Independent restaurants unite to get your attention – Sysco helps them get more bang for their marketing buck

Brick Oven Bistro on The Grove in downtown Boise is known for its traditional American food prepared from scratch with fresh ingredients.

Melissa Chee
The Idaho Statesman

http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040903/NEWS02/409030303/1029

But this local restaurant has never had the marketing prowess of chain restaurants that tempt diners with ads in the media.

Now, with the help of Sysco Food Services of Idaho, Brick Oven Bistro and nine other independent local restaurants are a step closer to leveling the playing field.

Sysco has teamed with the local restaurants to make up Idaho’s Local Flavor, a cooperative marketing campaign to leverage the collective resources of independents in negotiating ad rates with local media.

"It’s allowing us to combine our resources and reduce the cost of advertising," said Mike Fitzgerald, TableRock Brewpub & Grill owner. "It’s the only way we can come anywhere close to competing with the buying power of the chain restaurants."

The 10 restaurants are advertising with professional help from a local public relations firm, Boss Communications & Steele and Associates.

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Best of show

Idaho’s Local Flavor campaign was awarded the Best of Show in a marketing competition put on by the International Foodservice Distributors Association. The competition recognizes marketing and communications programs that support restaurant operators and build sales, IFDA president Mark Allen said.

Local Flavor restaurants

Angell’s Bar & Grill
9th & Main, Boise
342-4900

TableRock Brewpub & Grill
Capitol & Fulton, Boise
342-0944

Brick Oven Bistro
8th & Main On the Grove, Boise
342-3456

The Gamekeeper
11th & Main, Boise
343-4611

El Gringo
Overland & Phillippi, Boise
377-2387

Lock, Stock and Barrel
11th & West Jefferson, Boise
336-4266

The Piper Pub & Grill
8th & Main, Boise
343-2444

Café Olé
8th Street Marketplace, Boise
344-3222

Borton’s Steaks, Seafood & Spirits
10th & Main, Boise
336-9100

Berryhill & Co.
2170 Broadway Ave., Boise
387-3553

Related Links

* Inc.com http://www.inc.com/magazine/20010901/23348.html

* International Foodservice Distributors Association http://www.ifdaonline.org/webarticles/anmviewer.asp?a=283&z=1

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"It’s like having your own marketing, advertising, publicity department that you can call," said Brick Oven Bistro co-owner Stephanie Telesco.

The cooperative program gives the restaurant owners the chance to get more for their dollar in newspaper ads, television commercials and other promotions.

"We can buy larger contracts committing the group to more space," Fitzgerald said. "If you commit to less space, it costs you more per column inch. We can also participate in long-term giveaways that one restaurant couldn’t support by itself."

"The restaurants save about 50 percent on advertising costs," said Terry Reynolds, vice president of marketing for Sysco Food Services of Idaho.

And it looks like independent restaurants are going to need a leg up.

Last year, restaurant industry sales were up 3.4 percent, but independent restaurants aren’t the ones making the gains. Smaller chains and independent restaurants made up 42.9 percent of the $288.4 billion restaurant industry, a drop of more than one half of a percentage point from the previous year, according to Technomic Inc., a Chicago food-consulting firm. The top 100 big companies in the industry, however, continued to gain share.

Independent businesses are forming and joining alliances, cooperatives, networks and coalitions in record numbers, according to Inc.com. "Small companies are gaining the benefits of bigness," according to the magazine for business owners.

The Idaho’s Local Flavor campaign is designed to position locally owned restaurants as being a part of the state’s cultural landscape, Sysco’s Reynolds said.

The campaign features the chef or owner or each participating restaurant. Full-page ads in Scene, The Idaho Statesman’s Friday entertainment guide, highlight one restaurant and include the names of other Local Flavor restaurants along the bottom. Other marketing tactics include two- to four-page inserts in the Boise Weekly, Thrive ads, radio ads during the holidays and television promotions on KTVB Saturday morning "Flavor of the Week" and KNIN weekday "Dine with the 9" features, according to Christina Kinman, Boss Communications & Steele and Associates media specialist.

"Many of these restaurants have signature dishes that utilize Idaho products," Reynolds said. "National restaurants usually have a menu that is the same in Salt Lake City as it is in Boise. Local Flavor restaurants are unique to our area."

People were the main indicator of the program’s success for Telesco, who has participated in Local Flavor for about one year. After the restaurant’s first full-page ad in Scene, she was working as a greeter and people came in and said "we saw your ad in the paper."

"Our budget has stayed the same," she said. "But we’re getting far more — the impact is far greater than what we could do on our own."