Chefs Without Restaurants
Join Chris Spear as he interviews food and beverage entrepreneurs who've taken a unique path in the culinary world. His guests include caterers, research chefs, personal chefs, cookbook authors, food truck operators, farmers, and more – all individuals who've paved their own way in the culinary world. With over 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry, including his own personal chef business, Perfect Little Bites, Chris is dedicated to helping others grow and succeed in the food and beverage industry. Tune in to hear their inspiring stories and valuable insights on the road less traveled in the food and beverage industry.
Chefs Without Restaurants
How to Market Your Business by Using Your Car as a Mobile Billboard
Today, I’m diving into a unique and cost-effective marketing strategy that has worked wonders for my personal chef business: using your vehicle as a mobile billboard. If you're a service-based business owner, you’ll want to hear about this!
Episode Highlights:
- Introduction to Vehicle Marketing: Learn why using your vehicle as a mobile billboard can be a game-changer for your business.
- My Experience and Setup: I share the details of how I set up my car with magnets, a QR code, and business card holders, and the costs involved.
- Tracking Effectiveness: Discover how tracking your marketing efforts can help you understand what works best for your business.
- Real-Life Examples: Hear about my experiences parking in strategic locations and the results I've seen.
Links Mentioned:
CHEFS WITHOUT RESTAURANTS
If you enjoy the show and would like to support it financially, please check out our Sponsorship page (we get a commission when you use our links).
Get the Chefs Without Restaurants Newsletter
Chefs Without Restaurants Instagram, Threads, TikTok and YouTube
The Chefs Without Restaurants Private Facebook Group
Chris Spear's personal chef business Perfect Little Bites
If you have a business, I want to ask you something. Are you using your vehicle as a mobile billboard? If not, I'm going to tell you what I did and why I think it's especially beneficial if you have a service based business. This is Chris spear. And you're listening to Chefs Without Restaurants, the show where I usually speak with culinary entrepreneurs and people working in the food and beverage industry outside of a traditional restaurant setting. I have 31 years of working in kitchens, but not restaurants, unless you count Burger King. And I currently work as a personal chef throwing dinner parties in the Washington DC area. So today I want to talk about marketing again, because I do think that customer acquisition is something that everyone always asked me about. You know, as a personal chef, people want to know, how do I find customers? So here's something I did, it's gonna cost you well, it cost me $160. Because I did the math for you. Yes, you could wrap your car. I know a lot of people who've done that, but I didn't really want to invest the money in that. I also don't know that I love the look of that. And I thought there was an easier way to maybe do this. So I'm sure many of you have seen magnets that go on your cars. Hopefully some of you have even used them. But if not, I just want to talk about this for a minute. So I got two magnets for my car. The total cost of that was $75. I had them made on Vistaprint. And on it it says perfect little bites personal chef service. Then my tagline, the best restaurant in town is in your house. And then underneath it, it just says date night dinner parties, cooking classes, corporate events, pop ups, bachelorette parties, rehearsal dinners, and for vacation rentals. It has a picture of my logo, my email address and my phone number. And it also has a QR code. And if you listen to my episode about reviews, I'm sure you heard my take on QR codes. But I do think they're beneficial. If someone were to be in a parking lot and scan the QR code, it's gonna go do basically what's like a link tree except I build it on my own WordPress site. But it has the top four links I want people to go to which include my website, I do have the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast on there. And then a couple other things, whether it's a featured recipe or featured brand I'm working with. So I've got these two magnets on my car, I also decided to add a business card holder. This is something I saw on a couple of cars in my neighborhood. And I thought they were great. So I went on Amazon and looked for them. And found these business card holders that are kind of all weather meaning they have like a little flap on top. And it only cost $18 to get two of these. So what I did was got some double sided velcro cut a little square to actually and then put them on the side of the car. So I always have the rough side of the Velcro on the side of my car. And then inside my car, I keep these two business card holders with the fluffy side of the Velcro in there. Every time I parked my car somewhere. If it's within, you know, my service radius, I put them on my car. And each one I keep 10 business cards in. And this was really important for me because it makes tracking easy, right? So stay with me. I go to a grocery store, like Whole Foods somewhere where maybe my ideal client is shopping and would see this. I do my shopping, I'm in there for an hour, I come outside, and then I you know, take the holders off the car, bring them in, and then I count how many cards are there. I make it real easy. I have 10 in each and then I flip through up I have eight in