Bringing Your Value Proposition To Life

Bringing Your Value Proposition to Life Execute and Communicate Your Value Proposition

Differentiate Your Operation and Customer Experience You’ve gone through the hard work of assessing your operation, reviewing your environment and competition, and defining your operation’s unique and compelling value proposition.

Now what?

Now it’s time to execute your unique value proposition and communicate it to current and potential customers.

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Introduction

Deliver Your Value Proposition

by Aligning Your Operations

After You Have Refined Your Value Proposition . . .

Delivering a unique and compelling value proposition requires aligning every aspect of your operation and your experience—the food, the service, the menu, and the ambience. Here are tips for each of these areas.

In today’s challenging environment, the best defense continues to be a good offense. A key part of this good offense entails reviewing and refining your operation’s unique and compelling value proposition.

Start with the Food While you may choose to create a value proposition and differentiate based on something other than food—such as speed, fun, kid-friendliness, cost, or the overall experience—offering unique and consistent food is a critical part of every value proposition. Some suggestions: • Reconsider the items offered. Every item on the menu should be consistent with an operation’s value proposition—from the entrees to the appetizers, desserts, and beverages. The strategic decision about the unique value proposition should be the driver for deciding which items to offer.

Sysco’s recently published “Enhance Your Operation’s Value Proposition” distills best practices from leading industry experts on creating or enhancing your value proposition to make it as unique and powerful as possible.

• Determine your signature item(s). Every operation should have a small number of signature items (maybe even one) that are unique and differentiating, and for which the operation is known. The signature item(s) must always be available and must be consistent. What are your signature items?

But once you go through this strategic process of defining what your operation stands for, you face another challenge: How to execute the value proposition? How to deliver it, live it, make it real, put it into practice, and communicate it?

Sysco has reviewed and distilled advice and best practices from experienced operators and industry experts to help you turn your value proposition from a concept into a reality.

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Operations (continued) Bill Marvin, The Restaurant Doctor, points out that during stressful times people want familiar “comfort” foods. Consider providing comfort foods with an interesting or unique twist.

• Evaluate your food purchasing. Ensure you are getting the greatest value. Also, review the ingredients and brands you are buying to ensure that they are consistent with your value proposition. If your value proposition is about freshness or healthy fare, are you buying the freshest, healthiest ingredients and brands? If your value proposition emphasizes speed and convenience, are the items you are purchasing the fastest and easiest to prepare?

Ask your Sysco Marketing Associate to help ensure that your purchases fit well with your value proposition.

• Focus on presentation. How you present your food is as important as the food itself.

The presentation must be consistent with your value proposition. An operator with a value proposition of “black-tie quality food in a bluejeans atmosphere” would present its food in one way; a restaurant with a value proposition of “thin crust pizza for the entire family” would present the food in another way. Think carefully about how to present your food in a way that is unique and that properly reflects your value proposition.

Emphasize Staffing and Service An operation’s value proposition is truly brought to life through the people in the operation and the service they provide to customers. Suggestions for ensuring that your operation’s service fits with your value proposition include hiring people whose personality and behavior fit with the value proposition you want to create, and then investing to train all of your employees on your operation’s unique value proposition. They need to understand it, deliver it, and live it each day. Some specific training tips: • Pre-Shift Meetings. Having a staff line-up before each shift provides you an opportunity to focus your staff’s energy. Just a quick fiveminute meeting allows you to reinforce your value proposition and remind your people how you expect them to convey the value proposition to your guests. It also provides an opportunity to celebrate those employees who have exemplified the behaviors you want.

• Written Expectations. Do you have a written list of the expectations you have for your servers every time they greet a table? Providing them with step-by-step instructions of exactly how you want guests to be taken care of takes the guess work out of the process. Your servers should know their requirements right off the top of their head. For example, when asked how quickly they should greet a table, they should immediately respond, “within 60 seconds!” (or whatever your requirements are). An answer of “as soon as I can get there” shows the need for a more structured approach.

• Sales and Service Contests. There is nothing servers like more than a little friendly competition—especially when prizes are involved!

Create contests that support your unique value proposition. Whether it is selling your signature dish or creating a “wow” guest moment, a contest helps servers put your value proposition into action.

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Operations (continued) • Reviews and Feedback. Regular reviews for your front- and back-of-the-house staff can help increase productivity and reduce turnover. The more your employees know and understand what is expected of them, the better they will perform!

Bill Marvin stresses, “This is not the time to cut back on training and staff development. Quite the contrary . . . enhancing your level of guest service can help you stand out from other restaurants.”

• Menu Item Descriptions. Describing important items, the ingredients, and how these items are cooked/prepared can paint a picture for your guests that is hard to resist. Don’t just assume that your guests know all about the effort you put into making each dish special. Tell them about it!

Reassess Your Menu Your menu is perhaps the most visible representation of your operation’s value proposition.

It is not just a listing of the items you serve; it conveys what is unique about your operation.

Suggestions for how to take full advantage of your menu to convey your value proposition include: • Menu Item Placement. Where are your specialty items on your menu? Are they hidden on the back page? They should pop off the page so that one quick glance conveys to the guest what is unique about your restaurant.

