Marketing Trends Hot or Not List with Bruce Irving

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Welcome to the Restaurant Coach podcast. It is secure for the common restaurant.

Hello, everybody.

Hello. I'm Donald Burns. This is Bruce Irving, better known as Mr. Smart Pizza Marketing himself. We were just talking. He didn't know I hit the record button. But we're just talking about some of the food shows and stuff going around the country. And that kind of brings me up to a topic. I really think that now I've been going lately, like, I head out tomorrow, I fly to Malaga, Spain. I'm speaking at a conference called Salon H T. And then I go back in March to Hospitality Innovation Planet and speak and I'll tell you. And people go, why do you. Why do you like, go all the way around the world to speak? Just because. And the shows are so amazing in Europe. They're just. The content is incredible. The. Just the way the speakers are incredible. They have so many speakers and they're just. It just. It's almost like they have huge stages and it's like, it's like a huge presentation. And they're all a bit. They're really driven on the educating and learning. So it's like you go and it's like, amazing. It's almost like a rock concert. It's really cool. I love going, especially Hospitality Innovation, Asian Planet. Those people run like, probably one of the best shows in the world. This will be my sixth year going back to hospital, they call it. Hip.

Yeah.

And I tell you, man, it is. It's awesome. It's awesome. And I think the shows United States have gotten. What's. What do we want to say? Lazy. Stale. Stale. Lazy.

Yeah. I think they, you know, what happens is, and I understand you when you run a expo, right? The goal is to. You have like three different customers. You have speakers, you have vendors, and you have the attendees of the expo. And you need to kind of please all of them, right? If there's not enough attendees, the vendors aren't happy. If there's not good vendors, the attendees aren't happy. Or the same thing with speakers, right? If there's not a good speakers lineup, then the attendees don't feel like they got the value. Because I think the value really comes from a expo, from the speakers and sessions you have. That's where the real tangible value comes. The vendors are a bonus because they're at every show.

And if you go to Europe, that's how they focus it. It's all the education. They call them congresses. The educational segment is the forefront of what the drives of shows and the show, you know, the vendors, the floor is a secondary thing. Yeah.

And I think the shows that do the best job makes it up.

Yeah. But I think the show, the best job really have a really heavy presence on the education and they really get great speakers to come in, share a message and give a lot of value. And I don't mean those speakers. And you, you and I have both seen those people, they get up and it's a 40 minute sales pitch. Yeah. You know, you didn't learn anything. It's just a 40 minute sales pitch about, you know, buy this, buy that, where they tease you along and give you a little, you know, give you a little hint of it. But then it's like, well, you can sign up for my program.

Right?

Yeah.

Those are, that's bullshit. That's not what you want to do.

I've never ever I've spoken now what, this is like seven years I've been speaking on stages. I don't sell from the stage. I throw up my contact information. If you want to talk to me, talk to me, reach out to me.

If you do a good job of, of teaching something, you don't need to because the people are going to follow you. And if they follow you, if they need help, they'll eventually reach out to you for what you do because you've clearly explained what you do and how you can help somebody. And most of the time the people that hire you just don't want to do it themselves. They know what to do and what they need to do. They just don't want to do it. Or they need to have somebody help them do it.

Oh yeah. I mean, it's like social media. I mean, you can go on and find enough YouTube channel videos to actually tell you how to do it. But do you really want to sit there and like, figure it all out or it's just sometimes just easier to hire someone else. Like hire your company to come in and just, hey, man, Bruce, I want you guys to handle it.

Yeah. Or just join a group. Right. Even if you are like, maybe you don't have enough funds and you're a new business or your, your business isn't, you know, you're in the early stages of growing your company and you don't have the funds to hire a company and you just need ideas and accountability, I think if you have ideas and accountability, you'll be fine. Because the number one thing when it comes to marketing is consistency. If you're consistent with it, quality will come. But if you are thinking, oh man, this post isn't good enough. So I'm not gonna post anything. No post is ever going to be good enough because you're never gonna be consistent enough with it, regardless of the quality.

So speaking of, like, you think like, what are the biggest kind of, I would say bad habits or the bad traits of a really bad social media account? Number one, you set this consistency.

Yeah, I think they're not consistent enough. I think that in my opinion, if you need to post every day and you need to not think about the quality in the beginning, you need to think about, all right, my goal is to post one thing every single day for a 30 or 45, a 60 day period. And then at the end of that, go back and take like, just like every Sunday, you do like an accountability of your week. What went well, what didn't do well. Do the same thing with your social. All right, I posted, I stuck to one platform. I posted for 30 days. Go back to those 30 posts and be like, all right, which ones performed well? And there's, you'll definitely start to see a pattern. Was it the time of day? Was it the type of post? Was it the hashtags that I used? Was it the lighting? You'll start to see a pattern of the post that did well. And by well, I don't mean like exploded. It could just be like it got the most engagement, it got the most likes, and then do, all right, my next 30 days I'm gonna do all posts like this. And if it works like that, then you start to see what works and what doesn't. And that's how you learn. And being consistent over time, you do more of what works and less of what doesn't. And you'll get to learn like, as you do more like anything. If you do anything for 30 or 60 days, by the 60th day, you're gonna be much better at it than the first day.

So let's, let's go to, I want to, I want to hash this out and you and I go back and forth on this frequency. How much should you post a day?

I mean, the more the better, right? The more the better.

I'm a big believer. Like, I know people like, you know, oh, I posted once a day. Once a day doesn't. That would be like to me telling you, like, take a big bucket of pebbles, go down the ocean, take a pebble, throw it in the ocean and watch how big a splash you make. That's what you're doing by posting one post a day. Yeah, yeah.

