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Month: April 2019

Common Email Marketing Mistakes & How To Avoid Them

Posted on by inrestoblog

72% customers still prefer companies to contact them via email – and restaurant business is no exception. For a restaurant, sending promotional and offer related emails is one of the most common marketing strategies to get customers and generate revenue.

But how often you send an email campaign that has a significant effect on your restaurant business or your email engagement rates? Will sending more emails get you more customers? Why your customers might not be clicking your emails?

In this article, we will reveal the answers to the above questions, common mistakes that a restaurant makes while sending their emails and the best solution to avoid them.

You’re Sending Too Many Promotional Emails
One of the major reasons that your user unsubscribe from your emails is due to high frequency. There is a chance of losing potential value customer if they unsubscribe from your email list. While the ideal time and frequency of sending promotional emails vary from industry to industry, data suggests that people are open to receiving emails once a week or twice a month.

Solution
Don’t bombard your user’s Inbox with frequent emails. Plan your email marketing strategy and opt for weekly or bi-monthly newsletter or discount code. Also, you can go for “manage email preferences” instead of “unsubscribe” where you can give your users an option to reduce the frequency of emails received by you. This way, you won’t lose a chance to connect with your valuable customer.

Your Mailing List Is Not Relevant
One of the most common reasons that your email is not working for your business is because you are sending it to the wrong database. Building a relevant mailing list for your business is extremely important. Once you have your own base of interested foodies, you’ll see a significant change in your email performance.

Solution
It is extremely important to understand the source of your customer data and its relevance. The best way to get the customer data is by collecting it yourself. When a diner visits your restaurant, ensure that you collect user’s data either during walk-ins and/or while taking the feedback. For error-free data collection, we would suggest you to go for a digital platform to collect feedback and manage reservations.

You Are Sending The Same Email To Everyone
A common user received 121 emails per day. Now, that’s a lot of emails. If you want your email to stand out, then it is important that you should go for email personalization and customization. Compared to non-personalized emails, personalized promotional emails have 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher unique click rates. (Source – invesp)

Solution
Segment your mailing list based on loyal diners, new diners, diners who haven’t visited your restaurant for a while (say 2-3 months) and diners whose birthday/anniversary are coming. Personalize the communication and trigger targeted email campaigns based on the user’s data. Greeting your diners is not only common courtesy in email marketing But also a perfect reason to include an offer that’s hard to resist

To Sum Up
Email marketing is a powerful tool to promote your restaurant, given that you avoid these mistakes. To conclude, here are the three most important points to remember:

  • Use digital platform to a high quality mailing list.
  • Create an email marketing strategy where you define the frequency of your emails.
  • Choose appropriate criteria for segmentation and personalize communication accordingly

How Torqus Helped Theobroma Manage Their Backend Operations With Ease

Posted on by inresto


Inspired by the memories of little patisseries in France, Kainaz Messman started Theobroma after having worked as a pastry chef with the Oberoi group of hotels. It has now evolved into a full-fledged patisserie & bakery chain spanning Mumbai, Delhi NCR, and Pune.

The chain has a central kitchen based model. While the majority of products sold are manufactured and packaged in the central kitchen itself, the cafe and the express formats offer certain menu items which are manufactured at the central kitchen but assembled at the store.

In conversation with Nihal Harchandrai, Head of Finance and Strategic Initiatives at Theobroma:

Theobroma is a part of fond memories of countless Indians. Tell us about your journey and your first patisserie in Mumbai.

When we started our first patisserie at Colaba in 2004, we did not know what to expect. We didn’t know if we would be able to recover the costs of starting our business or whether we would have been able to fill up the four small tables. All that we were doing was making things which we loved to eat. Yes, we did hope to do well but we didn’t predict or dared to hope for the success of our brand and the love we have received from our guests.

What were the challenges faced by Theobroma prior to Torqus? How did Torqus help them overcome those challenges?

Our legacy systems didn’t capture our sales and inventory in real time. With real-time and robust POS system and a top-notch inventory management system, Torqus made our daily operations a cake-walk. With Torqus, I am able to monitor the sales and performance of all my outlets from anywhere.

How do you procure and manage the raw materials for your vast menu while ensuring minimal wastages?

We feel it is important to use the right raw materials in exact portions to create a world-class taste. For instance, we seek out real and high-quality chocolates instead of compounds made with vegetable fat. With over 1000 raw materials building up our menu, managing a high number of raw materials on a daily basis is crucial. Thanks to Torqus, we are able to manage all stock movements in real time. Moreover, Torqus helps us map our standard recipes in order to track any deviations in preparations and reduce wastages.

For example, if I have to deliver 20 kgs of brownies or chocolates for an event two days later, I can just pin it for that day on Torqus and the rest of my operations can align accordingly when the day starts. It’s no wonder that Torqus has single-handedly helped us reduce our wastages substantially. As a result, we aim to increase our profit margins by 25% and reduce our wastages by 50% over the next 2 years with Torqus.

How do you manage bulk purchases?

With multiple outlets and different requirements, order management had become a little difficult for our central kitchens. However, after implementing Torqus Supply Chain Management, it became really easy for us with their External Master PO feature which amalgamates POs received from outlets and converts these into separate POs specific to external vendors.

Considering the fact that there are a lot of perishable items in the bakery industry, how do you manage to ensure that the customer gets only fresh products every time?

Every day, we aim to sell fresh food items to our 35+ outlets across various cities in India. We are proud of the fact that our products have a short shelf life as we add no chemicals or preservatives. There is indeed a lot of loss and a lot of wastage if your products do not sell.On that note, Torqus gave us the convenience to record each and every incoming raw material according to the expiry date helping us push our raw materials on First In, First Out basis.