O'Dell Restaurant Consulting Blog

It’s common for startup restaurants to budget an initial 10% of their sales to go toward marketing in the first few months. If no one knows who you are, it can take some $’s to get known.
After that, it’s more common to see 2-4% of your sales being directed toward marketing. As far as how [...]

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See “Unique selling points – vol. 1
I hear all the time from owners and operators that companies like Applebee’s are successful because of their big advertising budgets. I say “bull”. Applebee’s, for example, is successful because of it’s branding. It’s the effectiveness of their marketing that gives them their competitive advantage, not the number of [...]

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Communication. In one form or another, it may be the most important thing that happens within a restaurant. Just like your employees, your customers need to know what is going on in your business. How do you communicate with them?
If there is one thing I try to get across to every business owner, it’s that [...]

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Excerpt from a forum post to an Indian restaurant owner: 
A unique selling point stays away from claims about “better food” and “better service”. Those are minimum expectations of your customers, not reasons to choose you over your competition. Sure, you may be able to get that very small market of people looking for Indian food by [...]

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