Marketing communication strategies for Subway Restaurant

Marketing Communication for Subway Restaurant

Marketing for any product or any service depends on the inherent reasons for the demand of that product or service. Thus the relative importance of different aspects is not the same for the marketing of different products or services. A restaurant is a place all of us go for a meal, bit, in our own minds, the rationale for going to different types or classes of restaurants are different. This determines the people who will go to that particular restaurant and what is the level of prices that he expects to pay. Some high class restaurants may get a crowd who just want to be seen there to improve their social status. But, subway restaurants are for the hoi polloi.

A product for the general public is viewed in marketing terms more as a sales exercise than a publicity exercise. (Buttle, 1996) Marketing is generally considered as the sexier step sister to the soot covered and dirty "Cinderella" of sales. Yet, the fairy godmothers of certain business have changed the conditions that take Cinderella to the ball for eventual marriage to the prince. In academic and business circles, the sales force and the sales management are often viewed as the part of the promotional or communications elements of the marketing mix. This view is reflected in the traditional concept of the 4-Ps of marketing. The strategic importance of sales in certain businesses has not been fully appreciated and the degrees of importance of integrating the sales activity into the wider marketing activities of the organization are not realized. This is true definitely in the industrial and organizational marketing and at a smaller level in the marketing of restaurants. To think of possible expansion in the role of the sales force, and the role of other people not in the sales force to sales requires changes in common attitudes and practices concerning sales. It also means that people in other functional areas have to be trained to think in terms of sales and practice their own skills for the development of the business.

The traveling peddlers of goods were the earliest model of salesmen and may be taken as the oldest form of selling. As the years have passed, the sales methods have become more refined, but the basic characteristics of the salesman remained the same. (Manning, & Reece, 1997). This form of sales is effective for low to medium priced goods or services. These customers cannot afford to pay for building up long-term relationships with the salesman. The sales person will have to make a large number of calls to meet his/her sales targets. This type of sales force sells the goods in a single call with only a single appointment with the buyer. With the development of the market, many such products have become commodities and most of the available products have the same properties. They also perform in a similar manner.

The buyers are also aware of this and can get the details about the product easily. The buyers end up knowing what they want, where he can get the product, and can reach many suppliers, the determining factor for their purchase becomes only - PRICE. The traditional salesman has no role in the process and he becomes a server of the customer in the selling point. The existence of the sales person itself has been viewed as a cost in many business and they have decided to cut down on one element of their cost by removing the salesman. (Dainow, & Bailey, 1988). They are now selling through the Internet as this helps them to sell at a lower price. Where there is a transaction before a sale, the salesman is an essential go between to even fix the price after negotiations. This still happens in automobile sales. But some manufacturers have made the sales man redundant in this area by putting up the car prices and the other facilities on the internet. They have also made these prices non-negotiable. A brand that comes readily to mind is Saturn by GM in the home of the free market.

For other cars also in many instances the prices are available on the net and the customer is free to find out the best bargain. This also the situation in most limited service restaurants like subway restaurants. They have been reduced to the level of commodities and cannot really afford salesmen or other conventional forms of publicity. So, who is the salesman in such a restaurant? The answer is nobody as also for everybody. Extending a rather tenuous analogy from "The Count of Monte Cristo," the staff in these restaurants have to believe that "we are all for one, and one for all" In short, the sales effort is to be handled by nobody specific and at the same time, by everybody. The agency for promoting the publicity for Subway Restaurants, Fogarty Klein Monroe was very much eager to publicize their low-fat sandwiches. This was a program, which was aimed at enabling the locals to lose their weight by means of a citywide campaign and was a technique of marketing endured. (Hassell, 2001)

Let us look at how the different people in the restaurants can help. We shall start with the man whom everybody hears about, but rarely sees - the chef. The restaurant employees are becoming liable for all types of transactions. The latest being the liability to pay income tax on tips. The manager of the restaurant and even the chef is responsible for the correct reporting about the tips received by the waiters to the tax authorities. This is a transaction most of them do not have the opportunity to see or even receive from the customers. The chefs thus feel that they are being burdened with tasks that they know little about. But they have been promoting their restaurants in novel ways to help them get ahead. In this situation, two different cities have seen promotional efforts by chefs meet with great success the oldest one being the effort in New Orleans. The restaurants should work as a team for the success of the organization. (Scholtes, 1988).

