A recipe dating back to the 11th century… Grandma's recipe… In a world where everything is readily available, such messages stimulate the imagination. Because recipes of dishes are not only about taste - check how to use them to increase sales.
Food recipes and their importance in running a restaurant
Food is essential for our life, but today there are too many options to provide ourselves with energy. Increasingly guests only come to the restaurant when they want to spend time with friends in an interesting place or try out a previously unknown recipe of dishes. Everyone has their favorite places to return to. Very often, what attracts us to a specific pizzeria or cafe is precisely the taste that cannot be found anywhere else. The easiest way to get it is by reaching for local, unique products. You can also create recipes for dishes based on unusual combinations of flavors or techniques, intense spices or other distinguishing features.
Developing recipes for dishes as a marketing activity
In Polish conditions, opening a restaurant quite often consumes all the resources of the founders. However, those who have a bit more free time and resources know how important the stage of developing recipes is. Since a recipe is both a technical step-by-step guide and an art piece, it's impossible to count down to the minute how long it will take.
When collecting ideas and developing recipes, you can:
- take part in workshops,
- collect ethnographic and historical materials,
- test ideas,
- look for the best products,
- develop your own methods.
All this is also a ready-made idea for content video, photos or entries on the restaurant's website. At this stage, it is worth taking care of creating a persona, which is the perfect customer. You can also order an image session.
Many venues do not stop at one; they order new ones on the occasion of holidays or just developing new recipes of dishes. Look Valentine's image session of the Korona Karkonoszy Manor and get inspired! In addition to all of this, also take into account the current consumer trends. A restaurant is a business for years, but you must not forget about local and global trends.
Are you interested in professional food marketing?
It has been our specialty since 1996. Check how we can help you.
Food recipes as marketing tools - examples
Literary critics have already described the motif of secret recipes for dishes, appearing in Polish novels for women published in recent decades. A recipe for grandma's preserves or a card with a secret recipe that fell out of an old notebook - this is often the starting point for the life changes of the main character. The novels are often followed by recipe books, or even gadgets and culinary workshops based around a given theme. This shows that recipes of dishes are already being used as a marketing tool and sales support not only in the restaurant industry.
The famous chef has an interesting strategy around recipes Jamie Oliver. He is happy to share simple recipes for everyday dishes that will suit everyone. In restaurants, he serves richer, more difficult versions of these dishes. As a result, millions of viewers of his cooking shows and book readers constitute an ever-expanding base of people who know his name. Part of it will stop at getting to know the recipes of the dishes Jamie and make them at home. Some people will also want to try what the "real" or "richer" version of the dish tastes like. It is worth emphasizing the uniqueness of the various variants of recipes on the menu. Food marketing can be based on even one recipe.
A confectionery shop at ul. Górczewska in Warsaw, which serves donuts famous in the city. When a journalist asked the owner about the recipe a few years ago, he heard that there was no money for which she would be willing to betray him. And rightly so! Very often, the entire coating around the product influences the taste sensation. Everyone who raved about wine for a few euros on an Italian beach knows it. The same wine brought to Poland and uncorked at home was… bad.
We do not know if this is also the case with the famous donuts from Górczewska. Perhaps if we knew the recipe, it would turn out to be ordinary cookies. Traveling to this one pastry shop, standing in line outside, and tasting donuts that aren't for everyone, make up the legend that has kept the place alive for decades. Using a strategy Product PR you can similarly influence the emotions around your dishes.
Food recipes - guard or share?
One of the biggest dilemmas is: is it better to share your recipes with your guests, or keep them safe? Both solutions have their advantages, and most restaurant owners navigate somewhere between them. The example of Magda Gessler's cooking programs shows that a chef (restaurateur) with a really rich experience does not have to obsessively guard his recipes. He will always come up with new recipes in place of the old recipes. In addition, the recipe itself is not enough and the "something" that still counts, makes one dish work and not another.
On the other hand, it would be a pity to openly share recipes of original dishes or regional delicacies. Many a place created competition in this way and soon had to disappear from the market. Ultimately, then, perhaps the best solution would be to keep the niche, luxurious nature of the recipe, without fanatically following the recipe.
For example, such a recipe can be shared during closed workshops, which will only fuel interest in the product and act as a ready-made marketing strategy. Recipes should be developed, if only in case the competition begins to serve exactly the same. With time, when you manage to collect many original variants and recipes of dishes, you can share the basic one. Famous chefs quite often, starting from their flagship dish, finally start to offer, for example, their own line of products that can be bought for home (such as Jamie Oliver's series of sauces).
Food recipes and the law
It is usually quite difficult to prove that one premises infringes the copyright of a provision on the other. On the completed "work" it consists of a recipe, ingredients, activities performed during preparation, but also the way of giving or the name. Only after most of these steps have been evidently copied, can we speak of copyright infringement. Of course the premises may not use the photos posted by competitors on their website or on social media. It is risky to use recipes from cookbooks without any modification, which is another factor in not skipping the stage of developing your own recipes.
Additionally, it is worth mentioning about business secrets. The company can talk openly about food suppliers and recipes. However, he may also choose to prefer to guard these elements. Then, violating this secret would be a crime. Hence confidentiality agreementswhich are often signed by the owners of the premises both with the staff of the premises and with suppliers.