You can’t go into a store, restaurant or bar, book a flight or hotel anymore without being offered free membership of their guest loyalty program. My wallet is now so thick with loyalty cards that I walk at a 45 degree angle to the ground, but at least I know I’m building points everywhere I go!

We’re all suckers for a deal and a loyalty card offers us that promise. The more we spend, the more we save. I think that grocery stores and supermarkets have perfected the system: points added at checkout, and then the choice of redeeming them on future purchases. Simple and effective.

My wife and I are traveling to Italy in August for my sister’s wedding and because Mrs. Bar Blogger travels to China twice a year with her job she builds up a lot of air miles very quickly. We decided to try and use these points to book a hotel in Venice during our trip and the nice people at Sheraton couldn’t have been nicer. We were treated like full paying guests, no question about black out dates and nothing but helpfulness all round and two nights in Venice to boot! Woo hoo!

But the flip side has been more my normal experience. I have experienced bar and restaurant servers that have turned their noses up at the mere suggestion that I would pay with my loyalty card or redeem an appetizer or bottle of wine for my considerable past patronage.

I have had hotels try everything they could do to not honor their promises of hotel night redemption and I’ve even seen bar owners say “I’m sorry, we don’t run that program anymore!”

So my questions to you are: Do you run a loyalty program? and if so, have you established the guidelines that the business and the staff must follow to get the most out of it? Is your customer benefitting from your program?

Think about the following points when setting up your program:

1. How easy is it for your customer to participate?
2. How easy is it for you to keep track of points earned and redeemed?
3. How well trained are your staff in all aspects of your program?
4. Are your staff taught to behave exactly the same way when handed a loyalty card as if they were handed cash?
5. How much will it cost you to run your program?
6. What steps have you taken to make your customer feel wowed and preferred?
7. If you were a customer, would you feel loved or hated by your program?

I recently interviewed Finbarr Malone, an Irish Restaurateur who was so sick and tired of poorly performing loyalty programs for his restaurant and bar that he had a program written specifically for his business with all the elements he needed to make it work for him.

Finbarr has 4 businesses in the hospitality arena and therefore understands the difficulties of business ownership and what it takes to make them work.

During our conversation, Finbarr explained

* How to setup a loyalty program in your business that will pay for itself instantly

* What you should NEVER do when implementing a loyalty system in your business.

* How to avoid rewarding lower spending customers at the expense of your best customers

You can listen to that full 30 minute interview with Finbarr together with 100s of tools to help manage your food & beverage business in our Online Community Right Now by Clicking Here

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Many bar owners steer away from offering more than a handful of quarter bottles of wine or the occasional wine by the glass due to lack of knowledge or experience with this drink of the Gods. However, ignoring the opportunities that wine offers your business means you could be turning away business without even knowing it.

One way to increase your customer numbers midweek or during the slow season is to host a wine tasting event. Now I know what most of you are saying: “We don’t know enough about wine to host a wine tasting”, or “I wouldn’t know where to begin…”!

But before you knock this idea on it’s head, consider the following:

1. A Wine Tasting Event allows you to create awareness in the community of your wine list and drinks menu. You may end up introducing new customers to menu items they never knew about before.

2. It allows you the opportunity to fill the bar with thirsty wine enthusiasts on nights where you would otherwise be quiet. Tuesdays or Wednesdays might suit to hold an event like this.

3. It positions you as an expert in the wine field and builds trust in you and your bar. If customers get a lot of value, the laws of reciprocity dictate that they will want to give something back, perhaps that means they’ll come back and spend more money or feel obliged to tell their friends about the bar. In any case, value never goes unnoticed.

4. It rewards existing customers with “something for nothing”. Don’t forget ablout the regulars who put money in your pocket every other night of the week. Get their “buy-in” too and they’ll appreciate feeling involved.

5. It can create a following of new customers keen to return again and again. What have you got to lose?

6. It can be sponsored by your wine suppliers and thus end up costing you nothing. New vendors trying to get your business will happily step up to the plate for this one. For the cost of a few bottles of wine, they might have your business for years!

With these benefits in mind, we have created the ultimate booklet to guide you through every step of the process from planning to execution and this is available in our Bar Owner’s Community and includes the following sections:

Introduction — Wine Tasting.
About Wine.
Different Types of Wine.
Production.
Uses of Wine.
Glassware.
About Wine Tasting and the Different Ways.
How to Taste Wine.
How to Host a Wine Tasting Event.
How to Serve Wine.
Conclusion.

By the end of this instantly downloadable ebooklet, you will be able to confidently host a successful wine tasting event and maybe even turn this opportunity into something that becomes a regular event for new and existing customers.

Click Here To Download

Cheers!

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A recent visit to the restroom in Barrel 44, Columbus, Ohio made me smile….

Although this is no laughing matter, I had to admire the owner’s take on the issue. What do you think?

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I received this question this week at http://thebarblogger.com/askbarry:

We run a very popular restaurant w/an 20 seat L-shaped bar and a service area at the end for servers lets the 3 bar tenders working any shift roam up & down with no assigned section nor one of the 3 designated for service exclusively.Sometimes the wait is long for servers and bar patrons/customers.Is it not sound business to assign them a section of the bar with responsibility for that area primarily?