If you have, I always say Once a day is the minimum.

The minimum, minimum. Like bare minimum.

But listen, it's once a day is better than once a week. Once a week you might as well not even do it.

Yeah, once a week you're dead. You're not even.

I think it depends on what platform too, because they all work differently. So specifically Instagram, you could Definitely post more. TikTok, you can post more, but the TikTok algorithm works differently. So you could post a video today and get nothing for two or three days, and then that video could just get into the for you page and take off. So each platform is different. So I think how much you post depends on where you are starting from and what platform you're talking about. And then you got to kind of gauge from there, like Twitter, you can post 12 times a day on Twitter. And that's just what people do.

Oh, my God. Well, Twitter is like so fast. I mean, you have to like jump on Twitter fast. If you're on Twitter, man, it's like constant.

I've been doing a lot of tests on Instagram. Like, I've, I've done tests and I think it depends on where your account is. Like, my account is pretty established and I haven't posted on my feed. I don't think I posted on my feed in a week or two. I've been doing this test where I'm more diving into stories and I see that I've been posting more stories on Instagram in less feed. So my account isn't necessarily growing.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's engaging with my followers that I have currently. So where I am with my account is I don't necessarily need to grow more. I would like to. And obviously the goal is always growth, but I really want to engage with the current followers I have. And I've seen that the feed helps you get out to people who maybe don't know who you are. But if you really dive deep into the stories and post really engaging, good stories, you can see your engagement on that triple or quadruple over a week by doing that. And you'll see your DM start to go up. You'll see your. Your links to your email list start to go up. You'll see your podcast measures start to go up, because those are the people who really know who you are and you're engaging with them more versus trying to find new people who don't know who you are.

Exactly. Yeah. It's all about. And I, I kind of have this rule and it's, you know, best known beats best?

Yeah, 100%. Someone asked me and they sent me a message on Instagram. They're like, you know, I hear you talk about social media all the time and you always say, you know, post and grow your following. But, like, why are you growing your following? Why. Why is. What's the roi? And I said, there's no tangible roi. But the more people who know who I am, the more people who buy from me. And that's the roi. Like, I can't say if you post once, you're going to get seven customers or if you post four times.

Right, right, right.

The more people who know who you are, the more opportunities you have to sell. And then I was on another session that actually, the recent summit, I think the restaurant summit, and I was on with Scott Wiener from Scott's Pizza Tours, and he said, you know, you really want local followers. You don't want to have. What's the point of having a billion followers if they're not local? And I said, dude, yeah, serious. Yeah, but if you have a billion followers, you can sell them anything. I would rather have a billion followers.

You can monetize that. You could sell a billion followers. I can monetize that sucker. And I can sell. Hey, would you like to buy this pen? Right.

As long as they're like legitimate people, you don't want spam accounts. But if you have a million followers on Instagram, it's not going to hurt you. You could figure out a way to sell them something.

True, that's true. Yeah. So I think that's a huge thing to think about, is like, you know, engagement and reaching more people should always be the goal.

So your feed reaches more people. Your stories is where you engage with them.

Right, right.

So you gotta.

How many stories do you recommend doing a day?

I don't think there's a set number. I don't think there's a set number. I think the minimum would be six and space it out. But I don't think there's too many if they're good. Like, quality over, like, the stories is where the quality comes into place.

That's right. That's the biggest thing is, like, people post all these stories, but they're. They're horrible. It's like, I'm having lunch and, you know, I found a pebble in my salads. Like, what are you doing, man? Yeah.

I think that you need to use the tools that Instagram has inside of that, too, like polls, yes or no stickers, ask questions, anything that can get someone to take action inside of Your stories will help reach more people versus just posting a video or posting a photo. And I've seen that when you post links, the engagement drops dramatically.

Oh, does it really? When you post links.

So if like you post a link to your blog post or your website inside of that, It'll reach like 50% of the people versus not having the link in there and like telling them to go to your bio.

Yeah, I usually say. I always say go to my bio.

You're better off doing that versus putting the link in there. And I know everybody has the ability to put the link, but it doesn't mean that you always should.

Ah, that's good to know. That's good to know. You're getting some. You're getting some hacks here from Bruce.

Yeah, listen, this is just experiments. I always say I'm an experimenter. Whether the accounts we run or my. Myself or my accounts, I just try things out and what works or doesn't, I come and share on the podcast and that's it on YouTube. That's what I do.

If no one knows Bruce. But I hope I, you know, Bruce has been on my show so many times. I hope you know Bruce by now. But if you ever need to reach out to Bruce, please contact bruce@smartpizzamarketing.com he's got the Smart Pizza Marketing podcast too. How many subscribers you have now to the podcast? Yeah, quite a few. Right.

We get like 5, 000 listeners per episode.

That's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome.

So for a pizza pot, it's like 90 pizza.

What's the craziest market that people like. I know when you do pod, you do your podcast stats. Like, I can. You can see like where they, where they tune in from. What's like the craziest country you thought like, I can't believe people are listening from there.

That's a good question. I'd say probably like trying to think of Iceland.

Iceland. Yeah, I got people. I have some clients in Iceland, actually.

Do you really like? I think I don't have. I. I think I did one time. It was a long time ago. I looked at that because you can look at the. The world map and you can see how many.

Yeah, you can see the map where they're, where they're watching from. Yeah, I'm really popular. I don't know why, but I'm really popular in. In Germany.

