---

Guest post by: Brandon O'Dell Become an Author

Tweet

---

---

How to make sure your products will sell

Pretty confusing main title, isn't it? I'll bet you're wondering exactly what I'm talking about.

Along with the other biggest mistakes restaurants owners make, offering customers what the owner thinks is good, instead of what the customer thinks is good, is a surefire way to lose money in the restaurant business.

Here's the scenario I've seen a dozen times.

Young couple sells their house and moves to a new city
New city doesn't have restaurants offering their favorite foods from previous city
Couple decides to leverage all their assets and open a restaurant selling the fantastic food from their last city that they know everyone will love if they would just try it
Couple doesn't realize the complexity of the restaurant business, and opens up underfunded and underexperienced
No one comes to restaurant, and couple blames their vendors, their employees, their landlord and their customers for their failure
Couple loses their restaurant, still owes $100,000 to the bank, loses their home which they used as collateral for the loan, owes $500,000 for the next 10 years of the restaurant lease, files bankruptcy and spends the next 20 years paying off their debt
Pretty sad scenario, isn't it? It's very common though. As a matter of fact, failure in the restaurant business is more common than success. Studies from Cornell University, Michigan State University and Ohio State University have found that around 60% of new restaurants fail around the three year mark. Between the 5th and 10th year, closer to 70% fail. While that is no where near the long-rumored 90-% failure rate that has been unsubstantially perpetuated for years, it's still playing against the odds.

Now you're supposed to ask, "How do I beat the odds?". I'm glad you asked, and I'm going to help you past the first hurdle, and a common mistake, giving customers what YOU want, instead of what they want. Restaurant owners are notoriously egotistical. Sorry if I'm offending anyone, but it's true. I've been this same way myself. Owners have the bad habit of projecting their own tastes on their public. They think because they believe something is delicious, that everyone else will too. Some of them are right. Many of them have eclectic tastes, and find themselves to be wrong though.

Our egos tell us that if we like something, it must be good. If we really like something, and we believe ourselves to be very knowledgable about that something, then it must be great, and will make us millions if we bring it to people who haven't had it before.

The fatal flaw with this reasoning is that people who haven't had something before will not have a craving for that something. There will be no demand for that something. So, while rotisserie fired Peking Duck may have been a hot ticket in your eclectic little community in San Francisco, that doesn't mean it will be all the rage when you move to Phoenix. I know what you're thinking, "You obviously haven't tried Peking Duck, if you had, you would love it."

You may be right. Your favorite food from your last home may be fantastic. It could possibly even spurn a following in a new community, and support a restaurant, once everyone develops a taste for it. There is the kicker. How can people have a taste for something they haven't had? They can't. You can't build a following for a fantastic new dish or type of food in an area where people don't crave that food. At least not without having a huge marketing budget to give free food to ten times the people you need to sustain your business. Until someone knows what they are missing, they can't miss it, and they won't crave it.

The moral to my point is this. Don't let your emotions and your ego decide what you are going to offer your guests. You may think something is the greatest dish, or type of food, in the world, but if the people you are trying to sell it to don't know about it, it's not going to sell. Give your customers something they already want. If you don't know, conduct a survey. Ask them if they know about a particular food, if they would go to a restaurant just to get it, how far they would drive for it, and what they would pay. Let your customers determine what you are going to offer them.

Don't give your customers what you want, give them what they want.

Related Articles

  What is the best way to develop my sales skills?
  How can you make more of your customers open your emails?
  Contribution
  Profitable Online Business Ideas and the Recession Part 2
  Know your magic numbers
  More crazy customers!
  Can you afford to make your email marketing more targeted? Can you afford not to?
  Which Social Media Tool?
  Social Networking or Social Distraction
  Old Gus and his pump
  How to generate referrals
  Get better results from email newsletters and promotional emails
  Are you Hard, Scrambled or Soft?
  Are you a Star?
  Tips for selling in hyper competitive markets
  Spam: You probably hate it but can you define it?
  Find your Focus
  Hacking Facebook Password with the help of free hacker tools for everyone
  How do I find a passionate and purposeful mentor?
  Can you use webmail for email marketing?

Related Forum Posts

Re: Do Your Prospects / Customers Trust You?
Re: Managing Your Brand
Re: Starting customized giftware...
How to develop sales contacts?
Re: How to Promote Your Blog – The Definitive Guide to Promoting

Share this article. Fund someone's dream.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Presenting Yourself With Impact at Work

The Priorities Game

Marketing Blogs - What You Should Know

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.