1. Squeeze In: A growing business
in ‘this economy’
Presented by Squeeze In President and co-owner:
Shila Morris

2. Tell ‘em what your gonna tell ‘em
• Brief History
• Our growth
• How we’ve done it
• Our secret weapon
• Numbers to back it up
• The best music video of your life

3. Squeeze In History
• Breakfast and lunch 7-2pm “best omelettes on the planet”
• Opened in Truckee California 1974
• Gary and Misty Young bought in 2004
• Brought on Chad and Shila as partners in 2007
• Opened Squeeze In Reno 2008
• Food Network Throwdown with Bobby Flay 2010
• Opened South Reno Squeeze In 2011
• Opened Sparks Squeeze In 2012

4. The original Squeeze In

5. It’s literally a hallway with tables

7. In 6 years, during the great
recession, we've expanded
tremendously
2007
• 1 location
• 1,350 square feet
• 42 seats
• 12 associates
• serving 50,000 guests a
year
2013
• 4 locations
• 9,229 square feet
• 414 seats
• 91 associates
• serving 320,000 guests a
year
That’s a 650% increase in just 6 years!!

8. Social Media presence
• The Squeeze In has 8,047 “likes” on Facebook
• 1,434 followers on Twitter
• Have our own custom smartphone app, been
downloaded over 3,000 times
• more than 60,000 views of our YouTube
videos
• We’ve had 3,834 check in’s on foursquare

9. So how did we do it?
• We learned we had to GPS. Get Positioned socially!
– Mass Media is dead, Micro Media is king!
– We’ve got accounts at Facebook; Twitter; YouTube; Flickr;
Yelp; Google+; Instagram; Pinterest; Klout; Urbanspoon;
TripAdvisor; FourSquare and many others
– We don’t just have them, we are actively engaged! No post
and ghost! (yelp example, Facebook example)
• Importance of PR and old media outlets, in a new
media world (2,4,8,RGJ, HARO)

10. But wait there’s more
• We focused on and engaged in company culture
(terms, values, community involvement)
• We built and use SYSTEMS! (little hinges)
– Inventory, training, checklists, scheduling, recipes,
portioning etc..
• We track and measure everything
– Prime cost, guest frequency, menu analysis, labor targets:
Motto: Anything measured, improves. KNOW YOUR
NUMBERS!
• We don’t get emotional about it
– Relax, the numbers don’t lie. It’s all in the numbers baby!
• Eggs benny example, expanding to Reno example

11. But we also have a secret weapon…
• We have a loyalty club: the proverbial
marketing ‘list’
– Comprehensive program that rewards guests for
dining
– Birthday and anniversary gifts
– Newsletter
– Access to exclusive parties and sales

12. Isn’t it just bacon and eggs?
• Lifetime value of a guest:
• Average Sale Per Person: $12
• Number of Visits Per Year: 24
• Sales Per Happy Guest Per Year: $288
• Average Number Of People Per Table: 2.3
• Gross Sales Per Year: $662
• Gross Sales Over Life Of guest: $3310
• Number of Referrals Per Guest: 1
• Gross Sales For Total Referrals: $3310
• Total Value Of A Satisfied guest: $6620

13. Get me more of those happy guests!
• Two ways to generate more revenue:
1. Acquire new customers
2. Get existing customers to come back/spend
more
The rub? To acquire a new guest via marketing costs
up to FIVE times as much as it does to get an
existing customer to come back

14. So you have to build your list
• Get existing customers to opt in to your
program
• Which will turn them into loyal raving fans
• Which gives you more security
• And you know who your best customers are
– 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your
customers. Don’t you want to know who they are?

15. Word of warning about ‘the list’
• The money is not in the list itself, but in THE VALUE you
provide to your list
– Being relevant to your customers (Harlem Shake: 2,416
views)
– Being engaged in their lives/causes/events. ($20,000 a year
back to local causes)
– Being authentic and personal (hand written thank you
cards)
– Not always selling, give them lots of useful free content
(advice for brides, party planning, recipes etc)
Remember: Facts tell, stories sell

16. Does all of this pay off?
• Smartphone app cost $2500 to create. It has
been downloaded more than 3,000 times and
the offer has been redeemed 2,000 times
generating more than $21,000 in sales.
• In March we spent $4,732 on marketing to
our list, generating $132, 291 in sales

17. Does it pay off?
• When we opened our 3rd location we ‘crowd
sourced’ $36,000 through our Kitchen Cabinet
program
• When we opened our fourth location we did it again
with our Founders Club generating $42,000 to help
us open our restaurants
• That’s $78,000 dollars made from the trusting
relationship we built with our EggHeads (Recent RGJ
write up and resulting Golden Egg program)

18. Does it pay off?
• Having our list gave us the credibility and
legitimacy to approach a local builder about
helping us finance restaurants three and four.
• In the last 5 years, we’ve signed up 30,598
households, who have visited us 126,851
times resulting in $4,126,704.73 in sales.

19. Does it pay off?
• McDonalds is considering a loyalty club, what
does that tell you?
• Yeah. It does pay off.
• If you miss this boat, your business might not
survive, and if you are a marketing
professional, you need to be on top of this.

20. Our recipe for success:
• Get serious about your numbers
• Implement as many systems as possible
• Monitor and dictate your company culture
and voice
• GPS! Get positioned socially
• Build your list (fence your herd)
• Do awesome stuff and have fun

21. Squeeze In music video
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1vzs2mj1
CY

22. The video
• Cost us $2,000 to make
• Has received 5,736 views in three months
• Got lots of attention for release (intended,
calculated)
• Had 28% increase in sales for the three weeks
following the debut
• So much more fun than a TV commercial!

23. What is owning a restaurant like?
• I like to cook, and I love to go out, I should own a restaurant!
No you shouldn’t, you should become a chef.
• It’s NOT a special place that everyone loves and is always busy
and naturally becomes successful (fancy pants)
• It IS a business and MUST be run as one
• P&L’s, Prime cost, vendor relations, complaints, Yelp
reviews, budgets, and so much more
• Sacrifices, no days off, sometimes no paychecks, tough
decisions

24. Yeah but look at all that money!
• 4 million a year goes through our registers
– $1.5 million to payroll
– $1.5 million to product
– $400,000 to leases, utilities, repairs and equipment
– $300,000 in taxes
– $70,000 for health insurance
– $20,000 in donations and charitable giving
– $110,000 to four owners. Good thing we get to eat for
free!

25. Tell ‘em what you told ‘em
• History of the Squeeze
• An under-the-hood look at what we do
• All kinds of numbers to impress you
• Best video ever
• Scared you away from ever opening a
restaurant
• A’s to your Q’s