By Matt Plapp
For the last few weeks here on PMQ.com, I walked you through the Attract pillar of the ABR restaurant marketing funnel. Attention inside your four walls. Attention in your community. Attention on the device they live and die with, their phone. If you did that work, congratulations. You’ve got eyeballs. Now what?
If you stop right there, every customer you just attracted is still a stranger. You’re renting their attention from Facebook, from the street they drove down, from whatever ad they clicked. The second they walk back out, you have no way to talk to them again.
Welcome to the Build pillar.
I’m Matt Plapp, CEO of America’s Best Restaurants. We help independent restaurant owners win: win new customers, win back lost customers, win more frequent visits, win higher checks, win their community’s attention and win against the chains. We do it through the three pillars of ABR:
- Attract Attention
- Build a Database
- Retain Your Customers
Today, we’re cracking open the second pillar, Build, and we’re starting in the most important place on planet Earth when it comes to your restaurant: inside your four walls.
Why Inside Your Pizzeria Is the Most Important Place to Build
Think about who’s sitting in your dining room right now. They didn’t accidentally end up there. They drove past every Chipotle, every McDonald’s, every gas station that now sells hot food—and they came to your restaurant. They chose you!
They drove there. They walked in. They handed over their money. They are eating your food right now. Those are the people you most want to know about. And they are sitting right there.
At America’s Best Restaurants, we track three ways we help restaurants grow their database: Facebook and Instagram ads, in-store marketing graphics, and our Comment Growth Tool, which runs through Facebook contests. The redemption rates we see, on average, are:
- Facebook ads: 24%
- Comment Growth Tool: 38%
- In-store signups: 47%
Direct mail, in comparison, sits at 2% to 5%. A Facebook ad is already five times better than the mailer many of you keep paying for. But in-store opt-ins crush them all. Almost one in two people who joined a database inside the restaurant came back and spent money.
That’s not rocket science. They already proved they want what you’re selling. They drove there. They paid to eat your food. So why are eight out of 10 of them walking back out without you even knowing their name?
The One-Two Punch: People and Technology
There are two ways to build a database inside your restaurant, and you need both. Let’s start with people.
A couple of weeks ago, I was in Las Vegas, speaking at David Scott Peters’ Restaurant Transformation Seminar. A young lady raised her hand and answered my question about what her team says when a guest walks in. She didn’t say, “How are you doing?” She said, “Have you ever been here before?” I was in love.
That question identifies whom you’re talking to, so you take them down the right path. New customer? Welcome them, walk them through the menu, and ask them to join your VIP list before they leave.
If they’re a regular? Acknowledge them and assume they are a loyalty member. “Oh, great, what’s your phone number, so we can get you points for this visit?” If they’re not a member, the employee can say, “What?! OK, you want a free dessert next visit, right? Great, let’s get you registered.”
“How are you doing?” is wasted breath. Customers don’t care about the answer, and neither do your employees. The question moves nothing forward.
You might now say to me, “Matt, my people won’t do that.” Really? None of your people ever wore a mask before March 2020, either. Somehow, they figured it out. You simply need to set the expectation, then train it—and, soon enough, it happens every shift.
As an experiment in 2022, I worked as a cashier at Rapid Fired Pizza in Florence, Kentucky, for three months. I saw firsthand the struggle. Most workers had no clue how the program worked or what the customers got for signing up. And the worst part? They’d say, “Hey, scan the QR code; you get something.” Their attempts were futile; no one signed up.
The kids working the counter just got off band practice, or just broke up with their girlfriend, or are worried about making a car payment. They are not thinking about your loyalty program. That’s why you need a script—not a suggestion, but a script, that is run the same way, every shift. And it starts with you, the owner.
Now let’s talk about the tech. This is not 1980. You should not have a glass fishbowl on the counter where people drop a business card. “Fishbowl email marketing” literally got its name from that. Move on.
Instead, you need one of two pieces of technology inside your restaurant. The easy one is a VIP program. The sticky one is a loyalty program. New and lost customers will not join loyalty right away; they don’t know you yet. But they will join a VIP list to reeceive a perk on the next visit or two while they test the waters. Once they’re a regular, they’ll upgrade to loyalty. So you need both, and almost every modern point-of-sale system can run either one. No excuses.
The Arizona Restaurant That Found $8,000 a Month—Without Spending a Dime
I want to show you what happens when you actually do this. We have a client in Arizona. In 2023, his loyalty program ran on autopilot. From January through May, his in-store signups looked like this: 66, 62, 85, 84, 85—on average, about 75 per month. Loyalty sales were flat: In April 2023, they made $23,429.
Going into 2024, he committed to scripts, signage, QR codes and asking. The next January through May generated 125, 98, 134, 108 and 119 signups—about 115 per month. That’s more than a 50% increase.
The impressive part, though, is how loyalty sales changed. In April 2024, they made $31,645—with the same restaurant, same menu, same prices and no new promotions. That’s $8,000 in incremental sales in one month—just because he asked more people to join.
This is, essentially, found money. Money for free. Money that was being left behind every month. But it doesn’t need to be.
The QR Code Hack
Here’s the hack for when your team won’t stick to the script: Take it out of their hands. To encourage loyalty program sign-ups, hang a giant QR code over the register and/or over the front door. I’ve seen restaurants stick QR codes on the men’s and women’s signs on the way to the bathroom. It doesn’t matter where, but make it impossible to miss, and put something behind that code that people actually want.
Some ideas: Scan to win $500. Scan to win $1,000. Scan to win a cruise to the Bahamas. Most of you could give away $500 to $1,000 a month out of your own pocket. Pull a name out of a hat, film yourself holding the cash and post about the winner. Say, “Hey, Jeff, you scanned this 25 times last month. Here’s $500.” You just turned an opt-in into a video that drives the next round of signups. The database grows itself.
Plan the Win
Here are two final questions before I let you go: What did you ask the last person who walked into your restaurant? And whose database are they in right now—yours or Facebook’s?
Pick one and start fixing it, then work on the other. And I’ll see you next week, when we walk the Build pillar out of your four walls and into your community.
I’m Matt Plapp, the CEO of America’s Best Restaurants, and we exist to help independent restaurant owners win. Not survive—win. We help them win through their marketing and by leveraging our three pillars: Attract Attention, Build a Database and Retain Your Customers. The goal is to win new customers, win back lost customers, win more frequent visits, win higher check averages, win your community’s attention, and win against the chains. That last one is the one keeping you up at night. And it should be.
