It’s common for newly opened restaurants to experience the hype of being the “newest craze”.

It’s also common for restaurants past their “opening hype” stage to feel the decline of customers, leading them to ask out of curiosity and desperation, “where is everybody?!”

In my 12 years in the restaurant business, I’ve seen this happen in all of our restaurants and restaurants owned by other people. Opening hype is real, but when the lean days come, you’ll be scratching your head wondering where have all the customers gone.

Like many who experience this, I have also gone through the stage of thinking that our regulars aren’t returning enough times. In a way, I must confirm that’s true, but if you’re only counting on your regular customers to sustain your business, that won’t do you much good. I, for one, am a restaurant customer who won’t be eating at the same place within a couple of weeks. Sometimes, it takes me months before I get to return to a restaurant that I’ve been to before. It’s just how my brain is wired when it comes to deciding where to eat. I know I’m not the only one who thinks like this and chances are, a lot of your customers think this way as well. So, if you’re counting on your regulars, you’ll need some tough luck to find someone who will be willing to spend money on your business every other day or every other week.

What am I trying to say here?

Think outside of your existing customer base. You need to be working on your marketing strategies daily to attract new customers who will later on become your regulars. In the odd days when all of your regular diners decide to eat somewhere else, first timers that you attract with your marketing campaign will fill the void.

Trust me, even if you have your strong days today and see hundreds of people come in within a week, there are still thousands more who have not heard of your brand. It’s those untapped eyes, ears, and palates that you have to work on attracting. Of course you have to work to retain your current customer base’s loyalty but, you have to put extra effort into widening your customer base as well.

That’s the tricky part. Not everyone has the expertise or the budget to launch a marketing campaign and sustain it. As for the “HOW’s”, I’ll detail that in a later blog if I have the time and patience to write. For anything else, feel free to contact me through this blog site.