Last week, I met with PMQ Pizza editors Rick Hynum and Charlie Pogacar to discuss speaking at PMQ’s next Pizza Power Forum, taking place in Atlanta on September 2-4. During the conversation, they asked how I got into working with restaurants and pizzerias and why I chose this crazy business over all others. That got me thinking. I’ve been writing for PMQ for a few months now, and many of you are following my advice, but you don’t know how I got here.
So today, it’s story time. I won’t bore you with my entire story; I will just share the biggest pieces of the puzzle that brought us here.
From Childhood Dinners to Digital Marketing
First, I’ve always eaten out a lot! As a kid, my parents owned an insurance company and had many restaurants insured, so we would eat out three to five times per week for dinner at my dad’s clients’ restaurants. I recall many nights at Waldo Peppers Pizza, Pasquale’s, Barleycorn’s, Mike Fink, Walt’s Hitching Post and many more. I used to joke that I didn’t think my mom could cook because we ate out so often, but that wasn’t the case. She was terrific in the kitchen, but they enjoyed eating out and supporting their clients more.
As I became an adult, that didn’t change. To this day, I might have one or two home-cooked meals every week. We eat out a lot, and I love it. I not only enjoy your great meals all the time, but it’s a lot easier for me.
Now, on to my move into marketing. In 2008, I decided to launch a local marketing firm. Over the prior 10 years, I’d honed a unique craft: digital marketing. And, back then, no one knew what that meant. On top of that, I had a background in mass media, so businesses wanted my help with their traditional advertising while allowing me to experiment with their email and Facebook. I say “experiment,” because most did not believe in either one, and digital marketing wasn’t even on their radar.
From 2008 to 2015, I built up a list of 34 clients from 31 different industries. The only duplication I had was in the restaurant space. I worked with three other owners who collectively owned nine restaurants. These nine restaurants covered every aspect of the business except fast food. They were also all big on events, catering and community marketing.
Around 2015, I realized I needed to focus. We were building marketing campaigns across many sectors, and not many were repeatable for clients—except for my restaurant clients. In addition, the $3 million in mass media we were buying annually was being outperformed by free emails and social media campaigns.
Narrowing My Focus for Proven Results
I hired a business coach and asked him what to do. I was at a fork in the road. I had a very successful marketing firm with low overhead, one employee and significant revenue, but I couldn’t see a path forward that excited me. This coach, Billy Gene Shaw, introduced me to focusing on just one industry and expanding nationwide. This way, we could leverage our results and data across many clients and have a more repeatable product.
Billy asked me a few fundamental questions to help me decide which of the 31 industries to choose, but none was more critical than this one: “If you could pick who you’d want to hang out with, who you’d want to have lunch with, and who you feel most resembles you and your work ethic, who would it be?” He asked me to write down a few names. The ones I wrote, Shaheen and Jim, shared the same business; they owned restaurants.
When I looked at the people I dealt with daily, I could easily see myself in them and understand their grind. The restaurant owners were the hardest-working and most entrepreneurial of my clients. If there was anyone on my client list I could envision being around a lot, it was those two. Ironically, Shaheen, a seven-year client, retired from the business in 2023 and joined my team at America’s Best Restaurants.
Next, Billy asked what clients saw the most significant benefit from our services—and, again, it was restaurants. Over the prior seven years, we had fine-tuned the art of getting consumers to raise their hands and give us their contact information. Trust me—this was much harder in 2010 than it is now. To get a customer to provide you with their cell phone number back then was tough, and we had figured it out.
But, more importantly, we could see how customer data was even more significant to restaurants than our other clients. A consumer buys a car every three to four years and a house every 10 to 15 years, so getting those clients’ information was a one-and-done situation. The upside wasn’t very big. But with our restaurants, they could leverage the emails and cell phone numbers to enable weekly marketing campaigns, driving sales all the time. Plus, we succeeded in helping our clients upsell through digital media, which was a win-win situation.
In 2016, I started winding down our local marketing firm and expanding the restaurant division. It took us a few years to gain momentum, but we work with more than 3,000 restaurants annually. I committed to traveling and being on the ground right away. If I stayed home in Northern Kentucky and attempted to understand the market from my office, we would fail. Since 2018, I’ve personally visited more than 1,000 restaurants, and my team has visited more than 5,000.
The shared data and resources were the biggest win in this transition to working only with restaurants. Seeing what works at a few restaurants gives you a certain level of feedback, but seeing how it works at hundreds gives you absolute proof.
So, now that you know how I landed in your industry and where my insights come from, hopefully, you’ll trust the path I’ll continue to take you on every week to build the ultimate restaurant marketing plan.
My name is Matt Plapp. I’m the CEO of America’s Best Restaurants. I’ve worked with thousands of restaurants since 2008 when I started this company, and over the next 12 months, we will help 2,500-plus restaurants with their marketing. This is the latest article in a new weekly column for PMQ to help restaurant owners understand the gold mine we have to market in 2025—and beyond.
