Marketing Analysis in Three Sarasota Restaurants

 For many college freshmen and sophomores, it can feel that our prerequisite courses are seemingly unrelated to our major. Considering the fact that I am a marketing major, I too thought that there was no way the science of cooking would have a meaningful correlation to my intended course of study. However, coming in to this week’s class, our “field trip” to downtown Sarasota restaurants, I was proven quite wrong. While there may not be a correlation between food chemistry and marketing, there is certainly a strong correlation between restaurants and marketing. It has been proven by many how important marketing is to develop a successful restaurant, as stated by Kukanja et al. “The best way to satisfy [restaurant] guests’ expectations is to identify their wants, strategise how to satisfy them, and implement these marketing strategies into operational practices.” (2017 p. 1509)  My small group and I decided to capitalize on this correlation, and set out to inquire about the marketing tactics in three downtown Sarasota restaurants.

  Our first step for this project was to formulate our questionnaire for the restaurants we would be visiting. After careful consideration we chose to ask:

What are the restaurant’s marketing tactics?

How busy/slow has the restaurant been recently?

What does the manager feel sets their restaurant apart from others?

Is the restaurant locally owned?

What is one thing the manger feels they could use to improve their restaurant?

What is the restaurant’s customer demographic?

Does the restaurant use social media?

  Upon making our list of questions we headed to our first restaurant, Boca. While discussing these questions with manager, we learned much about Boca’s business and their marketing tactics. To our surprise, we learned that Boca takes a seemingly old-fashioned route to market their restaurant. While they do engage in social media presence on Instagram and Facebook, Boca relies heavily on event calendars and free drink/appetizer cards they hand out to the public. This ensures that they are covering not only their younger customer demographic on social media, but also their older customers who might not use social media. After discussing marketing, we learned that Boca, which has three additional locations in Florida, has been around for 2.5 years. The manager feels that Boca is set apart from other Sarasota restaurants for its unique “farm to table” concept, he states that business is booming and the only thing he feels the restaurant could use to improve is a bigger space.

  Following our talk at Boca, we headed to Duval’s Fresh, Local, Seafood, a Sarasota favorite for 7 years, where we met manager Steve Powell. We learned that Duval’s focuses their marketing on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but they also strongly believe in the power of word-of-mouth. We also discussed how the red tide affected this restaurant, Powell felt it severely harmed Duval’s success, but they have since recovered and are now seeing a full house every night. Powell feels that Duval’s is a unique dining experience for its quality seafood, excellent staff, and attention to making all customers feel like guests.

  Our final stop was at Buddy Brew Coffee, where we met with manager Ryan Tyrell. We began to discuss how the coffee shop of four years has marketed their business, and to no surprise, we learned that this trendy, young coffee shop focuses heavily on their social media presence. Additionally, we learned that Buddy Brew has multiple locations in Tampa, with the Sarasota location being the only deviation. After taking a hard hit from red tide, Buddy Brew Coffee has made a full comeback. Customers are driven towards Buddy Brew over other coffee shops for their dedication to high quality coffee, says Tyrell. He also feels the only thing his business could use to be more successful is more awareness of the shop, considering their location is partially hidden behind the new Art Ovation Hotel.

  Pushing my fellow students and I out of our comfort zones to go and speak with these restaurant managers was truly a great experience. Together we learned so much about these restaurants that we may not have ever found out on our own. Completing this assignment also really brought to life how we can connect our majors and minors to the content of this course to make it a truly meaningful experience.

References

Kukanja, M., Gomezelj Omerzel, D., & Kodrič, B. (2017). Ensuring restaurant quality and

   guests’ loyalty: an integrative model based on marketing (7P) approach. Total Quality

   Management & Business Excellence, 28(13/14), 1509–1525.

   https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/10.1080/14783363.2016.1150172