One of them just had the best August since before COVID. So busy he had to shut off third-party delivery because the kitchen couldn’t keep up. The other one is watching sales slide, seeing more empty tables than he can explain, and wondering if the neighborhood is just done going out.
Same town. Same menu prices. Same economy.
If everybody were struggling, you could blame the economy and go home. But everybody isn’t struggling. And that changes everything.
The Numbers Tell Half the Story
The National Restaurant Association reported that July was the 17th month out of the last 18 with a net decline in customer traffic. Forty-nine percent of operators reported lower traffic than the year before. Those are real numbers and they’re not pretty.
But numbers like that are averages. And averages hide the operators at both ends.
There are restaurants right now turning people away at the door. There are restaurants in the same zip code watching the lights flicker. The economy isn’t the variable that explains the difference. Something else is.
What the Busy Ones Are Doing Differently
I’ve worked with independent restaurant owners for nearly two decades. The ones who hold their ground and grow during hard stretches aren’t luckier than everybody else. They’re not in better locations. They don’t have better food, necessarily.
They do five things consistently that the struggling ones don’t.
They have a database and they use it. They know who their customers are. They have names, email addresses, phone numbers. When they need to fill seats on a slow Tuesday, they don’t pray they send a message. The difference between a restaurant with a five thousand person database and one with nobody in it is the difference between having a lever to pull and having nothing.
They stay top of mind without being annoying about it. Their customers hear from them regularly not just when there’s a crisis or a slow week. A weekly email. A social post that actually shows something real. A text to their best customers on a holiday weekend. Consistent, low-pressure contact that keeps the restaurant in the front of the mind when someone asks “where do you want to eat tonight?”
They have compelling reasons to come back built into every visit. Not just good food. A reason. A scratch-off card a customer takes home and can’t use until they return. A loyalty perk that rewards the third visit, not just the first. Something that turns one visit into a habit instead of a memory. How about:
The Red Envelope promotion: the #1 restaurant bounce back of all time.
They protect their reputation like it’s their most valuable asset. Because it is. Five-star reviews aren’t vanity they’re the reason a stranger chooses you over the place across the street that has the same menu and the same prices. One bad review left unanswered can cost you more than a week of slow traffic.
They don’t stop marketing when things get tight. This is the big one. The instinct when revenue dips is to cut expenses, and marketing feels like the obvious place to start. But the operators who come out the other side of a rough stretch are the ones who stayed visible while their competitors went quiet. When a competitor stops advertising, their customers don’t disappear they go somewhere else. Might as well be you.
The Thing You Can Control
Here’s what I want you to take from this.
You can’t fix the economy. You can’t control what’s happening in Washington, what grocery prices are doing, or whether your market is having a rough year. Those are real headwinds and pretending they don’t exist doesn’t help anybody.
But there’s a list of things you absolutely can control:
➡️ Your database.
➡️ Your marketing consistency.
➡️ The experience inside your four walls.
➡️ The system you have or don’t have for bringing people back after their first visit.
➡️ Your online reputation.
➡️ The offer you’re making to the people who already know and trust you.
The gap between the restaurant owner who had his best August since COVID and the one watching his sales slide isn’t luck. It’s that list.
One of them built systems. The other one hoped.
Hope isn’t a marketing strategy. But the good news is you don’t have to figure this out alone, and you don’t have to do it all at once.
Pick one thing on that list. Build it. Then pick the next one.
The owners who are winning right now started somewhere. Most of them started exactly
Getting customers through the door once is hard enough. The real money is getting them to come back.
That’s exactly what our Red Envelope No Peeking Promotion is designed to do. Customers receive a sealed envelope during their visit, but they can’t open it until they return during your redemption period.
Inside is a guaranteed prize.
It’s simple. It’s fun. And most importantly, it gives customers a reason to put your restaurant back on their calendar.
Michael Thibault
Known as “The Done For You Marketing Guy for Restaurants.” International Speaker on Restaurant Marketing. Published contributing author of 4 Marketing Books. Industry expert on Google Searches and Review Sites. Recovering Independent Restaurant Owner and Caterer of over 21 years. And, all-around good guy.
