I have a groupie. Yep, you heard it first. I had groupies when I was in a garage band in high school, but now?

A very nice lady e-mailed me recently. She is in the ice cream business and had a lot of questions about promotion in the quick-serve sector. She encouraged me to do a column on promotion specifically and later admitted to being a groupie of my column. Thanks to her and to all of you who read this tome on a regular basis. As always, if you have a question or an idea for a column, please e-mail me at the address on the bottom of this article.

So, my thoughts on the use of promotion in our business. Don't do it.

Now, what I really mean is use promotion sparingly and smartly. Don't make it an everyday occurrence to the point that your customer expects to get something for free whenever he walks in the door. That's what is happening a lot these days. We don't serve food, we serve promotion.
Here are some types of promotion and how to use them.

Discounts—Get two whooping crane legs with any one of four sauces for only 19 cents. Try not to do this. People begin to question the value relationship of your food if you can drop the price like this. If the legs are a dollar one day and nineteen cents the next, what is the real value of the food? If you do it enough, that is the price they expect to pay and feel cheated when you raise it back to menuboard level. In these tough times, pricing is the last place you want to go to find customers.

Buy One Get One—The problem here is that the customer needs to have a use for two of the items. And, if the item is large, he may not. He might not have any friends to share with or he might have been one of those kids in school who was lousy at sharing. Rotten little kid. But, anyway, you can get rid of your overstocked Yak (from a previous column) this way if you have to.

Free—It's the best, if you can afford it. This is the most powerful word in promotion. Heck, this is the most powerful word in any marketer's quiver. This is the way to get a customer to try anything. He may hate rutabaga, but give it to him free, and he will inhale it. Especially today.
 
Buy Something and Get a Plastic Thing—You know, premiums. The best premium is one that keeps a child occupied for at least thirty seconds, or one that I would buy anyway and you are giving it to me. Like soap, or my electric bill paid, or a loan.

Buy the Sandwich, Get the Fries Free—This works, especially if you are attempting to get the customer to try something new. Just be careful that you don't give away your high profit items too often. I know lots of quick-serves that wish they could just sell fries and soft drinks.

Frequent Eater Clubs—Talk to the airlines. Many wish they had never done it. But it can work. You know, buy nine lunches, get the tenth free. It does encourage loyalty if you do it right and classy. I would love to get an e-mail from one of you where this is working. 

Coupons—It works for electronic or on paper and gives you an automatic inventory record. The grocery business still swears by coupons, and if you have ever been in line behind an avid coupon user, you know what I mean. He has his accordion folder with each tab labeled with food category, size of item, and expiration date. The General Accounting Office should be so organized. And he won't leave the checkout until every coupon has been accounted for in triplicate. All I wanted was laundry detergent, which at my house evaporates every other day. How does Proctor & Gamble do that?

Sampling—This really works. And it's not used very much in the quick-serve business. McDonald's was very successful in the early days using sampling in the new products area. I don't know that pork stamped with grill marks and served with onion and pickle on a chewy roll would ever have been tried without sampling. Think about it.

So, what would I do if I were King of the World?

I would ACT. I would Advertise, Clean, and Train. I am so clever.

I would use promotion as sparingly as I could. Maybe one major promotion per quarter, but they would be great. In between, I would advertise my image and my total experience, not necessarily my food, except as it fits into the experience.

I would clean the place up. The time used by the crew to explain how you have to live in Sao Paulo and turn your game card in at the next neap tide to win could be used to make the restaurant squeaky clean.

And I would train. The only important commodity in any of our lives is the customer. I would train my crew in the Golden Rule of the restaurant business. Do unto the customer, as you would have him do unto you. Nothing is too good for that guy on the other side of the counter.

And instead of messing with prices, free food, and coupons, I would execute local store marketing every day. I'd become Mr. Restaurant in my market, spend as much time in the store as possible given Billy's marble tournament, suggestive sell my sides and sizes, take all the signs out of the windows,  let the sunshine in, face the day with a grin, update the uniforms if I have control, and become the local schools' biggest supporter.

That's what I would do. Want to try it?

Happy Halloween, a Peaceful Life, and Happy Trails.