Food is Marketing – So Start Giving It Away

Many people in business are afraid of the marketing game. Call them introverted or shy, but once they are given the keys to their business, a very small percentage of business owners embrace the kiss babies and shake hands approach. A very small percentage are actually comfortable spending marketing dollars on their business, too. Thus, for many brands, marketing is the biggest obstacle to overcome for business leadership teams.

If marketing is the number of challenge, then it is ultimately up to brands to help solve this issue. For food brands, there is a great opportunity in the simplicity of marketing with food – giving it away. Yet, very few franchisees believe in this practice, and rarely is food used as a true marketing opportunity – outside of friends and family, grand openings and the rare occasion.

If I owned marketing for a restaurant franchise, here are some things I would try with my product – maintaining the belief that giving away food can be better than discounting product:

Cost Engineering: In order to clearly understand my flexibility in giving away product, I would evaluate my menu, top to bottom, to figure out what items are the highest food cost to the lowest food cost; and then, which products move the most to the ones that move the least. By understanding your product P&L, you can figure out how much flexibility you will have with your marketing through product.

Pay What You Want Day: Brands, forever, have proven that charitable contributions can create good will and a sense of community for a brand. Jersey Mike’s is a great example of this. The more the community sees you as not just another business, the better your sales will be. A pay what you want day can be a great way to drive proceeds (minus your food cost) for a local charity. If I were running marketing for a brand, I would do this across the board on a single day, own it, and give the brand an opportunity to reintroduce itself to the community for little cost and a ton of exposure. While giving a check for $50 to charity may not produce great public relations for you locally, a “pay what you want day” certainly has the bones to do so.

Review Currency: We have seen that reviews can make or break a business. When they are bad, if corrected, they can give a business owner tremendous data on their business. When they are good, it can do the same. I would host a review day where you don’t have to pay for your meal if you post a review and/or post your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat. Influencer marketing is all the rage – this creates true influencer marketing by having your guests promote their love for your brand.

Free Food for a Year for 50 Guests: Free food (52 items/1 per week) is a great way to create some buzz for a brand locally. This should be done for brand milestones along with grand openings. This creates a ton of buzz, and people love free food. The beauty of this program, if executed correctly, is that people don’t like to eat alone – thus, a free food item will encourage them to spend more and introduce friends to the brand.

Friends Eat Free: What a better way to drive more sales than to get your loyal customers to bring their friends and have them try the food too. Giving product away drives good will, and free always tastes better. The idea with friends eat free is that it will expand your customer base. Even if this new group aren’t heavy users, it will still drive others to think about your brand.

Own a Signature Goofy Day: Goofy days are a great opportunity to drive press, create a promotion and increase sales. Nearly every food brand has a national day connected to its core product (national pizza day, national burger day, national pretzel day). In the rare situation where a national goofy day has not been established, there is great news – it is creatable – meaning, you can just make it.

LTO Giveaway: LTOs are a great opportunity to give your food away for free – with a vision of increasing trial and thus, loyalty. Most LTOs are launched with pretty creative – but in today’s marketing world, that’s table stakes. Create a national day around your new items.

Regardless of what you do and how you do it, creating marketing events around food are low hanging opportunities to drive sales. In a world where people are often times afraid to market, this gives you, the lead of marketing, an opportunity to operationalize your food and leverage the process to drive sales.