Why chalkboards are a clever marketing tool.
Not all marketing or promotional strategies for your restaurant or cafe require a big investment in order for them to be successful. We can certainly get caught up in thinking that we need to have a budget for continuously printing the specials menu or updating promotional collateral for the tables.
Sometimes it's the old school methods that are the most effective.
Signs are one of the easiest ways a restaurant or cafe can grab a customer’s attention and nothing can beat a simple chalk sign to share the specials of the day!
Research suggests that 33% of Generation Z say that advertising usually (or always) causes them to try something new.
Chalkboard signs are a great way to boost business, they are trendy and fun but more than that, it gives the customer a feeling of fresh and seasonal produce straight to the plate. Use the boards to tell the story about your dishes of the day using descriptive content where you can, customer's want to know if something is 'homemade', 'locally sourced', 'fresh from the market' or 'hand selected by the chef'.
In order to avoid waste, the board can be utilised to up sell pre-prepared menu items that may not have been moving well for you, perhaps your chefs can change an ingredient or two to sell the dish?
It can also be a fantastic opportunity for your chef's to trial new dishes that you want to add to your future menus. Ask your floor team to gather feedback from the customers that order these items and use this process to engineer your new menu.
You can track your chalkboard sign success through your Point of Sale (POS) system, analyse sales trends over time to identify your top-selling items.
Such a simple marketing tool can have quite the positive impact on your revenue with very little effort and cost.