P i s t a c h i o

Published in Ontario Restaurant News, February, 2008

“In terms of return on investment, email marketing is the strongest tool we have,” says George Kakaletris, Vice-President of Marketing at SIR Corp. The Burlington, Ont. company owns seven restaurant brands, three of which are multi-unit, and Jack Astor’s is the brand with the most locations. To e-market Jack Astor’s, Kakaletris outsources a U.S. company that emails to a subscription database – guests sign up on the web site if they’d like to receive notices and promotions. “We were getting great results from direct mail and radio,” says Kakaletris, “but email blew them out of the water.”

Reds Bistro is one of SIR Corp.’s brightest stars. Upscale and in the heart of the financial district, It’s at the other end of the SIR Corp. demographic. “For Reds, we have to be very careful,” says Kakaletris. “Whatever we do has got to be less frequent.”

Similarly, the clientele of Canoe and Jump will never get more than two emailings a year. The establishments are owned by Oliver Bonacini Restaurants, a company notoriously serious about guest experience. Their restaurants are the favourites of Toronto’s high-powered and influential elite. E-marketing is not the way to reach this group.

“Most of our marketing is done inside the restaurant itself, through strong service,” says Marketing Director Theresa Suraci. Once the guest leaves, she says, it’s up to word of mouth, which includes blog talk, she adds.

“That’s where I think the real power is electronically,” contends Suraci. Many review sites and foodie forums have been popping up over the years, and their following is growing, too. “Word of mouth used to mean that one guest would tell 15 friends,” says Suraci. “Now, your message is getting read by 350 people.”

Suraci and Kakaletris both monitor restaurant-review blogs like TasteTO.com, and the forums and messageboards connected to foodie sites eGullet.org and Chowhound.com. “It’s important to know what people really think,” Kakaletris says.

In Guelph, Ryan May started Restaurantica.com to review restaurants honestly. From its humble start four years ago, the site currently lists 350,000 restaurants in North America. The key features are that you can search your city according to style of cuisines and type of restaurant [café, family, fine dining]. Because the review also provides a rating, on a scale of one to 10, searches can also be done according to rating.

Menu Palace is another popular hub that also includes caterers, banqueting, nightclubs and hotels. “A directory provides a restaurant with a pro-active audience,” says President Gary Lipovetsky. “It’s qualified traffic,” he says, because the visitor is actively looking to book something in the very near future.

Many independent restaurateurs believe that it’s important to be listed with these two hubs because of their size, reach and popularity, but some find it difficult to gauge their impact on sales. In response, Lipovetsky recently developed “call tracking” as a way to show how he converts e-visits to in-restaurant sales. He gives his customer a special phone number. When a visitor to Menu Palace calls the number, the restaurant knows conclusively that the inquiry or reservation came via that site. Lipovetsky has already signed up several Toronto restaurateurs for the “call tracking” features.

In smaller centres, independent restaurants are putting individual twists on the kind of e-marketing that works best for them.

In Hamilton, the 45-seat Boo’s Bistro has only been opened a year, “but word of mouth has been very good so far,” says chef-owner Vibulan “Boo” Aria. He cooked for a full house on the second Saturday in January, traditionally a hard time to fill seats.

Aria has only recently begun email marketing, sending gift certificates for birthdays, and congratulations cards for professional promotions. He says he can’t tell if his listing with two hub sites are bringing him any business. At the moment, he doesn’t want to do much more e-marketing, but “with more capital, I know I should spend to increase sales.”

Across town, 1010 Bistro has been open nearly six years and is fully integrated into an e-marketing program. “It’s the only way to go,” says co-owner Daniela Eelgrosso. She regularly buys ad space in the online versions of local magazines, as well as in the online version of several area phonebooks. Her web developer handles her email marketing, which she estimates has increased her business by 20 per cent.

In Windsor, chef-owner Marty Atkins has been running Bin 151 for three years. He has advertised his 100-seat restaurant in magazines and newspapers, “but what really works,” says Atkins, “is email marketing. I’m regularly increasing sales about 10 per cent, and I always sell out my cooking classes this way.” What hasn’t worked for Atkins is magazine advertising, which he no longer does.

Colin Foster has owned the Braywick Bistro in London, Ont., for six years. Until recently, Foster was with a hub site that gave him a single, static page. “I could control content, but that was it,” he complained. “There was no relationship [with the web company], no reservations, and at one point, they lost my domain name because they weren’t on top of things. What a nightmare.”

Last year Foster hired a professional to do a proper website, “and all of a sudden we understood where our visitors were coming from, where they’re going, what they’re interested in, what directs their navigation, and we were getting reservations through the site.” More and more, proprietors are analyzing their own web activity because reports are increasingly easy to understand.

Foster stopped advertising his month Chef’s Table promotion in print because or poor results. “When we email the offer, we sell out every time,” he says.

In Toronto’s midtown, Pallucci’s is a 100-seat restaurant owned by its chef, Neil Siomra. He had been using a bulk mailer, but they gave him formatting problems. “People were complaining that they couldn’t read the ad,” says Siomra. He signed up with Aweber, a popular mailing company that does subscription mailings exclusively (only to people who’ve put themselves on the list voluntarily). Siomra emailed his database of 500 to ask if they wanted to receive notices and special offers from the restaurant, and almost immediately, 120 said yes. With what Siomra feels is a true list, he began sending highly personalized messages. “Now I’m delivering content,” he says. “I can do, ‘Cooking Tips From Neil,’ or ‘How to cook calamari.’”

In Toronto’s theatre district, certain stretches of road are lined almost exclusively with restaurants, all of them wanting to capture the entertainment crowd’s business.
Fred Luk has been running independent restaurants in this neighbourhood since 1988. His restaurants have had websites as far back as 15 years ago.

In December, 2007, Luk collapsed the websites for his current two restaurants, The Red Tomato and Fred’s Not Here, because he signed on for new sites using Xpedite, a new hospitality software developed by JVS Web, in Toronto.

“I liked the features,” Luk says. “With most web providers, you can’t change menus on the fly, which I have to do a lot.” He adds that it was getting increasingly difficult to reach his web person. “We hear that again and again,” says Robert Lyall, JVS Web’s Director of New Business. “They’re not returning calls because they’re so busy, which is why we developed the software to be easy enough to be managed in-house.”

The software is a content management system that also allows Luk to post banner advertising and edit time-sensitive messages, like his cross-promotions with area hotels and theatres. The banners are templated in a number of layouts and can be personalized with easy-to-use design functions. Advertising can also be pre- and post-dated to automatically go up or come down on the site, which prevents the site from carrying the New Year’s Eve menu well into February.

Luk revels in the control he has to make site changes as needed. He does all his own marketing and manages a system of synergistic alliances as well as campaigns to produce new business. He calls his vision “micro,” because he concentrates on making the most of a market he is most likely able to influence – the neighbourhood.

“Print advertising doesn’t work,” says Luk. “The audience is too big,” but he will advertise in a neighbourhood paper, because the area’s condo boom has given him a new market to win.

For this, Luk used direct mail, which he does three times a year. A January campaign offered of a dish of brisket with risotto and a glass of shiraz for $20, when booked after 7:30 pm. Luk says the offer gets respondents to go directly to the site and book their reservation. Later, he’ll ask if they want to join his mailing list. According to Luk, 50 per cent say yes.”

His direct mail campaign may have brought in 800 reservations, but in the end, says Luk, “word of mouth is always the best.”