How to make your customers say: “You’ve gotta go there!”

In the restaurant business it’s important to have good food, good service, and a good plan to ensure good ROI. But if you want your restaurant to become the go-to place for your customers and their friends, it’s critical that you provide a memorable experience that moves your customers from telling their friends “You wanna go get some BBQ?” to “Wow! We’ve got to go to this place! You’ll love it!”

Cooperstown in Phoenix
I went to Alice Cooper'stown restaurant yesterday with a friend.
This is a BBQ-and-other-foods place that rock star Alice Cooper
created in his home town of Phoenix, AZ. The food is good, and there’s a good amount of it. But what’s best is the atmosphere.

Alice Cooper is an entertainer and Cooperstown is entertaining. From the guitars and gold records hanging on the walls, to the wall-mounted TVs showing all kinds of sports, to the waitresses
made up to look like Alice, the place says “Let’s have a good time!”.

It’s fun to eat at Cooperstown. You go there when you want to relax and have fun with your friends. You wouldn’t take business people there for an important meeting, but you *would* take them there if they wanted to have a burger, watch some baseball, and shoot the breeze. When I have friends in from out of town who love that sort of thing, I take them to Cooperstown. http://www.alicecooperstown.com/



The Palace Restaurant in Prescott:
Another restaurant that does it well is the Palace Restaurant in Prescott, AZ. The Palace is the oldest frontier bar in Arizona and the most well-known and historic restaurant and saloon in the state. Everything about The Palace says “Old West”, from the ornately carved 1880's Brunswick bar in the saloon to the black-leather-and-boots-and-hat-wearing, handlebar-mustache-bearing cowboy banging out rinky-tink tunes on the honky tonk piano. Even the food has classic old west names.

When you’re there, you’d swear you were in the 1800’s. You expect Wyatt and Virgil Earp to come stridin’ through the swinging doors at any moment. Whenever I go to Prescott, I go to the Palace. Oh sure, I could go somewhere else, but the Palace is so much fun that I keep going back and taking my friends. http://www.historicpalace.com/

So remember that when you plan the ambiance of your restaurant: What do you want your customers to experience in terms of a place to interact? Fun? Families? Professionalism? High-end? Relaxed? And then ask: How can I deliver it to them?

Don’t be afraid to talk to your customers and get their input, and also to visit some competitors to see what they’re doing. Because a restaurant is more than food. It’s an experience. Build your atmosphere and ambiance around that and your customers will come back and bring their friends.