Theatre – Page 31 – KRG Hospitality

March 17, 2023by krghospitality krghospitality No Comments

KRG Hospitality now Serving Midwest Region

KRG Hospitality adds Midwest Region

KRG HOSPITALITY NOW SERVING MIDWEST REGION

Toronto-based hospitality industry consulting firm with offices throughout Canada and the USA now serving the Midwest through Chicago office.

CHICAGO, IL (March 17, 2023)—Today, KRG Hospitality announces the addition of the Midwest region of the US to their North American service area. The team will operate out of an office in Chicago, Illinois. However, the agency will serve Midwest markets outside of Chicago as well.

KRG is excited to announce their presence in the region and their ability to serve clients effectively. The agency will offer the full suite of their proven hospitality solutions, including: hourly consulting and coaching; complete feasibility studies, fully customized concept plans; in-depth, focused business plans; project support and management; food and/or drink menu development and consulting; and personalized F&B education.

“I was born in Chicago and first entered the hospitality industry in the Northwest Suburbs. I got my first taste of nightlife in Chicago’s incredible bar and nightclub scene,” says David Klemt, partner and director of business development of KRG Hospitality. “Those experiences shaped my entire hospitality career trajectory. It will be an honor to serve the great people of the Midwest and bring their hospitality visions to life.”

“2023 is turning into quite the growth year for KRG, with the addition of team members Kim Richardson and Jared Boller, and now an exciting new market,” says Doug Radkey, KRG Hospitality founder, president, and project manager. “We see great opportunity in the Midwest, not only in Chicago, but many of the surrounding regions. The food, beverage, and hotel scene is incredibly strong, and we’re open to the challenge of not only helping launch new hospitality brands but helping transform existing brands scale and be successful in the new era ahead.”

KRG is ready to work with clients of all experience levels in the Midwest. The consulting agency’s suite of solutions serve new operators looking to open their first concept and veterans seeking a rebrand or expansion. From independent pizzerias and QSRs to multi-unit regional chains and boutique hotels, and everything in between, the KRG team is eager to take client visions and transform them into brick-and-mortar realities.

To schedule an introductory call to learn how the KRG Hospitality team serves clients, please follow this link.

About KRG Hospitality

KRG Hospitality is a storied and respected agency with proven success over the past decade, delivering exceptional and award-winning concepts throughout a variety of markets found within Canada, the United States, and abroad since 2009. Specializing in startups, KRG is known for originality and innovation, rejecting cookie-cutter approaches to client projects. The agency provides clients with a clear framework tailored to their specific projects, helping to realize their vision for a scalable, sustainable, profitable, memorable, and consistent business. Learn more at KRGHospitality.com. Connect with KRG Hospitality and the Bar Hacks podcast on social: KRG Twitter, Bar Hacks Twitter, KRG Media Twitter, KRG LinkedIn.

Image: Tobias Brunner from Pixabay

March 14, 2023by David Klemt David Klemt No Comments

SevenRooms Email Marketing Integration

SevenRooms Introduces Email Marketing Integration

by David Klemt

Today, SevenRooms announces a new marketing innovation that integrates with the platform’s Automated Email feature: Email Marketing.

This is more evidence of SevenRooms’ continued growth. The company began 2023 by adding their first-ever chief marketing officer. Just two months later, SevenRooms announced a new investor: Enlightened Hospitality Investments, spearheaded by Danny Meyer.

Additionally, offering this new tool to operators makes clear the platform’s intent to truly be an all-in-one operations solution. Email Marketing, for example, can replace third-party email services. Streamlining marketing makes it simpler for operators and their teams to ensure they keep guests engaged with their venue and brand.

And, of course, including effective tools within a single platform can lead to reduced costs and the relief of pain points. When systems are difficult to use, some operators are less inclined to want to actually use them. That’s a waste of valuable resources.

Combined with Automated Emails, SevenRooms Email Marketing gives more control over marketing to operators. Not only are emails triggered based on various tags, the emails can be customized fully. And, to ensure marketing runs smoothly for everyone, operators will have access to templates if customization isn’t necessarily in their wheelhouse.

You’ll find the SevenRooms Email Marketing press release in its entirety below.

SEVENROOMS EXPANDS MARKETING SUITE WITH INTEGRATED EMAIL MARKETING

New Email Marketing Tool Provides Key Data Insights and Revenue Potential for SevenRooms Clients

NEW YORK (March 14, 2023)—SevenRooms, a global guest experience and retention platform for the hospitality industry, has announced a new solution and expansion of its marketing suite for hospitality operators worldwide: Email Marketing. The product will work in conjunction with SevenRooms’ Automated Emails, a set of personalized, trigger-based emails sent to customers on behalf of the operator, to continue to engage guests once they’ve visited a venue.

Email Marketing enables SevenRooms customers to send one-time, customized marketing emails directly within the SevenRooms platform to give operators more control over the way they use their guest data. Having ownership of this guest data allows operators to build their brand through direct touchpoints with guests to drive loyalty and repeat visits. It also provides detailed insights into email performance with metrics that matter to their business, including showing the reservations, covers and revenue attributed to each email.

Email Marketing supports operators with a solution that is connected throughout a restaurant’s tech stack and removes the need to use third-party email service providers that create additional work for staff trying to manage email preferences across multiple systems. It is directly linked to the SevenRooms CRM and operating system giving operators full control over their messaging and who receives it by using Auto-tags or Client tags to segment marketing audiences. Additionally, operators using Email Marketing have the ability to create either fully customized emails with an easy-to-use visual editor or utilize curated templates.

