Creative Mother’s Day Meal Prep Promotions: Entre Vous Franchise
(FranchisePick.Com) Mother’s Day is fast approaching, and, for savvy businesses, so are sons, daughters and husbands… with wallets out and credit cards ready.
Some owners of florist, restaurants, gift shop, and confectionary franchises will receive a nice bump in business without much effort; Others are trying some aggressive and creative promotions to maximize their Mother’s Day bump.
Entree Vous Mother’s Day “Bond & Bake” Event
Entrée Vous franchise owners Patricia and Mike Brown of York County, VA are hosting a “Bond and Bake” event to promote their meal assembly kitchen franchise location.
The special event, to be held May 10 (the day before Mother’s Day) is designed to help families make enough meals to keep mom out of the kitchen on Mother’s Day. Families that participate in a Bond and Bake event noon to 2 p.m. May 10 at the kitchen site pay for the entrées they assemble and “get a free breakfast item mom will enjoy in bed.” The Browns scored a nice article and profile in the local Daily Press’ “Real Women” series.
Trexlertown Entree Vous “Bond & Bake” Makes Allentown Morning Call.
The franchise owner of this PA Entree Vous landed press in the Allentown Morning Call:
If you and the children would like to prepare a special Mother’s Day breakfast or meal, Entree Vous in Trexlertown can help you out.
It’s sponsoring a special Bond & Bake Mother’s Day cooking event, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 10 at its 1091 Millcreek Road location.
In addition to enabling children 5 and up to work with their dads at the meal prep stations, the kids also will be able to make their own chef’s hats and create Mother’s Day cards to go along with the entree they make with your help.
Best of all is that there will be no mess to clean up. You leave that behind because Entree Vous staff members will take care of it!
The Mother’s Day Breakfast in Bed package ($48.95) includes a breakfast fritatta, a hash brown casserole and a choice of either a Mixed Berry Crumble or an Apple Cobbler. However, dads and kids also could prepare any other family-sized entree (priced from $20.99 to $28.99) instead of the breakfast package.
Miami Herald: Entrée Vous, 13758 Kendall Dr., has a meal-assembly special for dads and kids planning ahead for Mother’s Day…
Where are other Meal Assembly Kitchen (MAK) Mother’s Day Promotions?
The struggling MAK franchise segment should have been aggressively promoting creative Mother’s Day themed options. With the exception of Entree Vous, search results for Mother’ Day Meal Prep promotions on GoogleNews were nonexistent:
Dream Dinners Mother’s Day: 0
Super Suppers Mother’s Day: 0*
Supper Thyme USA mother’s day: 0
My Girlfriend’s Kitchen mother’s day: 0
Dinner by Design: 1 Chicago Tribune
* Story of Green, OH Super Suppers closing came up
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POSTED IN: ENTREE VOUS
7 opinions for Creative Mother’s Day Meal Prep Promotions: Entre Vous Franchise
Mother’s Day in Meal Assembly - Or Maybe Not | Meal Assembly Watch
May 6, 2008 at 2:17 pm
[…] Creative Mother’s Day Meal Prep Promotions: […]
Kelly aka MM
May 6, 2008 at 2:45 pm
That really is a great idea…we offered something like that but couldn’t get our local newslet..r..paper to cover it unless we paid an outrageous amount for an ad….
I’m not kidding, when I called the special living editor (which I think for him was an oxymoron), I was told we had our “quota” of articles written about out business for the year and it didn’t matter how much I pitched it, I wasn’t going to change his mind…the reporter had already tried.
I’m guessin they had all the copy they needed for the front & back of the 1 page town newslett… r.. I mean newspaper.
But enough about me-good luck to Entree Vous Mothers Day Promo
sean
May 7, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Another big problem in the franchising of “hot new concepts” to inexperienced business people is the lack of understanding of local store marketing. In fact, it’s a problem with experienced business people, also. This came to mind when I recently read commenters reactions to this post on mealassemblywatch.com.