Here are my thoughts on this:

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I came across this great idea this weekend whilst getting a well deserved fried American breakfast in our local diner.

What it is is a Digital Photo Frame that rotates between all of the diner’s different menu items while you pay at the cashier’s desk.

For under $40, you can do the same.  Make sure your photos are high quality, they transition quickly so that customers waiting get to see as many as possible and even add a little sign beside it that says: “Ask our staff what dishes are being shown” so that if something catches your customer’s eye, they’re prompted to ask about it.

Quick and easy!

I found this great digital photo frame on Amazon if you want to buy one for under $40.

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We got a question here at TheBarBlogger.com during the week asking us what lines of defense could be added to a bar to protect it from stock loss and one of the areas that the bar owner had not considered was how to account for complimentary/giveaway drinks.

Whatever your policy is (or isn’t…) regarding drink giveaways or discretionary drinks for customers, you need to establish a system that all staff members follow.

This quick video will show you how to establish that system today:

Need a Complimentary Drinks Log Template?

Download this together with 100s of other tools and templates ManageYourBar.com, my Bar Owner’s Toolkit. Click Here Now

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We’re getting more and more requests for ideas on how to increase business in these difficult times. One thing is for certain: The game has changed and it’s time to start thinking differently about how to grow your business. After all, doing the same thing over and over again without signs of growth is not going to keep you in business very long. These 10 Low Cost Ideas will help you get the ball rolling.

“Become a Bartender” Night
Make the most of the quiet nights by offering bartending classes. More suited to city center locations and areas of higher populations, running a bartending class could include showing “students” how to pour a pint, how to make certain cocktails, learn a little about serving wine etc. You could charge a small fee to cover the costs of all the drinks and the chances are that your “class” will stay afterward to enjoy a few more at full price!

Free Menu Tasting
Advertise a free menu tasting when introducing a new menu (or simply when you re-introduce your current menu…). Have taster size portions of your menu available on trays around the bar for a few hours and mingle with the customers getting feedback about the food while your bartenders keep the drinks flowing. Your regular customers will love it and you’ll introduce some new customers to your menu and bar, all for the cost of a few trays of food that’s already in your fridge.

Beer Tasting
Most of your beer drinking customers will be accustomed to their regular pint and won’t “chance” a different variety very often. Make it easy for them to broaden their horizons by hosting a beer tasting event. Include regional and microbrew varieties, especially those served by the bottle which will normally have a higher margin than your draught products. You might find that some of your customers will switch their allegiances to other varieties after the event and you will also have had the chance to bring new customers into the bar with this promotion.

Television Nights
Make the most of midweek by identifying a popular television show and making an event around it. Bring in popcorn (salty foods make people thirsty…), arrange the chairs like a living room around the tv, offer table service so the customers don’t have to leave their chair and make sure everyone can hear and see the television. Your bar could quickly become the place to go to see favorite tv shows.

Charity Events
Offer your bar up for a fundraiser or any event your local charity would like to host and throw in a few free trays of food and tea and coffee. Ask that your bar details be included on all of the charities literature so that you can benefit from the cross promotion. Choose the charity carefully so that you don’t end up hosting an underage childrens event in a bar at night. The bigger the charity, the more members likely to turn up and buy from the bar…

“Reeling in the Years” Nights
Bar Owners in Cork, Ireland have joined forces to create and run www.decadesfestivalcork.ie which means that on different nights during the festival, all pubs will have a theme for a past decade such as the 50s or 60s. On those nights all bar staff will dress in the attire of the era, music from that era will be played, the bars will be suitable decorated according to the decade. Bars outside of Cork could replicate this idea easily in their bar and encourage customers to get involved.

Running an off the wall sports tournament
Consider hiring a foozball table or air hockey table for a week and run a tournament for your customers. Ask your suppliers to donate a prize or two. Run the tournament midweek with the final at the weekend. The more unusual the better!

Beverage Familiarization Week
Team up with suppliers to run events around their particular line of drinks. For a certain week, create cocktail specials, menu items using the beverage, tasting events and giveaways to get more people through the door. Most suppliers will be happy to provide the beverages to cover the promotion as long as you come up with a unique enough set of promotions and ideas to promote their drinks.

Get Online – Today!
Get involved in all of the social networking sites on the Internet, and then use these sites to generate interest in upcoming events or in upcoming drink specials. It is not necessary to create your own website because the major search engines will find your social networking sites very easily, but it can enhance the experience for your customers if you do have a fully interactive website. Let customers post pictures on your website to remind everyone of the great time they had in your bar, create a message board forum that allows you to interact with your customers, and create an email list that you can use to keep your customers updated on upcoming events. The internet allows you to stay in constant contact with your customers, and you should use this to your advantage.

Try to Break a World Record
A bar in the UK recently garnered a significant amount of press attention by trying to break the lesser known record of the most smurfs in a bar at any one time by asking all of their customers to dress up in smurf costumes. What crazy world record could you try to break? Let your local radio and tv stations know about your efforts and you might find a bar full of smurfs makes a lot of financial sense for you too!

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