I don't know why really. I think my second. So for me it goes like us, Canada, uk, Australia, Thailand for some reason, and then, and then it kind of like breaks up from there. I think the only place I don't have one listener is Greenland.

I don't think anybody lives in Greenland.

Yeah. It's probably why I don't have any listeners. It's like a big, big ass island with zero on it. When I look at the map, Greenland.

Have you ever been to Greenland and Iceland? No.

I do want to go to Iceland. I've never been there, though, in the military.

I'll tell you right now, Greenland and Iceland. The names are deceiving. They're like opposite. Greenland is not green. It's like. It's like. It's horrible. And Iceland is like, it's. It's a beautiful, beautiful country.

Yeah, I do want to visit Iceland. It's on my bucket list.

Amazing. I love going to Iceland. And I just came out with my. My first book, your restaurant sucks, just got translated into Spanish.

I saw that on. You shared that on Facebook. I saw that. That's. Congratulations. That's pretty cool.

That's really cool.

Do you have to. Did you have to? Because I know you have an audiobook. Did you have to say the audiobook.

In Spanish into the audiobook in Spanish yet?

Are you gonna do it or are you gonna have someone do it?

Let's see how the book is received in Spanish for, you know, because I didn't translate it because I don't speak my Spanish is not that good. Yeah, I have, like, kitchen Spanish. Broken kitchen Spanish.

Right.

I had to, like, move around the kitchen. I can yell at you in Spanish in the kitchen. And I can talk really bad about your sister, which will get me my translation. I had to hire someone to translate it. So I've sent it out to quite a few people to get some feedback about how's the translation quality. Now if the translation quality comes back and they say, oh, it's really good, I like it, then I'll find a speaker and I'll have someone translate. I'll have someone do the audiobook in Spanish, but there you go. Right now I'm just working on just doing almost the same way I did the books. I'll do the books first, see how they're received, and then I'll do the audiobook. And then my third book is out there now, too. Is that your restaurant Culture sucks.

So, yeah, I saw that one. That was probably pretty popular.

That one's. That one's actually been selling like crazy. And that's the third book to the your restaurant sucks trilogy, I call it.

That's awesome.

Done with the suck series. I'm moving on to another topic now. I gotta have some new stuff. I just can't keep playing this thing. So let's talk about some social media. Like what do you think is like anything new on the horizon that you think is like gonna be the up and coming thing? Everyone wants to be, you know, everyone wants to be tick tock I hear.

You know, I think YouTube shorts though.

Starting in February is trying to. Right.

I think YouTube shorts is the only one that has the ability to compete with TikTok. I think it depends on what you're trying to do. TikTok advertising is really, really pretty good right now. It's you, you can target, you can swipe up. There's not as many holdbacks when it comes to like the privacy issue or the demographics that you're allowed to use because they just let you talk.

Yeah.

So if you're spending money on ads, say TikTok. But if you are a creator or you know, a lot of this content creation comes back to business owners are busy and they don't see the value in it. Right. And they want to monetize with sales, which is what we all want to do. But there's also other ways to monetize, whether that be selling stuff, merch, other things that you could do, consulting or partner with these programs for ad revenue. And starting February 1st, which was two days ago, as of recording this podcast, YouTube started to allow you to monetize YouTube shorts and get ad revenue on the views of those YouTube shorts. Now there is some criteria in order to be able to be part of the YouTube.

Number of views, right? Or followers.

Yeah, for YouTube shorts I think it's like a million views in a 90 day period and 4000 or no, a thousand subscribers. And if you don't like, if you already have a YouTube channel, all you need is, I think it's a thousand subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time for regular long form video. So in order to do that doesn't take that much. But once you're in there, you can monetize your regular videos with ads. You can monetize your YouTube shorts and you're not gonna make a million dollars, but at least it's like paying for the content creation itself if they're good. Especially where, you know, a lot of your listeners are restaurant owners. And food videos do really well on tick tock and Instagram reels and on YouTube shorts.

So you can make additional food videos. Hint, hint. Yeah, yeah. Show people real fast. There's a guy out there on Instagram. That Chef Jonathan thing, he, he does like killer videos all the time.

What does he do?

He does like, it's like the, the quick cuts. Like he's like, you know, doing a dish and it's like, oh yeah.

So like you hear like, it's like slams on the counter and then bowl.

And then he's throwing the stuff in the bowl and then mixing it up and then you hear the pan sizzle and then they, you know, he's like making the noises.

Yeah, everybody has the ability to do that in their restaurant. It's just you got to take the time in order to do it and you know, something like that. That's when you, that's when you bring in the younger folks who may work for you to help you kind of edit because they know how to use the platforms. They're not really great when it comes to like, what moves the needle marketing wise or what types of content you, you should create to sell things. But when it comes to like editing things down and how things look when they're done and if it's gonna hold people's attention, they're pretty good about helping you do that because they know what, what they watch. They're the ones who watch TikTok and watch YouTube shorts. So if they look at your video and they're like, that blows. I'll never watch that. You shouldn't put that out there.

Don't post it. Yeah. So is that what you use your kids for?

100. My kids help me edit videos all the time. Like I always get. I get. Yeah, because they, they're better equipped to edit videos faster than I am. Or a video editor who does wedding videos who may do a great wedding video, but it doesn't mean it's going to translate to a tick tock video.

Right.

Like, the kids are pretty honest too. They'll tell you, like, that part is boring. You need to cut that out.

Cut that out. That thing sucks. Don't do that.

Yeah, they'll know and they tell you so. Yeah, my kids are on there all the time and they help me edit videos.

