The biggest sales opportunity in your restaurant is sitting at table 12

Did you know you’re likely ignoring your best customers every week with your marketing?

Specifically, the ONLY marketing you control is your outbound emails and text messages.

The backbone of your marketing plan is your email and text database, yet 90% of your customers aren’t in it.

WHY? Because you’ve never gathered their data from them.

The best time to start would have been a while ago, but the 2nd best time is today.

And the best place to start is the easiest: inside your 4 walls.  

Think about the effort it takes for someone to choose your spot for lunch:

  • They chose you over the competition.

  • They drove to your location.

  • They walked through your doors.

  • They ordered food.

  • They handed you their credit card.

That’s trust. That’s the intent. That’s an opportunity.

And 90% of restaurants completely waste it.

The Problem: “How are you doing?”

Most in-store conversations sound like this:

“How are you doing?”

You don’t care how they’re doing.
And they know you don’t care how they’re doing.

Instead, here’s what should be happening:

“Have you been here before?”
“Are you in our VIP program?”
“Want a free pizza on your next visit?”

That’s how you build a database. Because here’s the truth:

The easiest way to grow sales in 2026 is not finding new customers.
It’s getting your current customers to come back more often and spend more.

And you can’t do that without their data.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

One pizza client of ours was adding about 60–80 people a month to their loyalty program.

Not bad… but not great.

Then they made one change: Every employee asked every customer, every time.

Database growth grew by 30%.

And what happened next?

Their loyalty sales jumped from about $23,000 a month to over $31,000 a month inside that loyalty program.

Not because of better pizza. But, because of better systems. They simply increased the # of members by ASKING!

The Simple Fix

  1. Script the conversation.

  2. Make it mandatory.

  3. Tie it to tech that captures data.

  4. Incentivize your team to execute it.

They don’t forget to wear gloves. They don’t forget to wash their hands. And they shouldn’t forget to ask for the data.

Because every customer that leaves without joining your database is future revenue walking out the door.


Final Thought

You can’t outspend Chipotle. You can’t out-footprint the chains.

But you can out-execute them inside your four walls.

The next time someone orders a large pepperoni, ask yourself:

Did I just complete a transaction? Or did I build a relationship?

That answer will determine whether your sales are flat next year… or up 10-20%.

Let’s get to work.

 

– MP

MP’s Minute – Increase Your Sales For FREE

Here are 3 simple steps to building a brand and sales funnel for your restaurant that will make you UNTOUCHABLE within 24 months.

Step 1 – Don’t be a M.I.N.O in your community 

  • Member In Name Only – Stop simply existing as a business and become a local legend.

Step 2 – Tell Stories

  • No one needs to see your freaking food every day, but they’d love to hear about the local girls’ basketball team making waves.

Step 3 – HELP OTHERS

  • Local teams, nonprofits, and other business owners need help selling their products…SO HELP THEM!

Now, here is the copy and paste strategy to do this. 

This is Matt Plapp’s DREAM 23

The process is simple: you’re going to find 23 people in your community that have influence, and you’re going to help them tell their story, raise money, and sell their stuff…and you’re going to do all of this through your business Facebook page.

I stole this from the DREAM 100 strategy that’s popular in the business world, and of course put my MP Spin on it.

There are many paths to take this, but here are my two favorite

  • Coaches – Find 23 coaches in your local schools.

  • Business Owners – Find 23 business owners around your restaurant.

DREAM 23 COACHES PLAN

  • Find 23 Coaches.

  • Make a connection with them.

  • Ask them to be a guest on a Facebook video. A simple 5-10 minute video for them to talk about their team, their fundraiser, their upcoming season…WHATEVER THEY WANT!

  • Schedule these interviews over the next 52 weeks.

DREAM 23 BUSINESS OWNER PLAN

  • Find 23 Local Business Owners.

  • Make a connection with them.

  • Ask them to be a guest on a Facebook video.  A simple 5-10 minute video for them to talk about their business, what they sell, who they serve, a demo of their product…WHATEVER THEY WANT!

  • Schedule these interviews over the next 52 weeks.

So Matt, that’s only 46 weeks, I know! You’ll have some one-offs come up, and holidays will get in the way, but this will give you one year of content.

When you post these videos, you’ll invite the business/team/school to collaborate on them. You’ll also tag them and include links in the post to support them.  

The goal is simple: to get one piece of video content on your page every week that’s not about you. A video that’s engaging, tells a story, and helps someone else.  

AND GUESS what, there are many ways to do this to fit your style. In fact, here are two guys who do a great job of it.

  • Bravo Burrito – In this video, owner Mike Lardy is using his personal account to hype up an event, CLICK HERE to watch. He then shared this on his business Facebook page.

  • Stuff’D Steaks & Hoagies – I don’t know this owner, but he does exactly what YOU ALL SHOULD DO! CLICK HERE to check out one of his videos; he’s legit one of my favorites. 

There you go, now get to it.

Get active, REALLY active in your community, tell the stories of those around you, and HELP THEM OUT!


