In most cases, employees in the restaurant do not feel that they are involved in the restaurant marketing programs of the restaurant. Employee surveys measure the employees' feelings about their involvement with marketing and their satisfaction with their job.

These surveys are designed to be taken on a regular basis because there are very specific questions that measure improvement in either satisfying your customers or in satisfying your employees. You also need a quarterly follow-up and have a review process. You need to evaluate what worked well in the previous quarter and record any suggested adjustment for future use.

Review and project - What are the conclusions from collecting all the marketing data? These are the strengths and weaknesses of your restaurant, "this is what it looked like"; "this or that is why I say this" and "this is our basic marketing conclusion" for this particular restaurant. With this information you need to set up future marketing objectives and discuss the strategy involved in supporting the objectives and developing individual restaurant marketing strategies and put them on a calendar for the next year and in your 18 month marketing file. Now you have specific numbers and specific periods of time and know exactly what restaurant marketing programs are going to be implemented. What modifications may be needed to get the kinds of results you want for a particular restaurant; what is the criteria you are going to measure on every marketing program; what are the measurable results and how are you going to track these results. Fine tuning will need to take place as you coordinate all of the different restaurant marketing programs.

Management Incentive Programs need to be based on Sales Increases and Bottom-Line Profits. Then management has an incentive, a vested interest, to make sure that the restaurant marketing programs succeed. Management's livelihood will be improved if they do a good job. Pride, satisfaction of a job well done and being part of a successful team and working for a company that does a great job are all very important. But, we also recommend that you provide incentives to the employees who work at each restaurant according to their efforts in giving out "Employee Challenge" Cards. These efforts may give the employee another $50 / $100 a month and besides that, the employee gets the recognition of doing a job that is well done within the company. "This is terrific, life is good." Everybody wants to be a winner and everybody wants to be part of a team that's doing a good job. When you create this type of atmosphere, everything else falls into place.

• Feelings like they belong.
• Recognition as a team member.
• Compensation for extra effort.

All of these are "benefits" of your marketing program.

The employees feel like they're part of the program. They are included in the restaurant marketing planning process. Then, they get the recognition as they are succeeding and doing well in their participation with restaurant marketing. The compensation part is a "bonus" for their participation.