Awesome. All right, so let's play a little game, shall we? Let's play a little game with you. Play a little game with you. We're gonna call this game called in or Out. I'm name off some things and I want you to just quickly say if you think they're still in, still hot or. And it's out. Okay, Ready?

I'm ready.

Snapchat.

In.

Still in.

It's in. Depending on how you use it. Kids are definitely using Snapchat to communicate with each other. So I wouldn't. If you go to your kids. Right. And they are definitely sending each other Snapchat. So it is not out yet.

Okay. All right.

Twitter for a local business, I think it's out for you and I. In.

Yeah. Because that's where I get, I get a lot of connections with media.

Yeah. If you're looking to, you know, be a consultant, a coach or a marketing company or just like grow your brand as the business owner, not the business itself, I think that Twitter is a great place for that. And Twitter's a great place to like learn.

You're trying to build that brand and get some national recognition. Yeah. Twitter is where all the media people hang out.

I don't think you're going to get a customer from Twitter to go in. But definitely like you said in network, like you'll be able to talk to people on Twitter that you wouldn't be able to on Instagram or tick tock.

LinkedIn.

People say it's in, but I'm out on it.

You're already out. I'm out.

I just, I only have so much, I only have so much bandwidth and where I want to spend my time. I like, I know that if I was to dive into LinkedIn, I would probably be able to make it work. But for what I want to post and who I want to talk to, LinkedIn's a big time suck.

Yeah. You know what I don't like about LinkedIn is that, you know, I mean, it's, I think it's great for, for businesses like, for my business, for like consulting and stuff like that. 100%, it's great for that. But it's also a thorn in my side because everyone who connects with me is like some marketer who wants to show me how to grow my Instagram feed or wants to show me how to get 50 more calls per day. I'm like, dude, if I could do 50 more calls a day, I would, but I can't. So you spamming me with all stuff. And as soon. The number one thing I hate about LinkedIn, as soon as they connect with you, you automatically get that email right away. The InMail right away.

Speaking of that, let me. I'm gonna open up my LinkedIn right here.

They send you some crap right away. I mean, they don't even. Dude, it's like, it would be like going on a date and saying, hey, you wanna, you wanna get in bed together?

Can you see that? I have like 75 messages I haven't even opened in my inbox.

Yeah. And they're all like, hey, let me show you how you can grow your. You want to reach out, you want to do some, you know, let me show you how to market better.

Yeah, but you're better off sending me a smoke signal than a LinkedIn message on LinkedIn.

But also too, it's like a lot of times I want to say, have you read my bio? So I get these ones like on LinkedIn, hey, let me show you how you can grow your restaurant, you know, and get more people coming to your restaurant. I said, do you understand? Did you read my bio? I don't have a restaurant. I'm a restaurant coach. I'm not a restaurant. I don't have a restaurant right now. Yeah, I would say, yeah, I'm an investor in some restaurants. I'm a prime. I'm a silent investor in the restaurants. I don't like, play with them. They ask me for advice, I'll give them advice if they ask me. But most of the time when I work with like my private group, I'm just an investor.

I would say, I would say in order of importance, right? If you would say, Bruce, list the order of importance for social media. If, if you're a restaurant owner, I say Instagram is number one. YouTube shorts today. Tick Tock, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.

There you go.

That's the, that's how I would spend my time. And I wouldn't do them all. I would try to be the best at one or two of them.

So enter out Instagram stories, 100 in, 100 in.

Yeah, I think we should be in.

So of the three stories, reels or posts, rank them.

So post, throw right in the trash, right? You should never do a post right now, if you're listening to this, the only content I would create for Instagram would be reels, because that's the only type of content that's going to be able to have you reach potentially more people than follow you. So that's going to grow your account. And stories is where you convert those followers into loyal customers, friends, followers, whatever it is. They're going to really. The people who view your stories and the ones that consistently view your stories, those are the ones that you can convert into customers pretty easily.

All right, Facebook ads. Out, out.

I'm out on Facebook ads because I think TikTok ads are better.

I think tick tock, you know, Google.

Ads, I think, you know, I haven't messed around too much with Google Ads. I think there's a difference. When you run a Google Ad, they're more intent based searches. If someone goes to Google, they already have their mind made on something. They're just trying to find an answer to that. And I think chat GPT is going to mess with that.

Yeah, talk about that in a minute.

And when it comes to social media ads, you're dumping your content in somebody's face that didn't necessarily ask for it.

Right.

So it depends on what you want. If there's somebody in your area who outranks you on Google and you want to top them, Google Ads might be the place for that. But if you're just looking for the brand awareness and to get as many people to know who you are, then that's maybe where social media ads come into play. Because you're getting placed for money in people's feeds who didn't ask for that.

Yeah. And that's a critical thing to mention to people is that I think nowadays you almost have to pay to play if you want some awareness. You gotta put a little money behind advertising. I don't think there's really much in organic anymore. Do you think there's much?

Not for as many. Not for. I'd say out of a hundred people, two people are probably good enough to really win the organic game.

Yeah.

98 others are gonna have to pay for it.

Yeah. But paid advertising doesn't have to be super expensive too. Not at all. Hey, I mean you can do a really. I have some awareness campaigns out there and I run seven sets of ads. Right. And I put five bucks behind them each day. And every. They see like my market is a super targeted niche and they'll see one ad every seven days and then it repeats one ad every seven days.

And how much are you spending on that?

Five bucks a day. Yeah.

So that's like, that's, that's affordable.

It's super affordable. All it does is just keeps me nudged out there, you know. Restaurant coach. Restaurant coach. Yeah. Because that's really what awareness is about. It's just meeting people who. Aware of who you are.