This is done for the aid of the special children in "St. Michaels Special School for Special Children." The program is called "The Chef's Charity for Children" and is a cooperative effort by all the chefs in New Orleans. They all get together in the biggest ballroom in town, in the Imperial room of the Fairmont Hotel. About a 1000 people can be accommodated every day and the tickets are sold for $35 per head. The festival goes on for two days and the proceeds are given to the school. Each chef teaches the method of cooking one particular dish and the demonstration is shown on TV to all parts of the room. The television screening is a contribution to the cause by WWL- TV the local station for CBS in New Orleans. A monitor is provided within 12 feet of every guest and the program can be seen clearly. All types of specialty food within the general New Orleans area are cooked - Cajun, Creole and French. After the cooking is over, the meals are served. The meal consists of not only the dishes cooked by the chefs, but also the main meal cooked by the staff of the hotel. The raw material for the food is provided by the hotel and the wines are provided free by the distributors of wines in New Orleans. This has built a unique spirit of camaraderie among the chefs in New Orleans and even a book of cooking has come out. (http://www.culinary.org) In terms of the benefits to the restaurants whose chefs participate, the impact is tremendous. First, the quality of their cooking gets big stage to be shown on.

The chef feels important and this aspect improves his enthusiasm and performance. The name of the restaurant is promoted along with the chef, and the donation given to the school improves the general image of the trade and the image of the participating restaurants in particular. The cost is only in terms of the non-availability of the chef for two days in the year. The chef and other employees need to be treated in the same manner as a customer would be treated. (www.ces.ncsu.edu) Can the subway restaurants in any city combine and start such a promotion. They may decide to promote their own specialties, or their quality along with their speed. It may become an opportunity for them to demonstrate their own developed dishes, and not only a festival of ethnic cooking. The matter is that this will provide some image to these restaurants, which they do not have now. Advertising occupies an important role in the marketing of any business, and this is true for Subway also. (The New York Times, 10 February 2002)

The quality of the products is very important and they should be different, and more appealing than offered by other big food suppliers. (www.newfarm.org) Some restaurants celebrate seasons with their special meals. Asparagus is one of the first spring vegetables available in New Jersey. Normally, it is a difficult vegetable to combine in a full meal with wine and the lot. At the same time people love the vegetable. Restaurant owner cum chef of Restaurant Serenade stuck to a menu with a lot of asparagus for the month of April. This was actually a sort of a theme dinner with the theme being asparagus and the chef had tried out other theme dinners in the past. "Asparagus is very popular," the owner said. "It's the world's perfect vegetable. I don't know anyone who doesn't like asparagus." The top of the season was on April 15th which provided an all asparagus dinner. The price of the dinner was fixed in advance at $120 per person and consisted of an asparagus soup, a spring roll, and baby lamb stuffed with asparagus, a salad with asparagus, and an asparagus cake. Crisp young and fresh wines accompanied the dinner. The attendance was 85% of the capacity, and apparently the diners liked the food. (www.restaurant-marketing.net)

This is an ordinary restaurant with an ordinary condition. But, they decided to set up a special meal to attract special customers and promote the restaurant. The promotion was not a massive exercise with all America promotions and advertising with the built in costs. It had to get enough customers to fill their seats. Most of the time, it will be only their regular customers who will come. If the announcement is made well in time, and the event is promoted locally, the attendance will be enough. At the same time, the promotions like this will give an element of image to the restaurant. These promotions will give the restaurant an image it cannot otherwise get. These promotions will fill up the seats when they are otherwise difficult to fill. The success of such campaigns will make the restaurant staff get a feeling of self-satisfaction. After the attacks of September11, marketing had to play a great role in bringing people back to sub-way restaurants, to instill in them the confidence because of the fear caused by the attacks. (www.gaddresearch.com)

Some old and established restaurants used their age to develop promotions. Jax Cafe in Minneapolis is a 70-year-old restaurant and it wanted to convince its customers of their long-term association with the restaurant and thus build brand loyalty. To do this, it printed a menu card with the prices of 1933 on the card. This was not for regular usage on al tables, but meant only for a specially selected table. The operation had gone on from April 2002 through November 2002, and a table was selected each night by the Jax staff every night where the special menu prices were to be applied. The menu was a copy from the real menu of 1933, 1939 or 1954. This was not available during the peak days of Friday and Saturday. The people lucky enough to be allocated seats at that table could order items at a steep discount - like a shrimp cocktail, oysters or a Martini for 25 cents each.

