Johnnie – true story
One of the biggest lessons I ever learnt about
food marketing involved a fish and chip shop
I owned a few years ago. We worked
extremely hard to create perfect chips and every item on our menu
was meticulously sourced to ensure we had the best fish and chips
for miles around. We tried, for example, twenty three different oil and
dripping combinations and brands to ensure we had chips that were
absolutely perfect. The site was in an odd location however, and
although we were making profit, we weren’t making very much.I discovered that, far from being bored with my stories about just
how much effort we had put in to making every item on the
menu, friends and family were genuinely interested. I decided to
write down the story of each item and took out six consecutive
weekly quarter page advertisements in the local paper. The ads
looked like newspaper articles with one small product
photograph and relayed my story in great detail.At the bottom of each advertisement was a simple “Buy One Get
One Free” voucher.These advertisements literally transformed the business and
very quickly our weekly products were tripled. Of course not
everybody read every word of each long advertisement, but
they did read enough to know that we really cared about our
food and really had gone to a lot of effort.46 .Wake up and smell the profit