The Takeaway: You're Selling the Wrong Thing

Josh Kopel (0:02)

Welcome to FULL COMP, a show offering insight into the hospitality industry, featuring restaurateurs, thought leaders, and innovators. Served up on the house.

Welcome to The Takeaway, I'm Josh Kopel. The Takeaway is a tool, one idea, one tactic, one strategy you can implement in your restaurant this week. There's no guest, no interview, just actionable information that will help you make money without costing you a penny, all in less than a time that it would take you to count out a cash drawer. Here is this week's takeaway.

It took me years to say this out loud. My fine dining concept existed exclusively to promote my private events business, and my fast casual concept only existed to promote my corporate catering business. Like all of you, I was raised to worship the walking guest. To fill the seats, to turn the tables, to pray that we're going to be busy on a Saturday. In events and corporate catering, these were the things that you said yes to when someone happened to call. But then I actually looked at my numbers. In-house dining on its best months made me 10 to 12% net, but every event we hosted made closer to 30 to 35%.

And the thing that I fought for every night was like my lowest margin product. The thing that I treated as a side hustle was the actual business. And that's when I had this aha moment. I realized that selling a $16 sandwich and selling a $1,500 catering order takes the same effort.

Somebody asks, you've got to go find the person. They say yes, and the food goes out the door. The only difference is one pays for an hour's worth of work, while the other one pays for a week. And so I flipped my model. Events stopped being inbound and became outbound. I began aggressively looking for that business. One-time parties became annual accounts. Because the truth is, that law firm that booked that holiday party, they're booking one every year. And if they're not booking with me every year, it's only because I forgot to ask. Our events revenue at the fine dining concept went from a quarter million dollars to a million dollars in 12 months. Again, the same restaurant with the same kitchen. And here's what I learned by selling it aggressively. The person that's booking a corporate event is almost never a foodie. It's somebody's assistant booking for their boss, and they're terrified about getting it wrong. And she's not looking for a deal.

She's looking to not get fired. And so what I realized was that I'm not selling food or events or a catering order. What I'm selling is confidence. Which is why the highest converting line in our entire catering pack were five words.

All dishes replenished as needed. The buyer's nightmare was never the price. It was running out of food in front of her boss and 80 of her coworkers. And that line took the nightmare off the table even before it was asked. And so without delving too deeply in the concept, here's what I want you to take away. There's a B2B business hiding inside the four walls of your restaurant. And it works at triple the margin with the same kitchen. And almost none of us are selling it.

We shouldn't be selling food. We should be selling confidence in a programmatic way. And if this is something you want to start today, here's what I want you to do. I want you to Google law firms near me. Contact the top 15 that come up and ask one question. Are you hosting a holiday party this year? Do you guys order lunch catering? And if so, do you do it on a monthly basis? And then solve that issue for them. Create an effortless booking process, a stress free offer, and then give them the confidence they need by knowing that nothing's going to run out in front of their boss. Don't wait for the phone to ring. Go get that business. You can make as much money as you want to make. You are in control of how much money your restaurant makes. You just have to go out there and win the business.

That's this week's takeaway. If it was useful, do this one thing before the day gets away from you. Go to restaurantbusinessschool.com to sign up for my free 5-day Restaurant Marketing Masterclass. It's a live workshop where in 40 minutes a day, I'll help you build out your AI marketing team to raise check averages, book more private events and corporate catering, and bring your best guests back more often without discounting and freebies. There are no ads, there is no additional expenses, and no additional work on your end. It's just my strategies and the robots will do the work for you. And if that sounds like something your restaurant needs, sign up today at restaurantbusinessschool.com.