In theory, implementing tactics and hacks can help lead to explosive growth for your restaurant.
But…the reality is that tactics and hacks may not be a reliable source sustainable restaurant growth, even if they are creating explosive growth right now. The truth is, both tactics and hacks can become outdated very quickly.
Customer acquisition methods are changing faster than ever and the channels in which you reach your customers are evolving at the same rate. So, the tactics and strategies that are effective now, might be inefficient, if not useless, a few months from now.
The lesson being, explosive growth is not a result of one tactic or hack, it is a result of strategic processes that consistently reveal and create tactics that result in explosive growth. These processes are what Brian Balfour calls a “growth machine”.
A growth machine has three components:
- Scalability
- Predictability
- Repeatability
A machine is built to produce an ever growing engaged user base. The machine creates the tactics. The process makes the machine.
Bottom line: Tactics first is putting the cart before the horse. You need a process that will help you build a scalable, predictable, and repeatable growth machine. “
There are 3 reasons growth machines are effective:
1) Growth machines create meaningful feedback loops.
Growth is a sum of a lot of small parts. And the process for finding those small parts and putting them together to grow your restaurant is often a matter of trial, error, and experimentation.
This is why your growth machine should be designed to track your efforts so that you always have accurate feedback on how your current strategies are performing. That way, you can use your data to make precise adjustments and calculated risks when it comes to your growth strategy.
2) Growth machines are designed to specifically serve your business.
Growth strategy tactics used by other businesses are never going to be as effective as the marketing hacks designed for your restaurant. Every business is vastly different, even within niche markets. And trying to mold someone else’s strategy to yours is never going to be as effective as creating processes that help you form strategies tailored to your business.
3) Growth machines are controllable.
The best thing about creating processes that help your restaurant manage growth is that you’re in control. You don’t want the success of your business to rely on is the success of another business.
When you have a data-driven understanding of your growth efforts, you are always in control of the framework by which you are making your decisions and you can always improve and refine it.
So, with the right application and focus, you should be able to create processes that consistently generate growth in a way you can control and that are always improving over time.
Six Elements of a Good Process
- Setting big goals against the areas that impact your growth the most.
- Continually coming up with restaurant growth ideas and experiments.
- Prioritizing those experiments.
- A way to efficiently design and implement the experiments.
- Analysis of the successes and failures.
- Sharing what you learn with your team.
Get those 6 things right and you’re on the right track to reliably grow your restaurant.