100 like the more people. The Costanza method, that's what I call that. Right. The more people who know.

Yeah.

The more people are going to be aware of what you do and how you do it. And it's like when they think of pizza, they think of you or they think of tacos, they think of you. It's just being around. The other alternative to that is like I think if you don't have a Lot of time to keep. Consistently create content ads is a way to do that, because you can consistently be placed in front of people's feeds who wouldn't know who you are because you're not creating consistent content on the side.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, Perfect. All right. And you already said TikTok ads 100%.

And I. I would. I think you have. I think you have a few months left before they start to become what Facebook ads have become now. You know, they're. They're pretty inexpensive. They're really good targeting. But a lot of people are becoming more aware of that. There are TikTok ads out there, and they're messing around with them.

How about mailers?

I think mailers have their place. I don't know if I would invest, like, all my marketing dollars in that, but it depends on what. Where your business is.

Where your business is. If I'm in a big metropolitan, I got a pretty tight network or a neighborhood, I might do it there.

Or if you're new to the. Like, if you're new to the neighborhood, social media is a longer game. You're not gonna open up and then be like, all right, I'm gonna post to Instagram, and everybody's gonna know who you are. You may want to send out a mailer for two to three weeks to get, like, that Costanza method going, moving them to your social, so that way you can do both at the same time. And they're aware of who you are because you kind of bombarded them in the beginning of opening very cool billboards. I mean. I mean, I don't leave my house, so I don't know the last time I looked at a billboard.

I mean, even if you remember a billboard, what was the last time. A real memorable billboard. I don't. I mean, I drive a lot, and I tell you, I couldn't remember the billboards.

The only billboards that I recall right now are. I don't know if you've ever been in the northeast area. Like, you've driven from New York, Boston to Florida. When you hit, like, North Carolina, there's these billboards for this place called over the border or on the border in. In. I think it's in Georgia or South Carolina. It's like this big, big, huge thing. And, like, they have billboards from, like, 700 miles away leading up to the place, all 700 miles. And that's the only. The only ones I have ever remembered. I don't like when I'm. I'm either driving and I'm paying attention to the road, or you're the passenger and you're looking at your phone.

That's the only time when you're a passenger. Usually. I usually don't pay attention while I'm driving.

I don't look at billboards. So I. I would. I wouldn't waste my money on that.

I think the only one that I ever really remember is, like, Chick Fil A used to do some really crazy ones, like, you know, cows hanging off them. Like, really. But super expensive ones. Like, yeah, like, things hanging off them. And I would remember those things, but I couldn't tell you what the message was.

And, like, that's. Even if you spend thousands of dollars on that, you could be so much better off creating videos that could reach far more people in a. In a better way. Right. Like, even if that billboard says 10,000 people drive by this billboard every day, it doesn't mean 10,000 people looked at it, but you could create one video and place it in the feed of their Tick Tock or Instagram account that, you know, they'll at least see a couple seconds of.

There you go. How many miles do you usually recommend when people are doing ads? How many miles do you recommend they do it from their place?

I usually say, because I. I deal with a lot of pizza restaurants, so usually it's like four to seven miles out of their restaurant is usually like, the spot where you could either deliver to them or they could come to you.

There you go. It would depend on your concept, too, I guess.

Or if you're, like, in New York City, it may not even be a mile, because. Seven miles.

Yeah, because. Yeah, it's so condensed there.

So it depends on really where you're located, but anywhere from one to seven miles of the max.

All right, this is. This one is a touchy one for me. I don't want to ask you what you feel. Car flyers.

I mean, I don't want to offend anybody on your car. I. I don't like them.

I hate them.

Yeah.

And then they, like, they put them in your windshield, and then if they're really small, you don't even notice till you're halfway down the road and you're like, what the hell is that? Yeah.

Car windshield flyers remind me of desperation. Like, I feel like whoever put that flyer in my windshield, that business is desperate for business.

Or. You know what it reminds me of? It's like there's a Planet Fitness I go to sometimes, and there's like, they have a church right around the corner. And every time I come out of Planet Fitness. There's some kind of thing in the door about, you know, getting saved. And it always got. The church always has something in the door. They're just trying to like, what are you trying to send me a signal?

That church is desperate for business, desperate for people.

Yeah, they're trying to get me, but I was like, do they know something I don't know about me? I didn't even talk to somebody.

I think door hangers is different, right? Like, door hangers is a different kind of marketing that's similar to the car flyer but different. Right. Like you're hitting people where they live versus random. You don't know where that car is from. Maybe that person lives 40 miles away. And just happens.

If I had like, like a, like if I had an apartment complex where I could really blast it in that thing.

Or like I live in an area, it's suburbs, but the houses are pretty close together. So you could hit 100 houses in 10, 15 minutes because they're kind of close together.

Right. Food trucks.

I think food trucks are cool. I like them and I think I love food trucks. And I think the 2020 taught us that you want to be able to be nimble. And there's a lot of people who are starting businesses with, you know, in my industry, which is the pizza industry, I know you're more restaurants and like all you do pizzas and everything, but I kind of just do pizza. And there's a lot of people who started businesses with like two gosney or uni ovens and a pop up. And like, that's how they started their business. Then they grew to a food truck and then they turned that food truck into a brick and mortar. And it's like, it's the, it's the bootstrapping way to start a business or a restaurant without having to invest all of your money into a brick and mortar. Right in the beginning.

And people ask me all the time, if I had to start over, how would I start? I said I would either start with a food truck or a food hall. Yeah. And get proof of concept. And then I would expand to a brick and mortar. I wouldn't invest in doing a brick and mortar until I already had proof of concept with a food. With a. Either in a food hall or a food truck. You could make.

