To make money in the restaurant business, the proprietors have to have a competitive advantage. If working hard was all that was needed, the majority of restaurant owners would likely already be rich.

There are only two genuine and sustainable competitive advantages someone may have within the restaurant business.

Restaurant owners can't get the perfect chef or the perfect neighborhood or the most excellent menu or the cheapest prices -- at least, not for long. Culinary chefs can get a better offer, area population changes, new construction and undesirable businesses can turn impressive locations into so-so locations. Great recipes may be stolen and even improved upon. And not surprisingly, aspiring to be the cheapest is not the way to go.

The only two real and enduring competitive advantages virtually any restaurant owner can have -- Innovation and Marketing promotions.

Writer and management professional, Peter Drucker, said, "Innovation is the only lasting competitive advantage anybody can ever have in any business."

To loosely quote Ray Kroc, the McDonald's creator, knew the importance of modification when he declared, "McDonald's can make creative changes faster than the competition can copy."

Applying unique promotional skills is a major part of innovation mainly because --

Marketing is without a doubt the only thing which generates profit for a restaurant. Everything else is an expense.

When handled correctly marketing is definitely the best investment any restaurant entrepreneur could ever make. Inside the stock market or in real estate an individual can possibly hope for a 5% or maybe even a 20% return on their investment. But bear in mind in marketing, a hundred dollar outlay in promotion could bring in $1,000 in profit and frequently much more.

For instance, changing only a small number of words within an ad can bring in two to 10 times extra profit from the same advertisement. And in addition the only real cost to make the change would be the brief period of time it required the restaurant owner to learn how to compose headlines. That is a great return on your investment!

The normal restaurant owner thinks his job is to "just run his restaurant." He doesn't have time or make time to market his restaurant -- or make it a priority to discover the way to market a restaurant. Maybe that's why he's average.

A business owner can't make $100,000 a year engaging in $10 per hour work. A business owner's job should be to market, innovate and promote his/her restaurant.

The restaurant marketing plan used by many restaurants is based mostly on anything the latest ad salesman happened to be encouraging. When it comes to marketing, many restaurant owners just duplicate what everyone else is doing. That could spell disaster for pretty much any privately owned restaurant.

Nearly all restaurant owners work long hours, but it doesn't have to take extended hours to market, innovate and promote a restaurant.

Look at it this way, a restaurant business owner that masters creative marketing could swap restaurants with any restaurant owner in town. Allow him to have the location, the menu, the cooking artist and employees and then a year from now the restaurant owner who knows how to creatively market will have the most profitable restaurant.

Learn to quit pursuing the supposed competitive advantages that are short-lived and non-sustainable. Focus on marketing and innovation and watch your restaurant profits skyrocket.

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