So, a new restaurant just opened up across the street, what should you do?

This just happened a few minutes from my house and I can already hear the frantic conversations happening inside during staff meetings.  

First, accept that the new spot will kick your butt the next 90 days and they are going to steal some of your customers short term, or maybe long term if you let them.  But there are a lot of proactive things you can do to make sure the impact is much less than it will be, in no particular order.

First – If this new spot has long lines, and you don’t, have a sign you can place out front during these times that says “Current Wait Time = Zero Minutes 🙂 “

Second – Use social media ads to target people currently within 1 mile of your restaurant and put some DELISH looking video ads in front of the people during their long wait at the new spot.

Third – Finally get off you butt and create a customer VIP program that forces everyone in your region to give you their contact information.

Forth – Get way more active in your community.  DO NOT let this new kid on the block jack the high school crowd you’ve nurtured for the past 10 years.

Fifth – Read blog post “Day 69” and do everything I told the new restaurant to do 🙂. Just click the text before this sentence and read away.

Sixth – Last but not least, don’t sweat it.  You can only control YOU and them brining more traffic to your area can’t hurt.

Seventh – I lied, the prior tip wasn’t the last one.  As I was typing that I thought “what if their restaurant looks like shit?”  So the real last tip is to have 3 friends look at your spot from the street and give you tips on what you’re not seeing. Spruce up the front of your restaurant, fix your mulch beds (maybe actually mulch), pull some weeds, refresh your sign and get rid of the banner that’s been up for 5 years!  There’s a very good chance you have changes to make and with this increased traffic you don’t want people saying “look at that dump” because you’re next to a brand new spot.