Like, I always think about that worst case scenario for me. Like, if smart pizza marketing shits the bed, right? Nobody listens, I get canceled. Something happens. I can't do anything anymore. Right. I could take my two mobile Ovens, get a pop up tent, get a permit and go have a pop up. And I know how to market to get pizza. Like, I could probably make a couple hundred dollars a day selling pizza right out of those two pop up things with very little out of my pocket cost.

Yeah, it'd be super easy.

It might be fun. I might do that as an experiment.

You should know that. You should. You know what you should do? You should do it on the road. You should do a road trip from Boston to Florida and then do pop ups along the way and just pay for the trip and pay for the trip and document it too.

That'd be a good idea.

That'd be fun.

That would be kind of fun, actually.

If you do it. I'll go with you, man.

We'll do it. We'll tandem up together.

I'll throw down some pieces with you, man. I can. I could throw.

That would be fun. Now that you say that, that might be a good, fun experiment.

Yeah, it'd be fun. That'd be really fun to do. Yeah. All right. Email.

And I think email's way underrated.

Way underrated.

And the problem is, the problem is though, that a lot of people don't know what to email, which is a big problem. And they end up emailing the same thing that everybody else emails and it doesn't work. And then they're like, I don't. Like, I have. And everybody has a point of sale. So everybody. Every time I talk to someone, they say, oh, I have 7,000 emails. I'm like, all right, when's the last time you sent an email? Oh, I've never sent an email. What the hell are you gathering all these emails for?

No, I had someone the other day. Like, I have a client, has a bagel place and how many emails? I got 7,000 emails. When you, when did you email them? Well, I haven't emailed them. What do you mean, emailed him? I almost want to reach through to zoom and like choke him out. Like, oh my God, dude, are you. You're sitting on a gold mine.

It ain't bitcoin. Like, it's not going anywhere. You don't have to, like, if you use them, it doesn't. They don't go away. Just keep using them.

Just keep using them. So I think when people, like you said, people don't know what to email. What are some easy topics?

I'd say follow up. The first thing you should do is follow up with your existing customers every time someone orders from you. If you really don't know what to send. You can start with follow up, follow up for reviews, follow up for how your order was, follow up for repeat guests. Like you could set up a sequence pretty easy to get somebody to give you feedback on how the experience was and then follow up with them to get them maybe to order where they would order once a month. If you can just bump that up to twice a month, you just doubled your revenue.

Right.

That's really easy way to start and then go subscribe to some other emails. Like sometimes you gotta steal from some folks. And I don't mean like copy and paste, but if you know that there's a really busy shop that's near you that you like going to and they have an email list, sign up for their email and see what their sending. Sometimes you need inspirations from other industries and other businesses to kind of give you an idea of. All right, they seem to be working pretty well. I'm going to subscribe to their email list. Let's see what they're emailing out, what their. What their cadence is, what the sequence is, like what they're putting in their email. And like, kind of see if you can steal any of that for your email.

I usually have like my clients, I have them set up. We do like an email template, almost like a newsletter template. It's like. And I was.

They.

I always have them email once a week. So the news, the template's always like news. Like whatever's happened in news could be whatever. Like news flavor, new pizza, pizza of the week pizza or whatever. And then we usually do a spotlight, usually a guest spotlight or a team member spotlight or a community spotlight. Something that showcases that we're connected with people. That's our focus. And then we usually do some kind of mention about our loyalty program.

Yeah.

Then we usually always sell a gift card. Because you always sell gift cards. And then it should be your whatever your strong call to action is. Whatever your primary call to action is, like order online, make reservations, you know. Yeah, I love super boom, boom, boom, boom. And then to have that thing. Most of the things repeat every week.

Yeah.

You kind of change out a couple. A couple of spots and that's it.

And if he. The more you do it, the more people will get used to, hey, that email is coming out on Thursday at 1 o' clock or whatever time it.

Is you got just like, you're just like, you're. You got to be consistent on it. Yeah.

And there's no too many emails. You could. I could email. I love unsubscribes. I'll be honest with you, I love. Because that means they're never going to buy from you anyway. Just get off my list. Because I pay for how many people are on my list. So if you're going to unsubscribe because I sent you an email with words, then you're not going to buy anything from me. So get off my list. I don't want to pay for you.

That's the same way I feel. What's a good email provider? Do you like? You have a couple that you mentioned on the, on your podcast, right?

Yeah, I used this like, aweber, mailchimp is free. You know, if you use mailchimp and you have under a thousand subscribers, mailchimp's free. The only thing that you can't do with it is if you have the free plan, you can't schedule out, so you have to just hit the send button yourself.

But they have templates which are really nice that you can, you can make a template which is.

I think mailchimp is the easiest one to start with.

Yeah, definitely.

If you want to get a little bit more sophisticated. Like there's ConvertKit, which I use, which is a good one. Aweber. But a lot of your point of sale systems have email in there, and that's who I really think you should use. And if you have a. If you have a point of sale system that doesn't have some sort of email in there, get a new point of sale system.

Right.

Because that's the easiest way to do it. When it's like, all right, the customer orders online. It's already in your.

Yeah, right away.

It's just way easier than, you know, exporting your list, importing it to mailchimp.

It's.

It gets a little complicated that way.

All right.

Ghost kitchens, I think they're great.

I love Ghost Kitchen.

