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As a marketer amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, I've had to exercise innovation while keeping health and safety as the top priority. Texas Roadhouse in West Bend is my restaurant. I am the Local Store Marketer at this location. On March 17th, Governor Evers placed the
Safer-at-Home Order. The order mandated all non-essential businesses to close and restaurants to remain open only for To-Go and delivery sales. At the time, I was incredibly worried about my job. How can you market to the public when the public is locked up? Thankfully, I didn't need to worry for long. Easter, Mother's Day, Porch Deliveries, Ready-To-Grill Steaks, Family Value packs, and Farmer's Markets were all needing carefully thought out plans and marketing strategies. Let me tell you exactly how I was able to successfully execute my first ever Drive-Thru Farmer's Market.
The first question that ran through my mind when my boss brought the idea to me was, "ok. How the heck do I even do this?" I'll admit, I was in a comfortable groove before COVID-19 kicked me out of it. Where should I start? What even is a Drive-Thru Market and how am I supposed to plan this whole thing in five days?
After the initial shock, I pulled into high gear. Together, my boss and I figured out what our ideal menu was, who locally we could partner with, what time frame we wanted to offer this, and where we would market the news.
Emails and texts were sent out to our databases. Our native access to our local Facebook page was suspended by corporate as a result of the pandemic, so I've been posting publicly on my personal page and tagging @Texas Roadhouse-West Bend in the post. In addition, we relied heavily on community pages such as @WashingtonCountyRestaurants and buy sell trade pages.
We reached out to our produce company and easy enough they were all for this idea. They were able to put together "produce boxes" and sell them to us at $24 per box. Each box had the same variety of fruits and vegetables so that we could sell them as one size fits all.
Our menu was decided! We were going to sell produce boxes, dairy boxes, Margarita kits, and, of course, our Hand-Cut-Steaks. The dairy boxes consisted of cheddar, jack, parm and american cheeses, 2% milk, and eggs. The margarita kits (my favorite) are cute little baskets with tequila, margarita mix, and instructions. We sold Piggy Packs that had pork chops and ribs with BBQ. The steaks were sold in four packs. In addition, we offered Large and Small butcher packs and ready to cook Prime Rib packs.
Then it was time to create the online order form. We must use Microsoft Forms at Texas Roadhouse (regional rules) but I like Google Forms better because it has more features upfront and more user accessibility. Although, I've been using Microsoft for a few months and I recently learned you can customize workflows through Microsoft Flows to automate actions - it just takes a bit of learning.
I then created the paper order forms and menus. Off they went to be printed. Our printing company, Minute Man Press, was wonderful at putting this together on such short notice! They even delivered to us. I printed the order forms in 2-ply so that we could have multiple people working on the same order.
The layout was rocky. I don't think we finalized it until the morning of. We couldn't figure out what was the best way to accommodate a potential crowd while still staying efficient. We decided to have one entrance that branches off into two lanes. We were slow enough, however, to not need the back up lane.
Staffing was easy. Everyone came in between 8am and 8:30am. I would bring people in earlier or have a staff meeting the day before to go over the final details - there was a lot of confusion that first hour. We had 20 people running the outside and another 4 or 5 running the kitchen. We weren't open for regular business so this staffing was only for the Farmer's Market.
The morning of, I came in at 5am to ring in all of the orders and get started. I rang in every order and texted each person with a pay code. We preferred that online and early orders pre-paid that morning so we could guarantee their order. That's because everything was while supplies last. I wish that I had brought in one or two people at 6:30am to help send the texts. We used Google Voice to send out these texts.
Kaleb, a server that's been with Roadhouse for 4 years, was my godsend! We borrowed traffic cones from the County Fair Grounds, tables from Community Church, and shopping carts from Meijer. Kaleb delivered all these things to us, set up the parking lot with cones and rope, set up the tables outside, and if the wind had been willing to, he would have set up the tents.
Tea's, lemonades, and alcohol were set outside on a trough and on the table. Produce and cheese boxes were brought out 15 at a time. Once there were 4 left, we'd bring out another 15. It was a good routine. We had two people handling the meat orders - one outside and one in the kitchen.
Overall, the day went smooth. As soon as I realized we were burning labor, I cut! cut! cut! The staff was in a great mood and we had only minor hiccups (like running out of 1/2 gallon jugs for the lemonades). We are planning to host another Farmer's Market very soon. This time, we want to drive even deeper into supporting other local businesses. We invited a local florist, candyman, and popcorn shop. We'd love to partner with a dairy farmer to locally source the cheese and dairy products this time around.
The amount of team effort this took and how supportive our team was made the difference in how the day went. I'm proud to be a part of Texas Roadhouse!
