[mattm]

The cost of gas is on everyone's mind. This seams to be a major reason that people are staying home more and not going out to eat.

Has anyone experimented with giving out gas cards to your customers? It seams that you could have a lot of fun with a "We Are Giving Our Customers Gas" promotion. I think if you contact the newspapers and Local media outlets you could get some good free advertising as well.

[cneal]

Yes, we have been giving our guests the opportunity to win a $50 gas card for two months now with our "Eat Here, Get Gas" campaign. The guest recieve one entry for every $10 they spend after discounts and before taxes are applied. It hasn't really done much to to bring in new business or drive up sales that we can tell, but some of the servers have commented that it has helped somewhat in helping them upsell and increasing their check averages. At first we held a weekly drawing, but with four locations, that got expensive. So, we've gone to a monthly drawing.

[Damon]

My partner and I were just talking about it yesterday, in fact the title we were going to use was "get gas at Mother Hubbard's". Now instead of giving everyone a card we thought we'd start as a contest (on-line only for the first month as a test). Snippet's of songs dealing with cars or gas...like Mustang Sally..a 10sec snippet on our website, and an e mail response. I don't expect it to really "drive" (pun intended) business but it might take the sting out of the cost. We gave thought to changing the contest each month so it doesn't get too boring.

[ccdse]

We are giving away 2 $25.00 restaurant gift cards per week. I had thought of doing the gas cards but my partner thought that this is really the same. They have to use gas to get here and we are off setting it with the gift cards. Haven't really seen any increased business because of it but have a lot of appreciative customers.

[mattm]

Good point, when you give away gift cards to your restaurant the customer receives the same value, but your cost is less. Plus, you are driving return traffic to your restaurant.

The only reason to give gas cards would be if you could get free media attention.