my own todo list hovers around 750 things to do (I log everything into my list, from get cat litter to raise $75,000 cash for software development).  I have to continue building the 300-page wiki we are adding to SpoonFeed, update and distribute the new partnership agreements for my investors, help a young chef finish his business plan, find another young chef a job, figure out what the hell to write in this space tomorrow, and, yes, raise $75,000 cash for software development, which of course means updating my own business plan.

So, believe me, it is hard for me to also get to the social media for my company -- one look at our RIA Facebook page sorta makes it obvious how much I have been ignoring my own social media problem.  Frankly, it just seemed overwhelming to even try to figure it out.

Then I read a post by a gal I follow on Twitter and Facebook, Pamela Price.  She wrote a blog post on her patriotic gardening blog called  "Fluff Up and Promote Your FB Fan Page. And it seemed a great rundown for even the overwhelmed to be able to grasp:

• Create exclusive content and quit regurgitating what everyone else is saying.
• Allow your fans to post to your page because, it is social media, right?
• Post info from other pages to build your network. Like twitter, Facebook allows for people and pages you follow to be tagged (by typing @restaurant intelligent agency) in an update or post, which then shows up on both your feed, and the feed of whomever was tagged.
  
• Promote your page on every Internet site you belong to because, how else am I going to know about it?
  
• Ask folks to be your fans because, what do you have to lose?

So, we're going to start really drilling down on the RIA Facebook page in coming weeks.  We're hoping to make it a bit of a go-to place for some behind the scenes info from great Chicago restaurants (soon, make that restaurants from around the country!). We realize that, in our position, we can probably corral and share so many great restaurant stories that we should probably do that.

It took me about ten months to figure this out. And I think we are going to have to continue to tweak and evolve the whole strategy as we go, seeing what works and what doesn't.  But that is what social media all about.  No one is an expert, it is all still too new.  So the best thing to do is just jump in and try.

Hopefully, the work we are going to start doing over on our page will inspire you to start thinking about yours.

I got a big thank you call yesterday from a chef. He's on his way and wanted to call to say that it had been a bit of a team effort.  Him and me, together, against the odds, struggling up the mountain, fighting the battles side by side.

Really, all I did was push him out the door.  He did the rest.

I guess he was lucky enough to have someone pigheaded enough in his life to not give up pushing. Not everyone has that. And I can attest that it is super crazy hard to have to get up each day and choose to push yourself. To wring out every opportunity.  Suck it up and introduce yourself to the important stranger. Focus on the vision.

But truth be told, it was all him because he had to choose to listen.

A lot of people don't. They throw up real roadblocks, find excuses, ignore emails, forget to return phone calls. They decide to expend so much energy saying why not and seeking an easy way out that they don't have time or energy for the real goals.

Whether you have a pusher or you push yourself, the key to success, really, is what you choose to do every minute of every day.

Leave it to a dude who has been around since Banchet invented fire to school the rest of us in how to throw down a classy marketing strategy.

Here's the news item:

Miramar Bistro encourages guests to forgo the regular menu and place themselves in the accomplished culinary hands of Executive Chef Roland Liccioni. During dinner hours from Sunday through Thursday, Liccioni is ready and willing to whip up virtually any kind of degustation menu imaginable. All the guests need do is instruct the chef on their desired number of courses, taste preferences, allergies and budget. The rest is up to Liccioni -- and an elaborate, unique dinner is sure to follow.

As a former cook, this kind of prospect would seem to conjure up its own kind of Hurt Locker.  Imagine the people who want a degustation of four courses for $25.  But as a former cook, I was no Liccioni.  I hadn't come up through all the ranks of the kind of crazy French kitchen brigades he has.  (I did work for one crazy French chef, that was enough to put me off cooking entirely.)

As a customer, this kind of prospect made me dance around my office. Think of it: Guests actually ordering what they want to eat -- not some meal a chef feels they should eat.

In an age when you can't toss a side of pork without hitting a chef who is creating the experience they want instead of the experience the guest wants, this DIY degu is shockingly brilliant.

And it reminded me of this great video on Joseph Pine at TED.  Because the idea is not to cheapen your product because you'll turn into a commodity.  But to somehow turn it into a valuable experience people will want to pay for. 

And Liccioni has accomplished that in a way that still manages to acknowledge that we are in a recession.

Chris Borrelli is an edge case.

Yesterday, Chris wrote a super large article in the Chicago Tribune about being recognized at restaurants and being treated like a regular.  Unlike most people who crave some sort of special attention in life, Chris seems to downright hate it.