one and 10 in the other. Okay, I know this worked to people took my business cards. One of the things I think that's really important when you have a business is to do tracking so you know what works. So then I can start kind of putting together lists. Oh, you know, this converts really well when I park at high end grocery stores, but not others or it converts well when I'm in Alexandria, Virginia, but not Frederick, Maryland. So now we're up to $75 for two magnets $18 for two of the card holders. And then business cards. I bought 500 of them on Vistaprint which was like $67. So we're at $160. I think this is money well spent. You know, and once you've got that start thinking about where can you park your car that makes sense. Where I live in downtown Frederick, parking is free on Sundays. We have a great farmers market. Again. For me, those are the kinds of people who I think use my business, you know, we went to the farmers market the other day, but a loaf of bread, you know, a couple bagels, some produce and we spent I think like 45 $50 at the farmers market on stuff, right? So people like me, I think are the kind of people who would hire a personal chef for you know, a minimum of $100 ahead. So not only can I park my car in front of the farmers market while I'm there, but um I can also leave my car there all day because it's free parking so I can drive downtown park parked my car, put my business card holders on the side, I've got the two big magnets, my wife can follow me, I can hop in the car and we can go home and go about our day, I can leave my car there for eight to 10 hours. free marketing, right? Like you are basically putting a gigantic billboard in a high traffic area. If you've ever listened to Gary Vee, he talks about this with his lemonade stand and what he did when he was a kid. And this is very much how I think and how I've always thought about my business. I don't know if you'd call it guerilla marketing, but it's definitely something that I've gravitated towards, you know, what are the non traditional ways of getting the word out there, and in places where people are going to find out about you. So take a look at your business, take a look at where your ideal client might be in person. And then think about, you know, maybe getting some magnets for your cars and some business card holders and parking your car there. You know, I'm really surprised I went to Marshalls and I was in there for 15 minutes picking up something. And when I came out to my cards were gone. Now, if you want to dig a little deeper here and see how well this is working, you can actually if you're going to use a QR code use a distinct one that you only use for this tactic. I talked about this with my friend Justin, Justin, if you're listening, I think this was a great idea. So thanks. But you know, you can have a QR code go to a distinct location. And if you only use that QR code, or that, you know, a landing page, you create just for that, that's a great way to say, Oh, I am getting, you know, 2550 100 people a month, who are finding my business solely because of the business cards that I put, you know, in the business card holder on the side of my car, just another way to track metrics, because you know, if you can't track what works and what doesn't. How do you know what to double down on? I hope you found this helpful. I'm trying to do more of these short tactical kind of episodes, because again, I am committed to helping people build and grow their businesses. And not just personal chef businesses. I think there's a lot of businesses out there where this information, you know, it transcends the personal chef business. As I've said before, if you're a plumber, if you're a housekeeper, if you have a landscaping business, this is a tactic that you can use for all of those businesses. And if you're more of a visual learner, I'm going to try and link some of these pictures in the show notes. Maybe I'll put them in a Google Drive or something and send a link there just so you can see. So you can take a look at my magnet, see what it looks like. Take a look at the business card holders see what that looks like. And of course, I'll drop links to all these things. They might be an affiliate link, meaning if you buy the business card holder or an Amazon, I'm gonna get 15 cents. But yeah, I want you to be able to replicate this if it's something you want to do. Let me know what you think. You know, you can find me on Instagram at Chefs Without Restaurants. And my email address is chefs without restaurants@gmail.com If you found this helpful, and let me know what else you'd like me to talk about. Thanks so much for listening and have a great week. You're still here, the podcast is over. If you are indeed still here, thanks for taking the time to listen to the show. I'd love to direct you to one place and that's chefs without restaurants.org. From there, you'll be able to join our email newsletter. Get connected in our free Facebook group and join our personal chef catering and food truck database so I can help get you more job leads. And you'll also find a link to our sponsor page where you'll find products and services I love. You pay nothing additional to use these links, but I may get a small commission which helps keep the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast and organization running. You might even get a discount for using some of these links. As always, you can reach out to me on Instagram at Chefs Without Restaurants or send me an email at chefs without restaurants@gmail.com Thanks so much
