Have you heard the term "Coopetition"? If not, you will hear it soon. This is a major concern in marketing circles.
Therefore, in case you are not familiar with the term, start by eliminating the rejection. If we check Wikipedia, we’ll find the following definition:
“Collaboration or sharing is a neologism invented to describe joint competition. Maintenance takes place when companies work together on parts of their business, when they do not consider that they have competitive advantages, and where they think they may have common expenses. Peugeot and Toyota collaborate on joint components for a new city car for Europe in 2005. In this case, companies will save money on total costs while remaining fiercely competitive in other areas. They define very clearly where they work together and where they are competitive. ”
Your long-term business success is associated not only with successful competition with other restaurants, but also with their work in your interests.
Coopetition is part of competition and partial cooperation. When restaurants work together, they can create a much larger and more valuable market that could ever work individually. Restaurants can then compete with each other to determine who occupies the largest share in increasing the number of potential customers.
A good example of cooperation between restaurants is when there is a section of a city or town in which there are several restaurants located in a relatively small area. If you look at this area from a traditional business point of view, opening a catering establishment seems like a bad idea.
Why should anyone open a restaurant in an area where there are already restaurants?
The reality is that the abundance of places to eat attracts customers who can visit the area without a particular restaurant, and decide when they will arrive.
This is where the competition begins.
As a rule, restaurants with the best atmosphere or the most attractive menu or the best quality / price, which are filled with most people, usually bring the greatest number of customers ...
There are many typical examples of cooperation, such as:
o Food courts: all restaurants are located together in places such as shopping centers — exchanging tables, stalls, cleaning services, etc. Customers are delivered to the same place (cooperation) and then compete for their business (competition) .
o Advertising: sometimes restaurants work together to collect a magazine about food or a similar publication, where each of them contributes (both in money and content) to the publication.
o Special events: sometimes food events are organized in some restaurants, where they all eat or display their products in food stalls. Because of the participation of many restaurants - and good marketing - crowds of people attend these events (usually there is music and often many other events).
o etc.
As you can see, these are some of the opportunities for cooperation. However, there are other intriguing ideas for you. Here you have something to think about:
o Cross promotion with restaurants that offer different foods than yours. Often your menu does not compete directly with other restaurants. For example, if a person is set up for Italian food, she will not go to an Indian restaurant to have lunch or vice versa.
Perhaps you can team up with restaurants in your area that have other styles of cuisine, and together create a coupon book that you can distribute to regular customers of participating restaurants. Or maybe you can create a discount card that your customers could use at any of the restaurants in your area. This will attract more customers to your area.
o Cross promotion with restaurants offering the same food as yours, but not located near your place.
Again, people usually prefer to go to restaurants that are close to their homes or in the workplace. If there is a French restaurant nearby, and they are set up for French cuisine, they usually won't go far to another French restaurant ... unless another French restaurant becomes so excellent that it is worth the trip - and this is where the competition hits.
So what can you cross promote? Well, if you have an ethnic restaurant, you can create a newsletter in which printing will be distributed, and sometimes distribution costs in similar restaurants and distribute it among customers of all the restaurants involved. The newsletter should contain articles about food, culture, geography, etc. The home country of the restaurant.
But what if your restaurant is an American place? Give unique information about your areas. You can still have trivia about specific states, some local recipes, etc. D.
o Combine efforts to discuss the best transactions for bed linen, food and drinks, menu printing menus, etc. Imagine that you are talking to the owners of nearby restaurants and you are making a deal to use the same distributors for ordinary things like bedding, candles, dishwasher maintenance and supplies, garbage and / or grease disposal, exhaust filters, printed menus, etc. Then you can request a volume discount from these distributors and everyone will benefit.
These are just some quick examples of collaboration. Combining forces with your competitors can be a win-win proposition. Just be smart and think about the areas where both of you could win.
Can you think of more areas for collaboration? I would like to know. Please visit my website and let me know.
Happy joint approach!
