As a small chain expands, it usually devotes its resources to areas such as operations, human resources and franchisee support with little left in the budget for marketing. But marketing doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming. Chain Leader spoke to several operators and experts about some cost-effective marketing tools that have proven to be successful.

Nancy Davies, group account director for Chicago-based Stir Crazy, Salmon Borre Group, Lake Forrest, Ill.

One of its effective—and inexpensive—marketing tools has been the “Stir Crazy’s Cook Like a Wok Star.” The popular event can accommodate 25 people and is held every six weeks in a special section of the restaurant on a traditionally lower-traffic evening. It is hosted by a Stir Crazy chef, who takes guests through the process of creating an appetizer, entree and dessert. For the $25 fee, guests enjoy two glasses of wine that complements the food they will be preparing, cooking instruction, and they leave the restaurant with a notebook containing the night’s class recipes, shopping list with comparable costs from multiple grocery stores as well as descriptions—with photos—of various rice, noodles and other ingredients used in Asian cooking.

Clearly at $25 a guest, Stir Crazy’s Cook Like a Wok Star is not designed to be an immediate money-making venture. However, it is designed to break even. It provides the store with a public-relations opportunity, a great way to create unique word-of-mouth buzz, a way to interest and introduce the restaurant to new patrons and also act as a thank you to current patrons. Its ultimate goal of driving increased business to the individual restaurants has proved itself at the current locations that hold the event.

Linda Duke, CEO, Duke Marketing, San Rafael, Calif.

Using food instead of cash is a great way to gain momentum, such as sampling at kids soccer or baseball games and handing out an incentive to come into the restaurant. Dropping off a sample platter to area car dealers, who order food from various restaurants each Saturday for their sales staff, along with a menu and a first-order incentive, and following up on Saturday morning to take their order—this introduces your restaurant to some people that haven’t tried it and is usually a big cash order before the restaurant gets busy for Saturday lunch.

Penny Lau, director of marketing, Spicy Pickle, Denver

Our goal is to get the maximum exposure for the expenditure. For example, Denver has a light rail system like a commuter rail, and we have a lot of white-collar professionals that commute to work each day via the train. So we were trying to come up with ways to let these commuters know that Spicy Pickle was right on their way home or right on their way to work.

We hired a gentleman to put on a 6-foot pickle suit, wear wingtip shoes. He rode the light rail reading the Wall Street Journal during peak commuter times. So needless to say, if there’s a 6-foot pickle on the train with all the bankers and the lawyers going downtown, and he’s wearing wingtips and he’s sitting on the train reading the Wall Street Journal, I don’t care how bad of a day you’re having, you’re going to crack a smile. And it really got people talking.

He started handing out to all of the commuters certificates for free sandwiches at our restaurants. And he said, “Hey, on your way home, you have to get off right by the Spicy Pickle restaurant. Go on in there and we’ll get you a free sandwich.”

So we put him on the train for three or four days. It was crazy because by the third day people were attacking this poor pickle because they knew he was giving out free sandwiches.

Rick Kowalski, vice president of operations, It’s A Grind, Long Beach, Calif.

PR is very efficient because it’s not that costly, yet we get our name out in some interesting ways. We’ve tied in with some celebrity events recently. The MTV Movie Awards in September of last year we got some great PR from. We got some great photos of our brand with some celebrities holding our coffee. That got published in different publications.

We were approached by the production assistant [for the television show “Weeds”]. He lives in Long Beach and liked our brand a lot and said, “Would you be interested in working with us?” At the time the show was not very well known; it’s on Showtime, so it’s a cable production. So basically all we’ve done for the last four seasons is provide coffee and props for the show. They had to shoot a couple of scenes in a coffeehouse, and we provided furniture and a menu board and cups and different things to make it look on their set they were actually filming in a coffeehouse.

[“Weeds” star] Mary Louise Parker holds the cup in a lot of the segments of the show. If you watch the show at the very beginning when they show all the credits, there’s a bunch of people coming out of an It’s A Grind coffeehouse. There’s a full on logo for about three to four seconds.

For more cost-effective marketing ideas from operators, read "Marketing on a Dime, Part II," and check out marketing expert Aaron Allen's tips for "Marketing on a Small Budget."