Promotion of New Restaurant is one of top requirement for successful restaurant business.  It doesn’t matter how good a chef you are or how excellent your services are if people don’t know about your restaurant. It doesn’t matter the kind of restaurant you choose to run, you need to publicize it.

Promotion needs to happen fast because running a practically-empty establishment will quickly cause your costs to start spiraling out of control. You need to make some profits before that happens, so what can you do to get the word out? I have below 12 ways to promote a New Restaurant business.

Read also: 4 major challenges in running Restaurant Business in Nigeria

Firstly, you need to ensure you start a consistent marketing plan that you can easily build on. Keep record of how your first customers found out about you, so you know which methods of promotion will work best for you. Ensure you know your target customers, too, because different demographics will be easier to reach through certain channels. Here are some of ways to promote a new Restaurant you might want to start trying, right away.

Ways to promote a New Restaurant business

1.      Be the best in your location: One thing it’s important to get right is the look and feel of your new restaurant. If the aroma inside is attractive and you’re grabbing attention visually from passers-by, this will really help get you off the ground.

2.      Be sensitive to your surrounding and act fast: If something like event is going around your restaurant, it will have positive impact on your business. If more people are nearby for any specific reason, act fast and come up with a relevant promotion to draw them in.

3.      Offer discounts on plate of meal: People who are just starting out in the restaurant business are often scared with the idea of cutting down their prices, because they’re feel they’re at lost. However, you shouldn’t be afraid to temporarily slash down prices for promotions purpose, because getting your name out there is much more important to begin with.

4. Create and share flyers about your restaurant : Creating and sharing flyers about your new restaurant is an effective to promote a restaurant business. Nigerians will always want to try out a new restaurant when they discover one and flyer is one way to spread the message.

Read Also : Necessary Requirement for starting a restaurant business in Nigeria

5. Invite people for an opening ceremony of your new restaurant: When you invite people for opening ceremony of new restaurant they will help spread your business to the world.

6.     Start with a website for your restaurant: Your online presence is important at the early stage of your business, because digital marketing is cheaper than traditional alternatives. You will need a website to begin with, and this has to really capture your restaurant’s personality in a creative and professional way. It should also be optimized for local keyword searches so that people can find you on Google and other search engines.

7.     Build your social presence: Social media is mostly free to use, and you can generate a lot of publicity quickly with social media once you know who you are targeting. Reach out to influential users in your area and start building up a conversation on Twitter, and make sure people can check in and leave reviews for restaurant on Facebook. Someone needs to be monitoring your social channels to keep up conversations between your brand and your customers otherwise it will not yield a good result.

8. Promote your business on popular online community site like naijaonlinebiz.com: You can promote your business in an online community like naijaonlinebiz.com. With our over 5000 views per day; your new business will surely get exposure across potential customers.

9.     Gift certificates sale :One easy way to get extra sales from your customers is to offer gift cards for your restaurant. That way, when people say they’re going to recommend their friends visit your restaurant, you can encourage them to go one step further and buy their meal in advance. Most restaurants in car parks offer drivers gift certificates for bring in their passengers into their restaurant.

10. Sponsor local events: To get your name out there, sponsoring a one-off event or program like radio program will help you gain a lot more exposure and interest quickly. This creates a nice sense of familiarity and gets you networking with influencers locally.

11. Loyalty discounts: This is a very easy solution for getting the most out of customers who love your food. Keep them coming back with the promise of getting something for nothing after a certain number of visits. 

12. Offer Promotional tote bags: Giving out promotional tote bags is a promotional strategy you can adopt for promotion of restaurant.

In conclusion, if people don’t know about your new restaurant; you will practically soon be out of business. You need to promote your restaurant especially when it is newly started so that people can know about you. The above are 12 effective ways to promote a new restaurant business that you can tap into.