Recently, Michael Harper did a talk on why it is so important for pubs and restaurants to have the current food menu and online booking on their websites. Here’s a full transcript of the talk – and believe me, it’s a VERY good read…
Transcript – Podcast by Michael Harper of PubMenu.org
May 2011
How to Capture Online Bookings for Your Pub or Restaurant
Hi my name’s Michael Harper from PubMenu.org.
Now did you know, there’s a lot of people out there who would love your pub or restaurant, but you never see them – so why is that?
Well, I’m going to tell you why.
Let’s just imagine a scenario, right – we’re talking about websites here. Now let’s say you’ve got a hardware shop and you want to sell some stuff online. You put up a website, and, em, what do you put on the website? You put a picture of the shop. Right? A picture of the shop, and you think to yourself, “yeah, my shop looks great”, and sure, it looks great. So when people come to your website, they think “yeah, I want some hardware, I want some nails, a bit of wood”, whatever, “ah here’s a hardware shop, great – em – let’s have a look at the website. Ah, there’s a picture of the shop. Right. OK, well it looks nice, it’s a very nice-looking shop, er, you know, the paintwork’s all nice and tidy and whatever – em – but – what are they actually selling?” We don’t know, because all we’ve got is a picture of the shop, OK, and a description of the shop. Well, great, we can’t actually do anything with the business, so we move on, we’ll look somewhere else.
That’s what you’re doing!
If you’ve got the old-style pub or restaurant website, where you’re showcasing your business – you can see what it looks like – but you can’t actually BUY anything, well, that’s exactly what you’re doing. It looks great, but how are people going to actually close that deal; give you that business when they want to come and eat in your pub or restaurant?
In this day and age, it’s just not good enough to showcase your business, you’ve got to tell people, “this is the deal; this is what we’re doing, TODAY; this is what you can buy from me, TODAY – and this is how you can close that deal, right now, instantly”. That’s what you’ve got to do, because let me tell you, more and more people are going online when it comes to buying goods and services. They buy insurance online; they buy consumer goods online; books; clothes; they book holidays online – and that’s NOT just youngsters, that’s people of all ages – and it’s going to get worse and worse, whether you like it or not. Now if your pub doesn’t let those people actually make that booking – do the deal – there and then – you are going to lose out to competitors who can offer that service.
It’s not even good enough in this day and age if you’ve got a food menu on your website, but it isn’t quite up-to-date, because this is what’s going to happen, right:
Someone’ll come to your website. The first thing.. – believe me – the first thing people will do now, when they go to a pub or restaurant website, is look for the product; look for what’s on offer, right – they will want to see your menu, and they will go to that menu, and they’ll start reading it, and they’ll think, “oh yeah, that much… that costs that, that costs that, and let’s have a look at the dishes – oh yeah, mmm – quite like the look of that pork loin there with a nice apricot sauce… right, not seen that before, yeah, quite fancy that”.
Great – and you’ve got them; you’ve hooked them, you know – it’s looking good. And then what happens? They see those dreaded words – “Sample Menu” – you know and aargh, the disappointment! You know, you.. you’ve enticed them with your flashy website, you’ve shown them the menu, and then you’ve told them the very thing they’ve just fallen in love with – they can’t even have it!
So, it’s not a way to do it, you know, you need to have the current food menu. Oh, and incidentally, if it’s getting to the uh, you know, the.. the nights are drawing out and the weather’s getting warmer and you’re still showing the Christmas menu from last year, well, do yourself a favour – get it off there, because, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen Christmas menus in the summer, and it’s a real turn-off, you know?
What you need is a current menu. What you also need is a button people can push, to press.. to book that table there and then, because let’s face it, right, someone could be looking at your pub website and falling in love with what you do, cos they’ve seen the current menu, and maybe it’s half past nine in the morning, let’s say. What are they gonna do if you don’t offer online booking? -
“Ah, well, I’ve got to phone them up. OK, mmm – wait a minute though – it’s half past nine in the morning – well, are they going to be in BED? Are they going to be taking deliveries? Doing the cleaning? Getting ready for the day? Because, you know, they’re not going to be open now, so should I phone them? Should I wait till they’re open? Maybe I can leave a message? Maybe they’ll call back? Maybe they won’t? I don’t know…”
There’s UNCERTAINTY in the customer’s mind as to how to conclude that deal; how to make that commitment to you. And maybe that’s enough to put them off, you know, they might make a note to ring you sometime – they might ring you sometime, they might ring you never, and you know, it’s not clear if you’re going to get that business.
