Marketing Help?

[Kudzu Koffee]

My wife and I are looking for some new ideas on how to market our Drive Thru. We are especially looking for ways to promote our afternoon business. We are located in Athens, GA home of the University of Georgia. We opened as the first Drive Thru about 9 months ago, so the concept here is very new, although there have been a number of sit down shops here for many years.

We are fairly content with our morning traffic. We have a good location. A corner lot on a busy 4 lane road. We do have some visiblity issues because we are at the crest of the hill, but we have tried to overxome those by painting the building brightly and with signage.

We are looking for general marketing ideas and also some specific to afternoons. Any help or insight would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Kudzu Koffee

 

[FireCracker]

Signage is great, the more signs you have around the more people will remember you when the come accross that hill. For a drive thru I think that billboards are a great idea. People tend to forget about something they see as soon as they get out of the vehicle, wih a drive thru they don't have that opportunity.

As far as marketing for afternoon business you could do some sort of lunch time special, a happy hour, or rent a chicken costume and dance around the corner (it sounds corney, but let me tell you it works!) Also look for advertising messures you can take around the college, like a newspaper, or maybe putting your menu up in the commons area. Lastely, make sure that you have a wide varities of beverages that appeal to people in the afternoon such as smoothies, shakes, frappes, etc.

 

[Kudzu Koffee]

We do a happy hour everyday, 2pm to 6pm. We have also been on campus with flyers a few times. We have a Kudzu Monster Costume a friend made, I guess we need to get out there with it more. We are thinking about doing a 'free day' soon to try and get some more folks to try us out. Becasue it is such a new concept here I think some folks are just confused as to what we offer, which is a wide range of drinks. Thansk for you input.

 

[FireCracker]

Maybe instead of a free day, you could have the kuy in your costume drumming up attention, and then have an employee hand out free small coffees, or mochas to people who swing in. We have a school next door, and people fill our lott to wait for their kids and I have thought about doing the same thing around here.

 

[javahill]

It is a throw back from the 1970's, but you could create a theme drink and theme campaign "Afternoon Delight." Create cool t-shirts as give aways that advertise the drink and your drive-through. Give some away to college kids. But you have to make it cool enough so they will wear it.

If you don't remember the song, then consider yourself lucky. If not, look it up on iTunes or some other site. It was (scary I remember this) Starland Vocal Band.

"Afternoon Delight" - I got mine at... instert your drive through's name here.

Is 70s retro still "in" or has that ship already sailed?

 

[Kudzu Koffee]

In this town it is difficult to attract student dollars unless you are selling beer. We try not to count on their business. Instead we are catering to the Moms and Professionals. We are located between 2 Hospitals and in front of a school, so we get good business from them. We are about to do some more advertising in the local free arts paper. I am also working on Christmas Lights for our trees out front to make us even more visible.

Any ideas for good ways to get first time specialty coffee drinkers to give us a try? There are a lot of people here who don't know what a Latte even is.

Our prices are the best in town.

 

[javahill]

Here is your tag line "Better latte than never."

Make sure you highlight "latte" or at least the extra "t"

have a special that runs 2 pm to 4pm - get the afternoon moms.

 

[javahill]

Modification to my previous post

"New to espresso? Better latte than never."

 

[CoffeeHouseMusic]

Ever consider gift cards? Or a prepaid coffee card where the card is same as cash during most of the day but worth a free coffee if used during lunch time ?

Just a thought.

Good Luck

 

[joeburr]

marketing help?

Make a cupon swap with other busnisess in your neberhood.
It worked well for me and it atracks custumers to your area.
Good Luck
Jo Burr

 

[Krikorian International]

I dont know what the corp situations are like in your city.
But there is alot of money in gaining the morning work crowd.
Try approaching companies, giving their employees a discount.
If you give some execs free coffee they should be able to allow you to post on bulletins with flyers n such..
Hope it helps

Ash