I think they're a great way to test. Not only are they a great way to test out new items, right? Like, I know a lot of people who have a pizza shop and they're like, you know what? I want to sell salads, but what I don't want to do is I don't want to add salads to my menu. And then three people order them and then I'm stuck with those three people ordering salads. And they complain when I don't when I take the salad off. So set up a ghost kitchen online where you have salads. It's the same thing you're gonna do anyway, but you have it under a different brand and if it does well, then you just kind of suck it into your main brand and incorporate it.

If you had to pick, like, give me the top four ghost kitchen, like cuisines or types of food that you.

Think do the best, I'd say right now, pizza obviously does good. Salads, chicken sandwiches is hot.

Yep.

Probably burgers like Mr. Beast Burger. Do you know who that is? Yeah, he's the biggest YouTuber. Barstool Sports has a pizza Ghost Kitchen. I actually interviewed the company who works with Mr. Beast and Barstool and top creators to create these ghost kitchen brands. And you know, if you are looking at a ghost kitchen, maybe doing something like that, like you could use the brand of Mr. Beast burger and have it and you just cook the food for him in your kitchen and you get 40 of the revenue.

That's awesome. That's a great way. Especially so whenever there's a talk of recession. The number one thing I've been telling people is taking a lesson from COVID It's like, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Have some alternative revenue streams ready. So that way if one, well, dries up, you know, we're not. You're not sitting on the sidelines going, what the. Right.

It's like, I agree, 100. And that's why I go back to like having a million followers even if they're not locals. Not a bad thing. Because I know many pizza shops who, when Covid hit and the world closed down, they started to create kits and they were sending these mail kits across the country to their followers on social media. And these local businesses who had 400 local followers, which was great. When everything was open, when those 400 people couldn't come into their restaurant, had no way to get a message out to anybody.

Yeah. And no revenue stream, Nothing. They closed.

All those businesses end up closing.

Yeah. All right. Third party delivery.

See, you're getting me here. I, I like, I don't use it myself and I, I know why restaurants hate it, but I know a ton of people who have converted to third party delivery because it's just so hard to find drivers right now because all the drivers and people are working for those third parties. So I think it's. I think it sucks. And I don't. I would rather it not be around, but it is around and there's not much we could do about it. So how can you leverage it for your business to make it work?

Exactly. Plant based meats.

My daughter's a vegetarian, by the way, so. And I know a couple of. I Know a couple of vegan pizzerias who are 100% vegan, which is interesting.

Quite a few of my clients are actually vegan.

Yeah. So I mean, listen, there's obviously a market out there for it. Do I eat it? No, but just because I don't eat it doesn't mean I don't think it should be around. So if you have a market for it and you think that there's customers asking you for it, then I don't think it's a bad thing.

I tried. Like, I think the last time I was at a pizza place, they had a bunch of like the plant based stuff or the protein based crust, like the chicken crust.

Yeah.

It's like the big things I saw. You know, people go in that keto kind of lifestyle, healthy lifestyle is never, I don't think it's ever going to go away. They just kind of repackage it. Yeah. Then you go to keto. Now it's plant based now, you know, it just changes, it just changes shape. But yeah, this time of year, everyone's always looking into getting in shape. You know, first of year, New Year's.

Resolutions, like, vegan's not, vegan's not new. It's been around forever. It's just like.

It's been around forever. It gets more mainstream. Yeah.

People just talk about it more now.

Yeah, definitely. All right, how about buffets?

I don't think buffets gross me out now. They do. I just, I after covet. Something happened in my brain where I don't like anybody touching my food or being around open containers. I went to, I went to Whole Foods the other day and they brought, they were bringing back the samples and I'm like, you couldn't pay me enough money to eat a sample out of that. That now.

Oh, I know. You know, they've, they're. I'm not a huge fan of the buffets. Like, I go to Whole Foods a lot because I, you know, I like the ingredients there and I, I usually like. Because the, I usually get fresh seafood. I like to get some fresh seafood and cook fresh seafood for, you know, Stacy and I. Yeah. And, but man. And I'll just kind of, I'm walking through, I'll swing by the hot buffet just to, just to see what it is. It always looks just like disgusting. Like.

No, you know what? That. And you know what? People are kind of gross. I'm not gonna lie. Go to the gym. Go to the gym and sit right outside the bathroom. Not in a creepy way, but the amount of people who go to the gym don't wash their hand. Don't wash their hands after. Is enormous.

Let's reemphasize right there. If you're gonna stalk people at the bathroom in the gym, don't do it in a creepy way. Don't. Don't sit inside the bathroom staring at people, like, intensely.

Do it outside in, like, a incognito way.

Yeah. All right. How about those one restaurants that. Those theme restaurants and you've heard the name restaurants, you know, like Hooters, Twin Peaks, Tilted Kill. What do you think of those places?

See, I don't. I have three daughters, and I won't go to those places because I can only imagine. Like, I want to resp. And listen, I know that the people who work there choose to work there. They're not forced to work there, so. But I wouldn't want my daughters to work at a place like that. So I just don't go to places.

I see them on a d cloud. I think they're kind of on their way out.

Well, didn't. Who is just close.

Didn't.

Didn't who just go out of business?

I think they did, actually.

I think they either went out of business.

Yeah, A lot of them rebranded and, like, it's sold out and stuff like that. I just. I think it's a. Such a outdated concept. I think especially as we move more towards, you know. Me too. Movement. Yeah. Just, you know, diversity in our. In our society and stuff like that. We just wanted to kind of, like, get away from some of that stuff. I. Number one thing is I never. The food is horrible.

You know, nobody goes there for the food, though, right?

