Saturday 5 March 2016

Repeat Customers hold the key to profitability for a food Startup!

For a business to thrive, the number one need is to create a loyal customer base. Customers who will repeat their purchases/visit with your brand. While this is true for any industry, food businesses depend to a very large extend on repeat customers. Studies have found that nearly 45% of  customers that come dining into a Quick Service Restaurant are repeat. This is huge.






Here are a few facts and Tips on customer loyalty:
  • An increase in customer retention is directly linked to a reduction in costs. Not only do they bring you business, but also serve as marketing channels through word of mouth and a direct increase in profitability by 25% to 125%
  • QSRs lose nearly 25% of our customer base every year because customers relocate, find our competition better than ours or find new eating interests. To gain that same percentage of customers back, we will need to spend a lot of money and effort. In effect losing a loyal customer base directly increases our cost which is an overhead.
  • To retain existing customers, it is very important to help your customers go beyond the boundary of just satisfaction and transform this into customer loyalty.  To build that connect it is very important to know your customer base personally well and to create personalized experiences when you are a startup
  • Food is tied to people emotionally. A dining/food experience needs to bring out positive emotions such as - special,valued, important, welcomed, heard, Joyful, and respected. Before your food startup becomes too big, ensure that you set in such a culture among your staff that they understand and behave as if each customer is a king/Queen. Customers love the larger than normal life experiences that they go through. Create Such emotional experiences for your customers.
  • Stay Connected with your customer through Social Media, Emails, Blogs, Telephone. Social media and digital marketing that use analytics based approach to create personal and custom messages are not just a hype. They are required to keep connected to your customer every day.
Some of the best examples of  QSRs that give these delightlful & personalized experiences are Rajdhani, Stoner Ice Cream, Burger King to name a few.  So if you are a personal baker Or a personal catering service OR a QSR that sells specialized items just make sure you get an emotion ticking for the customer. That is what will set you apart from competition and take you to profitability

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