• Menu Item Pricing. Are you getting what you deserve for the items that no one else has? If you’re highlighting your most unique item(s), make sure you are making good margins. Your Sysco Marketing Associate can help you analyze the profitability of each of your menu items to determine how much they are contributing to your bottom line.

(Note: as operators strive to deliver value in this difficult economic environment, some may be setting prices too low, hurting their margins. As Steve Kron from Goldman Sachs said in a research note he wrote in early October, 2008, “While we believe value-added concepts will fare better in the current environment, commodity and labor headwinds make us question whether the trade off of margins for traffic is a rational, profitable decision.” In other words, it is important to offer value, but you must keep your profitability in mind.)

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Evaluate Your Experience, Ambience, and Décor The value proposition is conveyed through every detail of the customer experience—the physical premises, the signage, the layout of the operation, the colors, the lighting, the music, the bathrooms— everything. Each of these details should be carefully evaluated to determine if it is consistent with the value proposition and is conveying the intended impression.

Put yourself in your guests’ shoes. What do they see when they walk into your restaurant? Determine if the sights, the smells, and the overall feel is the message you are trying to convey. Think about little touches you can add to enhance each guest’s experience to even more effectively convey your value proposition.

By coordinating and aligning every aspect of your operation, you can convey a consistent, unique, and compelling value proposition.

The more you can differentiate yourself from your competition, the more your customers will reward you with their patronage. Customers are looking at the overall value for their dining experience, and the more consistent your message is–from the food, to the service, to the atmosphere–the greater the perceived value for your guests.

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Communicating Your Value Proposition You’ve decided on your unique value proposition and have aligned every aspect of your operation to deliver this proposition. Now the key is communicating the value proposition.

Words Matter To convey your value proposition, be able to articulate what is unique about your restaurant in one simple, clear thought. The precise words that you choose are extremely important. For example, the value proposition that launched Domino’s was, “Fresh, hot pizza delivered In 30 minutes or less, guaranteed.” Papa John’s was built with a value proposition of “Better ingredients. Better Pizza.” In these statements, each word matters.

What one sentence and what precise words convey your operation’s unique value proposition?

Onsite Marketing In addition to using the menu to convey your value proposition, it can be communicated in the types of promotions you offer, as long as those promotions are consistent with and emphasize your operation’s unique attributes and offerings. Other ways it can be communicated on site are through signage, table tents, even buttons on servers. It can be communicated in how the phone is answered, in how servers greet guests, and even through printing on take- out bags.

Who are your potential customers? How can you best reach out to them?

Communicating with Loyal Customers Many successful operators are engaging in a variety of marketing efforts to convey their value proposition to their current customers. They are collecting email addresses, creating databases, and then sending regular emails and e-newsletters.

They are creating loyalty programs and birthday

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clubs, holding wine tastings, and sponsoring special events.

They are providing loyal customers with coupons and discounts, taking pictures of loyal customers and posting them on a wall of fame, and are even naming menu items after their most loyal customers.

Each of these actions is not just a creative marketing vehicle; it is a way to convey and reinforce what is unique about the operation.

Who are your most loyal customers? How can you get them to increase their visits to your operation?

Targeting New Customers While some operators are employing traditional marketing techniques such as advertising and direct marketing to deliver messages about their value proposition, other operators are using much more targeted marketing efforts. They are using web and email marketing, engaging in permission-based marketing on mobile devices, and are beginning to deliver coupons to cell phones.

What can you do to enhance the onsite marketing of your operation?

Look at every aspect of your marketing as an opportunity to communicate your value proposition to current and prospective customers. Make sure the message you are conveying to your customers is consistent with your value proposition. Market what makes your operation unique and your customers will visit again and again.

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SYSCO Can Help As you work to execute and communicate your value proposition, Sysco can help.

• Marketing Associate support. Marketing Associates are valuable resources in helping you execute your strategy and deliver on your value proposition. Marketing Associates can help in menu planning and in developing offerings that appeal to distinct customer segments. Enlist their help today.

• Business Reviews. Through regular business reviews, Sysco experts can help you refine your proposition, execute it, and communicate it.

• iCare Partners. Sysco has formed relationships with several leading marketing services companies that can help operators execute and communicate their unique value proposition. Relevant iCare partners and ways that they can add value include:

- Focus Marketing helps operators improve their menu profitability. They analyze menus and provide recommendations to maximize profitability.

- Applied Media Technologies Corporation helps operations enhance their guest experience.

They do this by assisting operators in creating a perfect atmosphere through 24-hour commercial-free Sirius Satellite Radio and marketing on-hold.

- Fishbowl Marketing helps operators improve their communication with guest and potential guests.

Specifically, Fishbowl has expertise in helping operators effectively communicate their value proposition to increase customer loyalty and attract new customers.

- Red Book Solutions helps operators deliver flawless service. Red Book Solutions provides tools and training that help managers and staff deliver the service that is required as part of the operation’s desired value proposition.

Information on the SYSCO iCare program and on each iCare partner can be found at www.syscoicare.com.

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For more information, please contact your SYSCO Marketing Associate.

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