Context
Naked Fish is a sit-down sushi, ramen, and noodle restaurant in College Station, Texas, serving a college town where students, faculty, and local residents make up most of the room. The menu runs from ramen bowls to specialty rolls, and the restaurant trades on a full-service dining experience rather than counter service or delivery alone. Its busiest hours sit in the evenings and on weekends, which leaves midday and weekday service quieter than the rest of the week.
By early 2024 two things were changing around the business. Several new restaurants had opened nearby, giving the same customers more places to go, and the owner was preparing to launch a second brand, Cook N Connect, offering cooking classes for date nights, friend groups, college students, and corporate teams, using a separate space already fitted out for classes. Catering sat alongside both as a revenue stream the kitchen could serve but had not yet entered, which meant decisions about pricing, menus, logistics, and where customers would find the new brand were all still open.
Challenge
Naked Fish, a sit-down sushi, ramen, and noodle restaurant in College Station, was competing with several newly opened restaurants and wanted more reasons for customers to visit outside its busiest hours, particularly midday and on weekdays. The owner was at the same time preparing to launch Cook N Connect, a cooking-class brand aimed at date nights, friend groups, students, and corporate teams, and was weighing how classes should be priced, whether different customer groups should be offered different rates, and how a website that had not yet gone live could be set up to be found. Catering was a third open question: which kinds of events to serve, what the menu and logistics would have to look like, and which ordering platforms were worth joining. The team was asked to build foot traffic at the restaurant and give the new brand a pricing tool, a website plan, and a path into catering.
How the team worked
The team began with a project brief that separated the restaurant's near-term need for foot traffic from the longer-term questions around the new cooking-class brand: how to price classes, how to prepare the website, and how to enter catering. Each objective was scoped with a potential deliverable and a named owner before the first client meeting, and the team scouted nearby restaurants so the promotional ideas would sit against what customers could already choose in town.
For the restaurant, the team brainstormed and then fully specified promotional events, writing out rules, eligibility, timing, and prize structure for each one and leaving values and thresholds as placeholders the owner could set. Events were pitched at the parts of the week the restaurant most wanted to fill, with a recommended cadence for each, from a year-round challenge to a once-a-semester competition, and sample flyers so a promotion could go out without design work.
For Cook N Connect, the team worked from the owner's existing recipes and cost data to build a spreadsheet tool that mirrors how the owner already plans events, so it could be adopted without a learning curve. Class packages were layered on top of it: three tiers separated by technique, session length, and takeaways, each illustrated with an example menu and alternate dishes. The team also compared holding classes in a dedicated space against renting a venue per class, so the space decision could be checked against the class calendar.
The website and catering research was framed as pre-launch guidance. Because the class site had not gone live, the team explained what each search ranking factor does and turned it into actions that can be taken before launch, with a candidate keyword list and a post-launch audit to run once the site is up. Catering was set out as a five-step roadmap, from choosing event segments through menu, logistics, pricing components, and early marketing, and closed with a platform comparison weighed against a small kitchen's capacity.
Workstreams
- Developed five promotional event concepts for Naked Fish, including an eating challenge, a timed competition, a purchase-based raffle, a couples game night, and themed trivia nights, each with rules, prize structures, a recommended cadence, and sample flyers.
- Designed a three-tier package structure for Cook N Connect classes, with basic, intermediate, and premium levels matched to different skill levels and audiences and illustrated with example menus.
- Built an Excel cost estimation tool from the client's own recipes and current ingredient costs that returns total ingredient cost for a given guest count, generates a shopping list, and includes a written guide for adding recipes and updating prices.
- Prepared pre-launch SEO recommendations for the Cook N Connect website covering keyword targets, meta descriptions, text-to-HTML ratio, backlinks, and a post-launch site audit.
- Mapped a step-by-step entry into the catering market, from choosing event segments and tailoring the menu to logistics, pricing components, and early marketing.
- Compared third-party catering and group-ordering platforms on reach, curation, fees, and operational fit, and recommended a shortlist suited to the business.
What the team found
- Setting the restaurant's quieter hours against its busiest ones showed that the promotions worth building were the ones that give a reason to come on an off-peak night rather than on a night that already fills.
- Sorting class ideas by skill level produced three natural tiers separated less by ingredients than by technique, session length, and what each group would expect to take home.
- Ingredient cost per guest varied enough between dishes that a useful estimate had to be built recipe by recipe rather than as a single per-head figure applied to every menu.
- With the class website not yet live, no audit score existed to work from, so the useful work sat in the choices made before launch: keywords, meta descriptions, page structure, and referring links.
- The platform comparison showed a trade-off between broad reach with light vetting and curated marketplaces that send fewer but better matched orders while asking for minimums and lead time.
- Comparing a dedicated class space against renting a venue per class showed the space only pays for itself above a certain number of classes a month, which turns the question into one about the calendar.
What the client received
- Five promotional event concepts with rules, prize structure, recommended cadence, and sample flyers.
- Three-tier Cook N Connect class package structure with example menus, alternate dishes, and a sample flyer.
- Excel cost estimation tool with a guest-count cost calculator, a check-off shopping list, and reset controls.
- Written guide for using the tool and for adding recipes, ingredients, and updated prices.
- Pre-launch SEO recommendations, a plain-language glossary of ranking terms, and a candidate keyword list.
- Five-step catering market entry roadmap covering segments, menu, logistics, pricing components, and marketing.
- Comparison of catering and group-ordering platforms with a recommended shortlist for the business.
- Break-even comparison of a dedicated class space against renting a venue per class.
- Final written deliverable and presentation deck.
Outcome
Naked Fish left the engagement with a set of ready-to-run promotional events, each written out far enough that the owner only has to set prize values and dates, and with a tiered package structure for Cook N Connect classes that says who each tier is for and what a session would cover. The owner also has a working cost estimation tool that can be updated as recipes and ingredient prices change, a pre-launch checklist for the new website, and a clear view of how to enter catering, including which kind of ordering platform fits a small kitchen and what the class space has to carry to earn its keep.
Recommendations
- Run the promotional events as a calendar rather than one-offs, keeping the eating challenge open year-round, the timed competition once a semester, trivia on the slower nights, and the couples game night every few months on a weekend.
- Tie the events to social posting and to a student audience, since the competitions and challenges are the ones most likely to be shared and to bring a group rather than a single guest.
- Offer classes in three tiers so a first-time cook and an experienced one can both find a session, and use the example menus as a starting point the kitchen can swap dishes into.
- Price classes and catering from the cost tool rather than by estimate, updating ingredient costs on a regular schedule so quotes stay current as prices move.
- Apply the search recommendations to the class website before it goes live, then run a site audit once it is published to catch duplicate descriptions and thin pages.
- Enter catering through a familiar general platform for reach and a catering-focused one for curation, and build early bookings from the owner's own network and referrals before taking on larger events.
Next steps
- The client was handed five fully written event concepts with placeholder prize values and thresholds, ready to run once the owner sets the numbers and dates.
- The client was handed the Excel cost estimation tool along with a step-by-step guide for using it and for adding new recipes, ingredients, and prices as the menu changes.
- The client was handed a pre-launch SEO checklist and keyword list to apply to the Cook N Connect website, followed by a site audit to run after publication.
- The client was handed a five-step catering entry sequence and a shortlist of ordering platforms to approach when the kitchen is ready to take outside events.