Last week, a restaurant owner told my team:
“I’m not giving away free food. That’s not how I run my business.”
I get it. On the surface, giving away a free pizza feels like you’re losing money.
But if that’s how you think, you’re missing the entire point of marketing.
You’re not losing a pizza. You’re buying a customer.
Let me walk you through this…
The foundation of your marketing plan is the ONLY marketing you 100% control, YOUR DATABASE
So, you must be willing to do whatever it takes to build your marketing database.
Because that’s where your sales growth comes from.
We do that by trading VALUE (a free pizza, app, dessert, etc.) in exchange for what actually matters: a customer’s contact info.
Once we have that, we can market to them through email, text, and Messenger (which, by the way, still has wild open rates and it’s FREE).
Here’s what that “free pizza” really does:
It helps you:
Get a new customer in the door
Bring a lost customer back
Encourage a frequent customer to come more often
Get any customer to try something new
That $2–$3 food cost? That’s not a loss, it’s the price of attention.
And attention is the gateway to long-term profit.
If you’re still resisting this strategy because “you don’t give away free food,” ask yourself:
What’s more valuable? A pizza that costs you $3…
Or a customer who visits 10+ times in the next year because you captured their data and followed up with intention?
I know my answer. Hell, I’d give away almost anything at ABR if it meant building a real relationship with a restaurant owner.
Because I’m not playing for today, I’m playing for the next 5 to 10 years.
If you want to build a restaurant that dominates, you need:
A plan to capture data A system to follow up The courage to look beyond today’s food cost
That’s what we do every day with restaurants across the country.
This week’s song: Africa by TOTO…hurry your customers are waiting for you 🙂
This week’s book: Vivid Vision by Cameron Herald
– MP OUT 
