79 - Restaurant Marketing Lessons from Asia

Firstly, make sure you check you Google My Business account for your Restaurant.  Incorrect information could be costing you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars! We talk about Jamie's Italian.  A restaurant chain over $100 million in debt with stories of poor food, poor team culture and poor experiences for diner's.  A Sydney Jamie's Italian was filmed using packet Gnocci when they advertise making their own pasta.  I am not a food lawyer, and technically, yes gnocchi is not pasta, but it highlights some of the concerns about the chain.  Jamie Oliver has done an amazing amount of work, particularly with school kids, to improve the diet of millions of people and to try and limit the power of food and drink manufacturers who create unhealthy food, but it looks like a licensing deal for his name.  Building scale and keeping the quality is very difficult, it comes done to leadership and procedures. We went to Lagnaa Bare Foot Dining.  This is a great Indian Restaurant in Singapore.  Chef Kaesavan has done an amazing job with the menu and the experience that he creates.  A lot of effort has gone into crafting the menu which does a great job of telling the story of his food. The experience is around the bare foot dining, which you need to ask for.  Off menu secret items and experiences are a great way of making people feel like they are in the in crowd and everyone wants to be in the in crowd!  The menu highlights child friendly food and has a heat rating for the hot dishes, with special events for those who love their food really hot. Bailey's Galub Jamun! Everyone should go there and check out how Chef Kaesavan has put together such a great experience. We went to Port Klang in Malaysia.  There was one restaurant on Google we liked the look of, tragically it had closed, so we wandered around looking for authentic Malay food.  There were a few restaurants, but none that were tourist friendly and had put in any work to attract walk ins.  We ended up having some epic Japanese food. Beard Papa - this is a chain that does the 'World's best cream puffs'.  These were a favourite with the kids (young and old) and would be the perfect addition to many restaurants desserts menu, looking for something tasting and I think probably high margin. Cow Dung Tarts in Malasia - they looked great, but I am not sure how keen I am to get more cow dung in my diet! :) For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes.  It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools  to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page.  We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools.  Our free booking tool has taken over $25,000,000 in seats booked.