Any of you guys do old fashined food sampling on your products. In the restaurant for customer that are carry out or out side, do you take it on marketing blitz for sample. is there any success ratio on sampling. any good thing or bad thing to watch out if one deside to do it.
Thanks
Jayp
I am sending hand addresses hand signed letters with a magnet and a certificate for a free large one topping pizza, for carryout or delivery to every residential address in my delivery area. My goal is to put out 500 a week, but have only gotten that many out a few weeks. Typically, I am getting 150-250 out per week. I am getting over 30% redeemed and am confident that letting my product and service sell itself will be the best marketing idea I have utilized.
We are situated on the outside shops of a shopping centre complex.
Thursday evenings is late night shopping - yes in Western Australia we are still backwards in trading hours where shops close at 6 pm,except Thursday nights where they trade to 9pm.
Sometimes on thursday nights if we are a bit slow we bake a 15" pizza and cut it into small bite size samples and place it on a serving tray and walk the mall offering samples to consumers in the centre. We carry menus and deal sheets to give to them.
We always do a simple but tasty variant that most people would like such as BBQ Chicken or our house special.
We normally pick up about 5 extra customers who try and then decide to buy one after doing their shopping (bear in mind we are in a centre with 1 major supermarket and about 25 smaller speciality stores). It’s not big digs but they are all extras and it doesn’t cost a lot to do a sampling.
Another is doing taste samples on new variants. We cut them into small bits and offer them to customers while they are waiting for their order.
If you have a good product it is a good way to build business. We know that once people try ours they mostly will buy. Getting them to try the first time is the hard part, except if you give them a sample or a free pizza offer as with our “New Movers” (see previous posts on this).
Dave
We have occasionly sent samples of potential new products out to delivery customers and give to waiting carry-out sutomers. Dine-in customers is a no-branier. We have added about three new items and about 3 new signature pizzas this way. Several others have gotten new followings with sampling.
I have found that it works well and is a good idea if done with hot (or cold), fresh product