That menu sold the highest priced Porterhouse steak at $4 each, which was the price in 1954. The menu is only a part of the total package. The full lot of black and green dinner menus has been replaced, as also the lunch menus. This menu is in the form of a special edition. The menu also shows the traditional items available in Jax in photographs like original bar receipts, old matchbooks, members of the founding family and long time employees. This is also reflected in the Jax Memoirs which is a newsletter for the restaurant printed in the style of a magazine. This also is talking about the history of the restaurant and the promotions carried out by the restaurant at various times. This scheme was carried further by fixing July 27th as the 70th Anniversary Wedding Night. This could be attended by anybody who had fixed a groom's dinner or Wedding party at Jax after the inauguration of the restaurant in 1933. This will have a complimentary wedding cake for the couple and will be followed by champagne.

A local judge will be available on hand to renew the vows that had been taken by the couple. There was also a cabaret night on October 10th. This was called a Billie Holiday Tribute. The entire promotion was to end with a Grand Anniversary Celebration in the middle of November. (www.restaurant-marketing.net/magazine/April03/promotions) Todayage is viewed as a disqualification and this is supposed to be the age of the young. People still love their old favorites, at least some do. Remember what happened in 1985 when the company sought to replace coke with a brand new formulation called New Coke. The customers rebelled and after some time, old Coke had to be brought back as Classic Coke. It is this variety of Coke that still sells in the United States. With restaurants also people have images of their life. How many of us can forget the restaurant where we courted, or went for the first time as a family? These are the part of our lives.

The old people may not be going out so much, but when they do go out, they may still prefer to go to those places with which they still have images. Even when people change towns or residences, they still have old memories and these memories can be used to reinforce the loyalty. Even some of today's generation may feel that would like to go back to "the good, old times." They would also be enthusiastic about this type of a promotion. The subway restaurants may not have that much of history in their favor, but they may try to reinforce their image of being the early introducers of a new culture. (McRae, 1998). May be they can tie themselves up to the popular music of the time they were first launched. Other possibilities also exist. People have to think and think hard to promote restaurants. Restaurants now employ marketing agencies to promote their sales. NL partners is one such concern which deals with marketing and advertising and has been promoting sales for over 150 restaurants in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and northern New York State. (www.nlpartners.com/html/ffood.html)

Sub-way restaurants by means of creative toy concepts and promotional campaigns sub-way restaurants were also trying to sway kids into sub-way restaurants. (www.subway.com) A restaurant, O'Hara's Pub and grille in Brunswick, Ohio have had a continuous promotion scheme going on for the last 23 years, since it started. This gives free vacations to its customers to different locations like Cancun, Aruba, Orlando, and Las Vegas and so on. These are based on the results of their karaoke contest which is held for 10 weeks in the year. Every week the winners win $50 a week. The winners come back for a big contest at the end of the period. The winners in the big show compete for the trip to the location which is announced every year. The advantage of the karaoke contest is that it draws in a whole new crowd, and they all like to try their skills in front of the audience and the mike. The winner is happy, but all the losers have made money and free publicity for the restaurant.

Some may even come back to try their luck in subsequent years. These appeals to the young, sometimes even very young. However, they still pay money to the restaurant through the bills and provide entertainment through their performances. This promotional concept is now being extended by them with a Happy Hour Wheel. Here the patrons spin a wheel to win a trip. This is a new concept and may not have been so well thought out in terms of the marketing impact. That is one of the troubles with promotion. Sometimes we get so carried away with the success of a scheme that we try to repeat it in other areas without really analyzing whether the extension will be profitable or not. In common terms, it is like a price cut. Normally price cuts will bring additional customers and sales, but they also reduce profits. If one keeps continuously cutting prices, his volumes may increase, but he has also got to remember that as a businessman, he also must be profitable. Volumes and the total neglect of profits is not a proper business goal. This type of promotional schemes may appeal directly to the customers of Subway Restaurants. (www.restaurant-marketing.net/magazine/April03)