Challenge
Baked or Fried, a restaurant near the Northgate district of Bryan-College Station, entered summer 2020 with far fewer customers coming through the door as the pandemic and the seasonal departure of students emptied the area. The owner believed more effective marketing would help, and also wanted a stronger pipeline of employees. TASK's first job was to test that belief before recommending anything: was this a marketing problem, and if so, what about the current approach was not working?
How the team worked
The team started from the owner's own belief that marketing was the fix and treated it as a hypothesis to test, not an instruction. Each consultant took one candidate explanation: that the Northgate market simply did not know the restaurant existed, that the website and hours did not fit the target demographic, or that the restaurant was not showcasing the right options and deals online.
Market research came first, built around a customer survey, coded review analysis, and a competitor comparison, so that the later solutions could be sized by time and cost and matched to whatever the evidence showed.
Workstreams
- Framed the engagement around a diagnosis first: whether awareness, positioning, or the existing print and social channels explained the drop in foot traffic.
- Reviewed the restaurant's current marketing outlets and monthly spending mix to understand where money was going and how little yield each channel could show.
- Planned a market-research pass, including a survey of the target market's awareness and reception of the restaurant and a comparison of its review volume against direct competitors.
- Analyzed public Google and Yelp reviews for recurring themes, including whether operating hours matched what the surrounding student market wanted.
- Examined how the website, menu photography, daily deals, and social posting presented the restaurant to its target demographic.
- Committed to proposing several solutions varied by time and cost, rather than a single recommendation.
What the client received
- Problem diagnosis: whether the slowdown was a marketing problem and what in the current approach was not working
- Market research plan covering target-market awareness, review analysis, and competitor comparison
- Multiple proposed solutions varied by time and cost
Outcome
The engagement gave Baked or Fried a clearer way to think about its slow summer: a set of testable hypotheses about awareness, fit with the student market, and how the restaurant showed its options online, plus a plan for surveying customers and reading reviews to confirm them. The owner could then weigh marketing changes against operating changes like hours and deals, with options at different costs.