Marketing Health Food in Bethesda
Through a friend I was introduced to the owner of Flaxella – Flax Cafe and Gift Shop. I immediately liked the owner, and the restaurant. The food is excellent, the prices are reasonable, and the atmosphere is relaxed.
The owner has been doing lots of the right things in marketing her business, but she wanted a little extra outside help. She didn’t want to change overall branding – colors, logo, name – but was seeking a tweek to motivate the new marketing push. We kept colors, images and shapes from prior campaigns, but re-worked many of the elements for placement within a variety of directed usages.
The first thing I saw was that the cafe was under-selling itself. It’s a great place, and the prices were far lower than competitors. In being overly focused on providing value, there was only a tiny margin on her products. The owner couldn’t afford to participate in certain kinds of promotions (two for ones, and give-aways) because the base prices had such small margins. Additionally, the growth consumer base – health food and cafe consumers – are used to paying some premium. In not collecting that premium the restaurant both loses out on the income, and fails to meet consumer expectation. We decided to raise some of the prices to be more equivalent to the competition. Flaxella still offers great value, but now there is some more room to play with in the marketing program. In order to implement, the owner required one page folded, printed menus, and a large wall-hung menu, which I designed and delivered as a pdf.
In order not to lose existing customers, some of whom might be motivated by the prices, we created a member program. This builds her e-list, her customer loyalty, and provides brand exposure. The key card – available only to customers prior to the menu switch – offers the bearer 15% off all food and beverages (essentially preserving earlier values for members.) You can see the front of the key card above. All of the new collateral materials implement a few consistent changes.
In terms of expanding the base, we decided that it would be appropriate to broaden her beyond Flax. She provides a variety of healthful food options, including Flax foods and beverages, but not limited to Flax foods and beverages. We moved from Flaxella – Flax Cafe and Gift Shop, to Flaxella: Bethesda’s Health Food Cafe and Coffee Bar. We created a postcard, which is being printed for direct distribution, and also a one page flier for her to run off as she needs. The flier is really a version of the postcard, formatted to print nicely from a business printer. The flier is what is on the left here.
There is no silver bullet in marketing. Success in the restaurant business means volume. Hopefully by broadening her marketing slightly the store will appeal to the health conscious, and not just the flax lovers. I’m certain once customers visit they’ll want to go back.
By collaboratively developing marketing materials freelance professionals can empower business owners to effectively represent their work. That doesn’t have anything to do with design work, but it has an immense amount to do with the return on investment that the owner will see. Small business owners are not in a position to staff their marketing work. In most cases small business owners are the implementers/organizers of their marketing programs. Freelance professional marketing help can reinvigorate the sometimes gruelling process of building a business.
There is no silver bullet in marketing, and the success or failure of marketing initiatives has a tremendous amount to do with the fit of design to implementation. Each business is unique. In order to bring in additional customers the restaurant is adding an events series, starting with a healthful gourmet cooking series – one Saturday afternoon a month to start. I’ll update about that as we have the details. I am also now in the process of creating a new website for the business.
