2007 NRA Show - Chicago | How to Start a Two-Bit Operation: Small Business Tips

I went to my first NRA show yesterday and I didn’t think I was going to make it out alive. I felt like I was being attacked from all sides. Booth after booth. I couldn’t avoid….
.

…all the saturated fat!! Everywhere I turned, there was free food being offered to me by food retailers. Fried cheese, funnel cakes, hamburgers, fried crab/cheese cake, french fries, smoothies, ice cream, jalapeno poppers, ham, bacon, sausage, and the list goes on and on. After a couple hours, I felt like lying down and passing out.

Oh, if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about the National Restaurant Association’s yearly Restaurant Hotel-Motel Show (not the other NRA). It’s going on May 19-22 at McCormick Place in Chicago and boy is it big! Anyone who’s affiliated with the food and hospitality industry is at the show. There’s multiple exhibit floors, educational sessions, celebrity book signings, cooking competitions, and a very cool ice carving competition. It’s quite an immersive experience and a great learning opportunity to see how all the industry players position themselves and pitch their services to restaurants. And if you’re not interested in learning, you can easily eat and drink $70 (admission cost) of free food, beer, and wine. Just head over the Budweiser booth where all the rest of the guys are and hang out there.

One of the educational sessions was about Local Store Marketing by John Matthews of Gray Cat Enterprises. John was President of Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches, National Marketing Director at Little Caesar’s and Vice President of Marketing at Clark Retail Enterprises/White Hen Pantry - definitely qualified to talk about restaurant marketing. He gave tips on how smaller restaurants should compete with the larger chains that could also be applied to similarly small companies in other industries. Some of the ideas:

Gift cards - Starbucks makes about 11% of revenue from them, people spend about 30% more when they use a gift card, and about 10% of it isn’t even used!
Supplemental Sales - Up-sell impulse and ancillary items and provide employee incentives. If you’re trying to sell a 25 cent pickle with every sandwich and make it a competition between employees, customers might even sympathize and buy a pickle just to help them win.
Milestone publicity - Throw a huge grand opening and follow it up with anniversaries. Find reasons to celebrate to remind customers why they should like you and reward their loyalty. Reach out to vendors for publicity funds and support.
Non-competing cross promotion - Neighboring businesses can help each other out by exchanging advertising and flyers.
Local sponsorships of teams and events - Make sure you own the 3 mile radius around your business and make it personal so that people want to go to you to support your business.
Coupon books - Little Caesar’s had great success creating special coupon books with guaranteed low prices that they would give to local teams or charities for fundraising efforts. This created a win-win situation where the teams and charities were able to raise money and Little Caesar’s received publicity through a volunteer workforce.
Customer Surveys - Another opportunity to reward and bring back customers while collecting invaluable information.

For anyone that’s in the biz, I definitely recommend attending. It’s educational, fun, and very filling. We didn’t have a booth for Menuism this time, but maybe next year…

- Justin

Here are some more photos. I’d have more pictures of the food if I wasn’t so busy eating

mmmm….ham
by far the most popular booth - Budweiser
impressive dessert display
the main exhibit room
another exhibit room
some booths looked like shops!