The new product also enhances the experience for guests of SevenRooms customers by allowing them to stay in touch or up-to-date with their favorite venues, receive targeted messages and promotions, or simply control the venues from which they receive marketing. Leveraging Email Marketing, restaurants can use their guest data to tee up relevant, customized emails. For example, sending guests who have purchased wine at least five times an invite to a dinner with their sommelier, or excluding guests with shellfish allergies from an email about their annual clambake.

“SevenRooms Email Marketing product provides restaurants with functionality that simply does not exist in the email marketing platforms that restaurants traditionally use,” said Allison Page, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at SevenRooms. “We enable restaurant marketers to leverage their robust SevenRooms guest database to quickly and easily build targeted campaign segments, eliminating the need to manually export and import mailing lists between systems. While other email service providers promise revenue, SevenRooms can prove it with accurate data on the revenue generated by each campaign to truly measure email marketing performance.”

“The combination of SevenRooms’ Email Marketing and Automated Emails makes guests feel very connected with us,” said Alyssa Fenu, Sales & Marketing Manager at Mango’s Tropical Café. “Being able to choose who our emails are going to — a specific customer segment or broadcasting to our whole database — makes the process a lot simpler. And it’s super easy to understand how many people opened our emails, how many people actually made a reservation, and how much money we’re making because it’s all in one place.”

For more information about SevenRooms and its services, please visit www.sevenrooms.com.

About SevenRooms

SevenRooms is a guest experience and retention platform that helps hospitality operators create exceptional experiences that drive revenue and repeat business. Trusted by thousands of hospitality operators around the world, SevenRooms powers tens of millions of guest experiences each month across both on- and off-premises. From neighborhood restaurants and bars to international, multi-concept hospitality groups, SevenRooms is transforming the industry by empowering operators to take back control of their businesses to build direct guest relationships, deliver exceptional experiences and drive more visits and orders, more often. The full suite of products includes reservation, waitlist and table management, online ordering, mobile order & pay, review aggregation and marketing automation. Founded in 2011 and venture-backed by Amazon, Comcast Ventures, PSG and Highgate Ventures, SevenRooms has dining, hotel F&B, nightlife and entertainment clients globally, including: MGM Resorts International, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Wynn Resorts, Jumeirah Group, Wolfgang Puck, Michael Mina, Bloomin’ Brands, Giordano’s, LDV Hospitality, Zuma, Australian Venue Company, Altamarea Group, AELTC, The Wolseley Hospitality Group, Dishoom, Live Nation and Topgolf. www.sevenrooms.com

Image: Brett Garwood on Unsplash

March 10, 2023by David Klemt David Klemt No Comments

Reduce Discounts, Increase Profits

Reduce Discounts, Increase Profits

by David Klemt

There’s reason to be optimistic about generating revenue this year but operators must also be savvy if they want to boost their bottom lines.

Put another way, the growth some industry organizations and experts are predicting isn’t just going to occur. We’re optimistic about 2023 as well, but it’s going to take hard work and shrewdness.

As we know now, the National Restaurant Association is forecasting massive sales this year. In fact, the NRA projects the foodservice industry will generate $997 billion in sales. That’s nearly a trillion dollars just from the foodservice space.

Clearly, that’s a big number. It’s also $60 billion more in sales than the industry generated in 2022. That’s impressive in and of itself, surpassing the 2022 sales forecast by almost $40 billion.

Okay, so those are a lot of big numbers. Should foodservice outperform the forecast again, the industry will pass the trillion-dollar mark. And I know every owner and operator, be they independent, chain or franchisee, wants a healthy share.

However, impressive as those numbers are, they’re just that: numbers. Operators will still have to do the work to increase traffic; convert first-timers to repeat guests; and increase revenue. Fail in those tasks and there’s no reason to expect profits to rise.

It’s math, after all, not magic.

One way operators can increase revenue and profits is to offer fewer discounts. Really, this isn’t an incredible concept: If more guests pay full price, operators see more profits.

Real-world Example

Costs are up nearly across the board, and it can be tempting to offer discounts in an attempt to increase traffic. However, one group has shown over the past couple of years that discounts don’t need to be an operator’s go-to traffic- and sales-boosting tactic.

Carrols Restaurant Group is a Burger King franchisee. According to Restaurant Business, the group operates more than 1,000 Burger King restaurants. So, they operate approximately one out of every seven Burger Kings in the US.

Last quarter, Carrols managed to generate more than $14 million in free-flow cash. That’s higher performance than the group has seen in the past couple of years.

A significant factor for Carrols and Burger King is backing off of discounting. Again, this isn’t groundbreaking but it’s still noteworthy. A brand that once was reliant on discounting is now backing off that model and seeing dividends.

Of course, guest perception, the guest experience, and marketing play a role. Guests must still feel they’re getting value for the dollars they spend. They must also feel that their experience, from QSR to full-service, shows that they’re valued by the restaurant. And the marketing messaging must truly speak to a brand’s guest base and bring them through the doors to spend their money.

Premiumization over Discounts

The bottom line for an operator’s bottom line is this: If prices are continually discounted, that lower price is now the actual price. At least, a discounted price is now the normal price in the eyes of guests.

In other words, an operator who discounts all the time is training their guests to only visit and buy items when prices are lower than usual.

The superior option? Offering premium LTOs that speak to a brand’s base and tempt them to spend more. LTOs don’t need to come with discounted prices. In fact, they should be treated as premium promotions and command premium prices.

Create seasonal LTOs (in one concept’s case, inventing a fifth season), as an example, to generate buzz and increase traffic. Offer premium items at premium—but fair—prices to leverage the traffic, increase sales, and boost profits.

Another strategy that’s more effective than discounts? Building a brand with which guests resonate. Guests who relate to a brand tend to visit more often and support it with their dollars.

It’s tempting to discount. Don’t give in to temptation.

Image: Karolina Grabowska on Pexels