Celebrate Milestones to Increase Sales + Create Buzz
independentrestaurantassocWe just sold our Juan Millionth Taco. That’s a lot of tacos. It took us 19 years to get there.
To let something like this pass without leveraging it to build your business would be a missed opportunity. Here’s the story of how we did it:
When we realized we were close to serving our 1,000,000th taco, we simply HAD to promote it.
We decided on a slogan – “Juan Millionth Taco, how many did you eat?” and developed a logo for the event. The prize was to be Free Tacos for a Year (translation: a $1,000 gift card) to the lucky person. We teased it with staff Tee-shirts social media posts, email marketing and in-store table tents and posters during the month it was going to happen. Pretty quickly, it became part of the conversation in the restaurant and community. I mean – that’s’ a BUNCH of tacos.
For the final week of the countdown, we promoted 3 straight days of Taco Tuesday in order to serve the “Juan Millionth Taco.” The result? A 25% increase over last year’s March and the busiest week ever.
Keys to using milestones to increase sales and create buzz:
- 1. It has to be a natural part of the restaurant – something in your restaurant’s current language.
- 2. Create a good story to promote it that includes suspense and anticipation.
- 3. Build it up and make it part of the conversation through 4 walls in-store marketing and social media
- 4. Use the event to promote reward program memberships in order “to get the most up-to-date” information.
- 5. A meaningful prize or award.
How can we continue to keep this in our conversation and make this milestone part of our restaurant language moving forward?
- 1. We’ve created a video commemorating the event and show it in our lobby loop.
- 2. We’ve created a sign to hang over the spot in the restaurant where the taco was served.
- 3. We’ve created a space in our entrance for our guests to see the press, photos and memorabilia from the event.