With an online booking button, click the button – DONE.
And the other thing is, some people might be at work when they view your website, mm? Maybe they should be working, but, you know, they might see your website at work. They might not be able to make a phone call, you know. They can look at… have a discreet look at the website, but they might not be able to make a phone call to make the booking. Again, you… you… you’re losing that opportunity to close the DEAL there and then. With online booking you can do that.
We give you that missing component.
Now, it’s not an easy component to supply. If you go to a web developer, errr… and ask them to sort out online booking for you, you know, the pound signs will be in the eyes, you know, because it’s a tricky thing to do, it’s… it’s a big thing, you’re talking big money. Now, that’s why, incidentally, that so many pub or restaurant… I can’t tell you how many pub and restaurant websites I’ve… I’ve seen where they’ve got that phrase that’s now becoming very common – and very… very famous really – err – “online booking… coming soon”. You know I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen that. And the reason for that is that’s it’s
a. it’s quite expensive to implement, and
b. the average web developer, you know, they shy away cos it’s quite.. it’s quite tricky.
We give you that missing component. We give you the missing component.
How does it work?
Well, we will give you web pages where you can put your current food menu.
How do you get the menu there?
Simple. You email it. You just email that menu as often as you like – including your daily specials if you like – and that menu’s published on your web pages in minutes. The web pages that we give you, they can link from your existing website, so if you’ve got an existing website and you want to keep that going, you just link to the menu that we… the menu page that we provide, just link from your existing web page and it all works totally seamlessly, and the same for the online booking – it’s all linked from your existing website. If you haven’t got a website, no problem at all, we give you the whole website, and it’s totally self-contained – you don’t need a separate website if you haven’t already got one.
When people click to book online, they get an instant confirmation as soon as they put all the details in. That instant confirmation has a booking reference, and at the same time, you get an email with all the details of that booking, so you know exactly who’s booked and when.
We also give you a total online booking system, so you can manage all your bookings through the booking system that we give you. It’s very, very easy to use, we can have you trained up in a very short space of time to use it, and you can use it for your walk-in bookings; your phone bookings; as well as your online bookings.
If you don’t want to use the booking system; if you would just rather get an email when people book, well that’s fine. You can stop there and just get the emails. The only thing about that is that you’ll need to action those emails, you know, you can’t just accept bookings and then not do anything with them, you’ve got to actually action the emails; check you’ve got capacity to handle it. If all you’re going to do is take the emails when people book, you need to action the email; you need to open the email and say “can we do this booking?” and if you can’t, you need to get back to that person straight away and let them know.
If you use the whole booking system that we give you, and as I say, it’s very easy to use, then we will err… the system itself will manage your capacity. It knows how many tables, how many covers you’ve got; it knows your opening hours; and it knows how long people will, on average, stay, err… with you when they have a meal and it manages the capacity for you, so it’s a good way to do that, the best way to do it is use the booking system, but it’s entirely up to you.
The important thing is, and.. I mean, you know, this is the killer, right – the important thing is that we will give you all this for a monthly subscription, you don’t pay anything up-front. I repeat that – you don’t pay anything up front – you just pay a monthly subscription and you can cancel at any time.
Now what that means is that unlike a web developer who might charge you up-front x hundred pounds or goodness knows how much, err.. and then say “Right, are you happy with your website? Thanks very much, OK, bye then!” You know, we don’t do that. We take your money each month – and it’s not a lot of money either incidentally – for the service that we provide on an ongoing basis, and because you can cancel at any time, we need to make it good enough so that you’ll stay, and that’s our incentive, you know, so we will go out of our way to make this work for you on an ongoing basis – this year, next year, you know, however long you want it, because we… err.. your success means that you’ll keep on paying us and you’ll stay with us and be a happy customer and that’s what WE want.
As I say, my name’s Michael Harper. You can get full details from our website:
PubMenu.org
On there there’s a contact form, there’s also a phone number which you can call, and err… we will do our very best to answer any questions that you have.
But the important thing is:
If you haven’t got a current menu on your website;
If you haven’t got online booking;
then you ARE missing out on business, and it’s going to get worse as time goes on, so please do act now, take a look at the website, get in touch with us, let’s start working together, and let’s get you some of that lucrative online business.
Thanks for listening.