-MP 👊

 

 

Today’s book and song…

📚 Big Moeny Energy – Ryan Serhant 

🎵BRING EM OUT – T.I. – Get out in your community and BRING EM OUT!

MP’s Minute – Focus, A Singular Focus

Focus

A Singular Focus

As a small business owner, I don’t think a single day goes by that we don’t have MANY decisions to make, many hats to wear, and too many problems to fix. 

This is why today’s topic is difficult to address.

SINGULAR FOCUS

One of the most trusted entrepreneurs I follow is Alex Hormozi. A few months ago, when I was at his office, he covered this topic and was adamant that the only way we have to fix our problems is to FOCUS on them. In fact, we ignore everything else and ONLY focus on that.  

Alex spoke about looking at your business, figuring out your biggest issue, and then 100% focusing on that  

An example he used was comparing a dumpster fire to a kitchen fire.

If there’s a dumpster in your backyard, it’s not a big deal; it’s very unlikely to burn down the house.

But if you have a kitchen fire, that’s an issue that will burn down the house.

When we look at our businesses, we have to figure out what our kitchen fire is. What’s the ONE massive issue that if we fixed, it would make the dumpster fires even less important?

For most of us, it’s revenue. The old saying is “money solves most business issues.”

When you look at your restaurant today, if you had 23% higher sales, would that solve the biggest problem in your business today?

And if so, what would it look like for you to only focus on that? Do you have the management team in place to allow you to ignore the dumpster fires and focus on that ONE BIG issue?

Ask yourself, what is the ONLY item you should be FOCUSED on, and what would happen to your business if you fixed that ASAP?

 

-MP out👊

 

Today’s book and song…

📚Deep Work by Cal Newport

🎵Right Now – Van Halen

MP’s Minute – Restaurant Marketing Audit

📈 Impromptu Marketing Audit

Yesterday I had a meeting with a new client, and I did what I’ll do from time to time: a deep dive into everything I could find online with regards to their restaurant’s marketing. Basically, I did a deeper version of our Attention Audit, linked at the end of this email.

I did this because I knew the owner would be receptive to the feedback, and to be honest, I enjoy going down these rabbit holes.

Below is what I found: good, bad, and great.

🧠 Google Reviews

  • FIRE responses 🔥 I rarely see custom, detailed replies like this. Every review response was 3-4 sentences written 100% for that review and not a “copy and paste” reply. What they mentioned in the review was incorporated into the responses, and extra touches were added to make these review replies among the best I’ve ever seen. The owner told me that he handles this task himself.

My only suggestion was to sprinkle in some keywords, like the city/region, into the replies for local SEO punch.

🌐 Website & Data Capture

  • No menu on homepage. They are using only the external online ordering link. This hurts your website’s SEO (being found on the internet) and doesn’t give customers who are not ordering a place to browse.

  • Ditch the “newsletter” label on the email capture. Consumers don’t want a “Newsletter” from a restaurant; name it something fun like “Brew News.”


✉️ Email Game

  • Food pics are taken from too far away. I had to pinch in and zoom to see what the items were. Get really close and make people HUNGRY

  • Great send frequency. For the past 4 months that I’ve been on their email list, I’ve gotten a longer, more in-depth email on the 1st of the month, and then mid-month, I get a 1-off email about a specific event with a CTA.

📱 Social Media

  • NEED videos! They did a few awesome reels in the Summer, then stopped. Facebook and Instagram are meant to be social, and there’s nothing more social than you and your team showing up on video to tell stories, have fun, and show the people WHO the players are in the restaurant. 

  • Facebook Post Suggestion – They had a great event and catering post, but it was missing a DIGITAL CTA. It said “call us” instead of putting a link in the post body.  That link getting clicked helps the Facebook algorithm find more customers to click it. You can also make the first comment on the post a CTA link.

  • This is a first: I had to yell at a restaurant to actually post FOOD content. This is probably the first time that’s ever happened; it’s the other way around. I’m telling you to STOP POSTING FOOD EVERY DAY. But they had only made 2 posts in 5 months with food, WILD! Your customers need food porn! They had solid content, but it leaned too far one way. My suggestion is a posting schedule. Have a theme for every day, like:

    • Monday = Menu Monday – Feature a menu item by showing how it’s made ON VIDEO.

    • Tuesday = Tap Tuesday – Showcare a beer you have on tap

    • Wednesday = Wacky Wednesday – Do a contest, have fun, give people a reason to comment

    • Thursday = Thirsty Thursday – Give customers a promo

    • Friday = Community Spotlight – Highlight an event or business in your area

Social media is meant to be SOCIAL! So stop hiding behind graphics made for direct mail.  Create content that gets customers’ attention, tells stories, and gains their engagement.

📈 IN CLOSING

Click below and see how you score on the audit, and then have a friend who knows marketing give you THEIR opinion on what they see. Heck, I’ll do one for you if you’d like. Just reply to this email

https://business.americasbestrestaurants.com/attention-audit

 

– MP

 

📚 Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

🎵 Blue Train by John Coltrane