There is no area of business that has as high a percentage of people who think they are experts than marketing, nor as high a percentage of people who have a fundamental understanding and strategy. Franchisors exacerbate the damage of this lack of understanding, some intentionally and some because they, themselves, don’t have a clue.
Two of the fundamental errors in thinking that lead to franchisee marketing failure are 1) the imitation mindset, and 2) the silver bullet myth.
The imitation mindset is believing that the right marketing that you see others doing is the marketing that you should be doing. You see lots of television commercials, get lots of coupons in the mail and think that that’s what you should be doing.
The Silver Bullet myth is the belief that there’s a magic commercial, radio spot, direct mail piece that is going to magically drive continuous business to you without you having to be involved.
FRS love to dangle the silver bullet baubles in front of their franchisees: Oprah, Dr. Phil, Martha Stewart… and they fall for it every time.
DinnerZen writes: I might be missing Sean’s boat (wouldn’t be the first time), but trying to compete with the gazillions of dollars being spent by other retailers and restaurants to get mommy gift money just doesn’t seem like a wise proposition. and then No offense to anyone who thinks the Dr. P thing is dumb, but there are a lot of stores who’d pay a pretty penny to get a mention like that… I’d love to see the web hits to their site on the 9th- by moms, not for moms.
Let’s see… Free press in the local market that increases name recognition, educates consumers in the buying area, provides a clear call to action and could create trial visits doesn’t seem “wise,” but obscenely expensive national coverage that will drive hits to the national website IS wise…? Do you think you aren’t paying a “pretty penny”? Will you pay your rent in web hits next month?
Come on, guys… Why do you think someone might want national coverage that includes markets where (hint, hint) there aren’t any franchise units yet?
Kelly aka MM
May 7, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Sean,
I wondered how the Dr. Phil thing would play too…
But you’re right about people looking for the marketing silver bullet, the Holy Grail of marketing that would sky rocket our stores to breaking even….
The accepted wisdom of “sustained national advertising campaigns” is that it would raise awareness of the Meal Assembly and thrust it into the mainstream.
It didn’t work for Stone Cold Creamery and it won’t work for MA’s, because, as Joel (I think) pointed out, MA’s are providing a service no one sees a need for or wants (except for a small segment of the population, niche markets that will be able to support one store but will not be able to support competition).
I know this “belief” in an industry dies hard for hardcore MA’rs, but every market expert I have read comment on the industry agrees that it is a non-workable concept on a franchised level.
sean
May 7, 2008 at 6:18 pm
It’s really pretty simple when you think about it.
If you’re like most retail or restaurant businesses 80% of your customers are within 5 miles of your front door. If you take a national map and draw teensy little 5-mile radii around each location, that it the franchisee’s marketing universe. Marketing to the vast space in between is like throwing money into the ocean… unless you’re selling franchises.
Focus on you immediate neighborhood and get the word out to them cheaply, continuously and personally. Sell yourself, not Dr. Phil, Oprah or Martha. They’ve got their shows… this is yours.
Kelly aka MM
May 8, 2008 at 7:18 am
Sean, another good point- I had read that statistic too.(after I closed)-dontcha think the Zors would see fit to educate their prospects and franchisees to that marketing truth for more focused marketing? It would limit sufficiently where a store could be located..oh yeah that would mean they couldn’t sell all those franchises-never mind)
Anyway-if you used that marketing formula-then most stores have no real chance to succeed-let me give you an example:
Supper Thyme sold 3 franchises in the LA area..millions of potential customers in that market….
In less than a year each store was in trouble and two have already closed, one is still struggling.
They had hundreds of thousands of people to draw from in a 5 mile radius and yet……
Draw me some conclusions??
K
Kelly aka MM
May 8, 2008 at 7:23 am
I checked out the Super Suppers Green, Ohio location- it looks like it’s out in the middle of No where, your 5 mile radius marketing guideline makes that store look like a loser from the getgo..
Does that mean that Zors are not following their own demographic guidelines in selling franchises?
In the original MAK session based model we figured we needed 500 customers through our doors a month buying our 12 meal/package to break even…..
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