The article, more than anything, elucidates some of the awkward ways restaurants approached his regularity. New waitress telling him and his girl what they were going to order, a hostess spouting out that he had been at the restaurant twice before -- to no apparent end. This all apparently gleaned from computer-tracking. 

Chris seemed to lament the days of old when being a regular was more about being plain-old folksy than marketing.

Only I seemed to remember the days of old quiet well, in The Days Before Computers, when I was a waitress at a diner and had plenty of regulars. And I can assure you, that folksy showing up with the orange juice just as Mr. O.Jerk was parking himself at the stool was all about marketing -- because it was all about tips.

To me, I think the biggest difference is that in the past, being a great server was about using your Emotional Intelligence to read a table. If you had regulars, you watched their patterns and slowly, over time, began to anticipate their actions. It all came together slowly and in human time.

Today, with the advent of technology, that learning curve is compressed. And it seems restaurants are going through a little awkward teenager phase now that they are getting a handle on data collection.  But it doesn't mean that the technology should be thrown out with the bathwater, because really, restaurants are in business and dealing with customers is about marketing.

So, what's the real learning here? Customer data is something you use to inform the guest experience, not something to show off.

Just sharing that you know Chris has been at the restaurant twice is a pretty selfish act, if you think about it. That hostess wasn't trying to improve his experience, she was just flexing her muscles and hoping Chris would be impressed.  And really, why should he? She had done nothing except show off some rudimentary data collection that had no purpose.

But if that customer data shows that he liked the window table and during pre-shift and that hostess had done her review, she could just go a head and silently sit him at that table. Magically, Chris will feel great about the place and probably not even know why (and really he doesn't have to know why, he just has to feel good).

As for the robot new girl who spouted out his order before even handing him a menu. Frankly, I woulda done the same thing as Chris, which was to order something else just to spite her. So small minded, I know, and he seemed to know, but there is a bit of bizarre-o big brother in that scenario as he laid it out.

The smart move is to remember how he likes his French Toast cooked, no matter who is working the shift, or remembering to bring the milk skim the time he forgets to clarify.

Technology, after all, isn't something to fear, it is something to use. It doesn't have to be a tyranny in our lives, it can be a tool to make it all a little less hard. Because I am sure if the establishments Chris frequented used it with some subtly and generosity rather than as a trophy to show off, Chris would silently marvel at how comfortable and content he was at those places. He wouldn't notice, it would just be.

Again, we revisit hospitality.  And the idea that hospitality isn't about you, it's about the guest.

Calculating? Sure. But I'll tell you, with this kind of approach to marketing, I was even able to soften up Mr. O.Jerk back in the day.

Let me admit up front -- I had forgotten my coat.

It happens, sometimes, when I get distracted with my work and get so singularly focused on what I am doing that when the alarm rings to get me moving to a meeting, I have to scramble to re-enter the world and get out the door. I'll forget my coat, put my sweater on inside out, forget I parked the car in the garage where I always park it, what-have-you.

So, when I found myself standing outside a restaurant in 25 degree weather, it was clearly my own fault I was cold.

But I guess I was also shocked to find myself standing outside a restaurant, waiting to get in. Their posted hours indicated they would be open. A guy who was standing nearby had called shortly before to confirm when they would open and had been told the same time as posted, which was about 10 minutes before. There were people milling around -- warmly -- inside, looking at us like we were some kind of strange. After all, we were standing outside in the cold.

Now I'll concede that I have been indoctrinated in The Blackbird Way. Here is a place where the owner is known to drive people to the opera to make sure they get there on time, where the chef will gladly run food, run the dishwasher -- who cares what needs to be done, just get it done. And where guests have been known to show up at 3:00 in the afternoon and have a drink at the bar even though the place is clearly closed and the staff is getting ready for service, having family meal, conducting pre-shift meeting.

But I think, sometimes, there is this overboardness when it comes to "making sure the guest's experience is exactly how we want it."  Like the kitchen staff that gets angry at the customer who orders well-done steak. Or the front of the house staff who stands around sniggering at the the guest who orders Diet Coke with their meal.

I dunno. At the end of the day, it's a business. Sure, we want people to experience our brilliance. But it is a business first and last and every which way in-between. I know, I know, I am gonna get lambasted for not understanding that the guest just don't know better and has to be educated. The chef is the one who knows how you like your steak, thank you very much. 

But sometimes I think people tend to get a little too freaky-deaky with their self-absorbed obsession and it begins to make the whole experience completely inhospitable.

Like the restaurant who wouldn't even let guests come in from the cold and stand quietly in the vestibule while they finished getting ready for service so that the experience would be perfect. Really, we were all too cold to notice and too angry to care their special kind of perfect.