FuelNet presents a case study on how one growing business retained customers and landed new ones by tapping into one of the latest marketing trends:

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PROBLEM: Competition was taking a bite out of Michael Passalacqua’s restaurant sales, and the third-generation owner of Angelo’s had a lot on his plate. The restaurant’s once-thriving neighborhood in Washington, Pa., had gone downhill, and a mall with a 15-screen movie theater on the edge of town was drawing away customers. To make matters worse, within a matter of months, several chain restaurants, supported by national advertising and constant promotions, had opened in the area. “I knew the only way to compete was some sort of frequency marketing program,” Passalacqua says.

SOLUTION: The Fast Track program from the Restaurant Marketing Group (RMG) served up the software tools, manuals, and coaching Passalacqua needed to turn things around. “It’s a 90-day program that shows the owner how to improve the service cycle and use database marketing to individual customers and neighborhood businesses to make the restaurant stand out,” says Ron Wilkinson, president of RMG. Key to the program is the ProfitMax database management software, which owners use to offer customers incentives around birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays.

Effective database marketing is an important item on the Fast Track menu, and to make sure restaurateurs make the most of it, RMG offers one hour of coaching each week from an experienced industry professional. “Coaching on how to build sales and service is the most effective part of the program,” Wilkinson notes. “Each coach works with 100 different restaurants, so it’s a uniquely valuable opportunity to get input.”

RMG’s focused approach gave Passalacqua the tools to build a customer database, which in turn gave him the foundation to expand in a new location. “The database is crucial to my ‘four walls’ marketing approach because it keeps customers coming in,” he says. “At this point I have 28,000 names in my database and 6,000 on my email list. The chains are struggling, but I’m now able to do something different from what’s out there.”

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