Nobody goes here for the food. But I was just like. Yeah, but then it's like, I was like, you, though? Like, my daughter's like, 26, almost 27. And then it's like, if I go there, I. I just can't. It just, like, makes me feel like a creepy old man, and I don't.

How can I come home and look my daughters in the face.

Sitting there going, no. Yeah, I couldn't do it was Chris Rock's joke. He always says, your only job as a daddy to keep. As a dad is to keep your daughter off the pole.

You know.

Don'T make her a stripper.

That's right.

That's your job. Just keep her like that. All right. Clubhouse.

I mean, I. I deleted the app off my phone a long time ago.

So now Twitter wants to do audio rooms. Right.

I think that you're better off Doing audio rooms on Twitter because at least.

There'S people on Twitter myself, because I'm on Twitter. Clubhouse. It just seems like it's industry. And you and I both know quite a few people still do Clubhouse questions quite a bit.

Sean. Sean Walshef, who we both. I always, every time he says, join me on Clubhouse, I'm like, what for?

Like, dude, let's do Twitter on Twitter about this. He says, what for? Why don't you just do it on Twitter? And I'm like, I'm in. And he's like, yeah, let's do it. But no one ever got back to anybody.

I just don't have the app on my phone. It's like that was a. That was a company that very much was a. A Covid company where covet happened. Nobody could leave. Everybody who wanted to talk to people. It just happened at the right time where they came out with Clubhouse and everybody couldn't go anywhere and they wanted to communicate and it just was like a. The right place at the right time. And now that it's over, it's over.

Done. Clubhouse is dead. Yeah.

There's no reason for it.

No reason for it. All right.

And then as a matter of fact, if you ask me to do a clubhouse, I'm unfriending you everywhere.

All right. Note to self. Never ask Bruce to do Clubhouse. Never ask Bruce right there writing this down so I don't forget. And then the last one, last one. Detroit style pizza.

I love it.

So it's still in.

It's. I mean, listen, it's, it's. It's not as in as it was a year ago, but it's still delicious.

What do you think is the next pizza? So, like, I always, like, there's always like new pizza styles. What's the next pizza style is going to be out there? What do you. What is your prediction? You look into your crystal ball right now and Bruce says the next upcoming pizza style will be.

I think we're styled out. I think we've. We absorbed all the styles of pizza that you could possibly have. I think now it's going to be all right. Let's not try to recreate a style. Let's try to perfect what we do and make it really, really good. Because I think there's, there's a lot of different. Like, New York style is always going to be my favorite. I like New York style.

Yeah.

Because I can eat. You can eat it often. And Detroit style tastes great, but you can't eat it every day. It's not. It's too much cheese. It's not like the healthiest pizza in the world, but New York style to me is always going to be the classic. It's always going to be like, if you can do a really good New York style pizza, I trust you to make me any kind of pizza.

Really? Oh, that's the, that's the lismus test right there.

Yeah. Because if you that up, it's three ingredients. It's dough, sauce, and cheese. You can't do that. This. I'm certainly not letting you make me anything else.

You're out.

Yeah, you're on the clubhouse list.

That's it. So is that gonna be like, when your daughters start dating? Is that gonna be, like, the rule? Like, the guy's gonna have to come in and make a pizza? That should be your, like, your, your, your kind of, like, application. Like, you gotta make me a pizza if I like the pizza with my daughter. If not, get, get out. Get the out before I kill you.

I don't want to make it that easy.

You don't make it that easy. I don't?

Yeah. Like, I don't want. I don't think I'm gonna invite him in my house at all.

You're not gonna put him in your house at all.

You're not allowed in my house. So you guys get engaged. Like, when you guys get engaged, then you can come in my house. She's 21.

21. See, she's dating.

You know what it is? I have, like, nieces that are older. So all my nieces between the ages of 29 and 22, right. And they all had boyfriends. And I, I, I get exhausted trying to get to know all these new people. I was like, come on. I don't want to know anybody. I don't want to. I don't want to meet anybody of your boyfriends until, like, it's, you're gonna get married when you're gonna get married, then bring them over my house and.

I'll get to know in the circle of trust.

Yeah, like, I get to know him. I like them. You break up. And then I was like, I got these stupid pictures on my phone of all of us together, and he's not even part of the equation anymore.

He's texting me. He's upset. It's embarrassing.

I don't want to deal with that.

I don't know what to do. The guy's texting me like, your old boyfriend's texting me. He wants to know if I can help him out. Get back together with you. I'm like, I'm lost. I don't.

I can't do it anymore.

I can't do it. I'm out. I would say I was out too.

Yeah.

Perfect. Bruce, always a pleasure talking to you, my friend. It's always you need to contact Bruce. Always get a hold of him@smartpizza marketing.com. you also, you have another podcast too, don't you?

Yeah, but I kind of. I kind of archived it for now. I'm too busy with smart pizza marketing, so I love that one.

That's a great one.

If you want to. Sometimes I'll throw what I would throw on the podcast over on my YouTube channel, Smart Pizza Marketing. So go follow that and you can kind of find extra content about marketing there too.

Follow. Follow Bruce on YouTube channel. Follow him on. Follow his podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts, it's smart pizza marketing. It's everywhere.

That's right.

It's a global sensation.

Thank you, Donald. It's always fun coming on, hanging with you.

Always great talking to my friend. If you have any questions, please you always reach out to Bruce smartpizzamarketing.com if you need to get a hold of me, you can always reach me@therestaurantcoach.com you want to send me an email, you can always reach me@Donald therestaurantcoach.com we try to make it easy for us to get a hold of people around here. And until then, everyone have a fantastic day.

See ya.