Sorry, but not sorry, for the title of today’s blog. 

I’ve been at this game since 1999, and I’ve heard it too many times: “We can’t afford it right now.” Unfortunately, the outcome is almost always the same: OUT OF BUSINESS!

This is the topic of today’s podcast, and there’s more context there, but I’ll give you a little here as well.

A restaurant we work with was bought recently, and the message above is from the new owners regarding continuing our service. Now, to put this in perspective, their revenue accounts for about .00002 % of our company revenue, so I’m not salty about losing a client.  I could care less about losing that revenue; it’s insignificant.  My anger is rooted in the fact that this small business owner, a new one, is making a grave mistake.  The few hundred dollars per month that,’ “is not in the budget” sales attached to it of $100,000.  

My anger, or as you can see in the emoji above, crying, is due to watching another restaurant owner make a terrible business decision.  

I always compare fitness and marketing because they are so similar concerning their lifespan.

I can’t tell you how many friends of mine tell me they are “too busy” to go to the gym and eat right. Meanwhile, every day that goes by with them ignoring taking care of themselves is THEM contributing to their death.  You can almost see the counter above their head, a chalkboard with lines being marked off each day. Grim, right?

Well, this is the same thing with your marketing.  

This conversation plays out for me and my team daily, hundreds of times per month, thousands of times yearly.  Restaurant owners who signed their names to loans and personal guarantees, borrowed against their 401K, and stressed out their spouses.  So, with all of that on the line, why in the hell are you being cheap on the only way you’re going to survive, MARKETING?

Over the past ten years of my company working exclusively with restaurants, here are the two scenarios I see from the owners who say, “It’s not in the budget for us right now.”

1st – They are married to the restaurant.  They become employee #1 and work their asses off seven days per week.  They barely pay themselves, and personal debt stacks up while they wait for the restaurant to turn that corner. 

2nd – They go out of business.  

I wish I had better news for you, but when you fail to put oil in a car engine, it will eventually LOCK UP, and your car will stop running.  Marketing and advertising are the oil your restaurant’s engine needs.  

Another part that pisses me off in these instances is the banks or prior owners who let this happen.  

If a bank gives someone a loan to buy a restaurant, they should understand that the loan obligation will eat away at the profit the prior owner enjoyed, plus the prior owner had MANY years before chains filled the market to build a nest egg. 

And if the prior owner self-finances this, which happens many times, they should realize the same thing.  THEY are handing over a business that’s PAST it’s prime, and not the new owners are taking what small profits that were there and paying the prior owners.  

In both instances, they are partially responsible for the failure these restaurants are about to have.   

So if you want to succeed, you better not BE A CHEAP ASS when it comes to marketing.  If you don’t want to end up like #1 or #2 above, you better invest in marketing. Otherwise, you’re simply marketing lines of the chalkboard and counting down the days. 

And, of course, this was today’s podcast topic, too. CLICK HERE to listen to episode 693 of Restaurant Marketing Secrets

P.S. The crying emoji is ME. Because every time I have these conversations, a little piece of my marketing heart dies 🙁