Sunday 23 September 2012

Dae Han Min Guk

Dear the manager of the De Coree restaurant in Palmerston North, New Zealand,

A few nights ago both myself and my family entered your establishment for my birthday dinner. I have lived in North East Asia for 15 years and in that time I have eaten Korean cuisine on a number of occasions and have enjoyed it immensely. I have even been to Korea a couple of times and found it a very interesting place to travel to.

So it was with great joy that I found in my hometown there is a Korean restaurant. It took some convincing to get my family to go to your restaurant because, well to be brutally honest no one in this town knows anything about Korean food. For people in provincial New Zealand Japanese food means sushi, Chinese food means they stuff you can get at the fish and chips shop and won tons but Korean food, I don't think anyone in my family could name one Korean dish. Even my brother didn't know what I was talking about when I mentioned Gangnam Style.

So today I would like to offer you ten ideas on how to get more people through your doors and hopefully get Korean food into the more mainstream of Kiwi tastebuds.

1. Please get yourself a website. Most businesses today have a website. One of the first things that people look for is a website and if you had the menu for your restaurant on it that will help you get more customers.

2. Get some kind of social media presence. Whether this is Facebook or Twitter or something. Can a business survive today without an online presence? I'm not sure. It would be difficult.

3. Organise cooking lessons. Preferably these would be free. New Zealanders are mostly Scottish in heritage and Scottish people are well known to be tight with their money and New Zealanders are no exception to this so if you can organise something that is free or not much money people will come flocking.

4. Join the Manawatu Wine and Food Festival next year. This year I was working at this event and their were representatives of Mexico and India there and someone from Korea wouldn't be out of place.

5. Have you joined the International Culture Day in the Square towards the end of march? This is another event that would be beneficial to your business. I know many groups go there and it is a wonderful event.

6. Hand out free vouchers in the Plaza at lunch time. You can almost guarantee that they won't all be used but people who do use them will spend money at your restaurant. I received two free Stella Artois's the other day. I went to the restaurant and we spent an extra $120. That sounds like it was worth it for that restaurant.

7. Invite a reporter from the Manawatu Standard to your restaurant and get them to write a review for you. That can't hurt your chances. They say any publicity is good publicity.

8. Write the review yourself.

9. Offer Korean language lessons at your restaurant for example on a Tuesday night. Do you think people will stay after to have some food? You bet they would.

10. I know that either yourself or your Korean friends are great fans of golf. Would it not be a good idea to have a Korean food night at the golf club? With the right marketing you may get quite a crowd.

Palmerston North is a small town and things get around the town very quickly. So if you can entertain a  few people in a great manner, you will be so busy that you won't know what to do with yourself. The power of word of mouth is fantastic.

Good luck sir.


감사합니다

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