Check out all of our Take Five Q&As here!
On Tuesday, March 24 from 12:30-2:00 pm, Rev Ciancio will be moderating the workshop, "Got Marketing Questions? Get Real Answers From Restaurant Owners," which features four industry experts who will weigh in on all things marketing: Adrienne Calvo (check out her Take Five here!), Greg Provance, Carmen Rossi, and Mike Bausch.
We caught up with Rev to find out what restaurant from history he would love to eat in, what industry trend needs to go, and more!
What’s something you believe that most people in the industry would disagree with?
Marketing can fix inconsistent or bad operations.
Of course, that’s not how most people think about it. Good food and good service are table stakes. In fact, some people will return to a restaurant if the food is just OK as long as the experience and service were excellent.
A lot of restaurants think they have a marketing problem. “We don’t have enough new customers,” or, “our customers aren’t coming back enough.” But the real question is why they’re not coming back.
If you have a foundational marketing system and you’re doing the basics well, it’s likely guests aren’t happy with the food or service. Start by investigating what your guests are saying and how they feel. That will reveal whether you have an Operations problem or a Marketing problem.
Here’s an article that goes deeper.
What’s an industry trend you wish would go away?
Hot honey on everything. I’m not saying I don’t like hot honey. I’m just saying I’ve had a lot of it and ultimately it’s a gigantic calorie bomb, and for my taste, it’s just not hot enough. Hot habanero honey, on the other hand, I’ll take more of that.
Jokes aside, restaurants thinking that posting to Instagram is marketing. Sharing organic content in your Instagram feed is, at best, a retention move, and it’s a cumbersome channel with difficult-to-measure ROI. You spend all that time creating something interesting, writing a caption, adding hashtags, and then you post it. What happens? Maybe 1–2% of your followers see it, and most just keep scrolling.
A consistent social media feed only works if you have a foundational marketing system that includes local search optimization, digital advertising, guest contact collection, regular email marketing, guest feedback, reputation management, and more. In that case, social becomes a supportive channel for bringing guests back, not the strategy itself.
What do you wish you knew five years ago?
The smart answer would be stock market results so I could have invested my money where it was guaranteed to grow.
But professionally, I’ve learned it’s far more valuable to deeply understand the guests who spend the most with your restaurant and focus on getting more people like them, rather than trying to convert someone who has only visited once.
That’s just industry standard behavior. Why force people out of their habits when you can enhance the habits of someone who already likes you?
What’s currently on your playlist?
A mix of Meshuggah, Archspire, stand-up comedy, AC/DC, Weird Al, and Jesse Cole’s Fans First audiobook.
If you could spend a night in any restaurant or bar from history, which one would it be?
I didn’t have an answer ready, so I did some digging, and this absolutely has my attention: Restaurante Botín in Madrid is officially recognized as the world’s oldest continuously operating restaurant, open since 1725.
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