They know how much their big customers are worth to them and they have set aside marketing dollars to make sure that these High Rollers return.

What do you do for your "High Rollers"? What do you do for the 30% of your customers who provide 70% of your Sales? What special services do you provide to ensure that these customers WANT to come back again and again to your restaurant? Do you have a list of your top fifty customers? How about your top ten customers?

I think a restaurant owner/manager can learn a lot from how casinos treat their customers. Restaurants, in general, give the same to deal to everyone. They do not differentiate between their "good customers" and the "other" customers. In fact, most restaurants don't even know for sure who their best customers are; they don't know how much they're worth; what their value is worth to their business over time, and as a result they do not know whether to invest in them or not. They don't even know when their customers leave for a competitor.

The restaurant marketing program must be designed to help you to gather this information. You need to gather the names, addresses, phone numbers, fax and email information on your customers. It will also gather birthday, anniversary and other special event information for your database. You will be able to record "notes" on every customer. You will be able to build your volume through restaurant marketing.

You know how to effectively administer these special event programs, so we will not go into detail here. You must track the frequency and the total dollars that the customer spends each visit and you have access to this information.

With this information, you can set up a program to differentiate and to reward your very best customers. You need to make rewards proportional to a customer's spending. The more a customer spends with you, the more you should reward them. The objective of this type of program is threefold:

• To appeal to and recruit your competitor's very best customers.
• To reward and to retain your own best customers. (30% category)
• To encourage and to provide an incentive for all your other customers (70% category) to spend more money with you.

You must have an appropriate method to market to every single one of your customers as well as, methods to bring in new customers.