December 28, 2007
"It wasn't long after moving our restaurant Natasha's downtown to a generous welcome by the downtown community, ample press coverage and great food reviews that we found ourselves taking up collections from friends to meet payroll. This was in 2002, and we needed to act.
Our plan had three basic steps. First, we embarked on a vigorous customer survey campaign, compiling data on own customers. Then we hired our version of a consultant: the UK senior marketing class. We offered $1,000 as a contest prize to five student teams who were to conduct market studies with the goal of doubling our business in our downtown location. This was their semester class final. Third, we made friends with people who owned restaurant franchises.
Downtown's ticket to negative branding
Our first discovery was that there existed an extremely effective, ongoing, self-financing branding campaign for downtown that was already a tremendous success. Being so accustomed to it, we really didn't understand its success. Downtown was a brand already — a very huge, negative brand, bigger than we ever imagined. A lot went into creating this brand over the last 30 years, but we think the driving force behind this brand now is — believe it or not — the simple parking ticket. Every time one of our customers parked near our business, they were, more often than not, stunned like rats by a $15 parking ticket. None of our customers are one-hour customers, and the same holds for the businesses around us. Most of our on-street meter parking has been taken up by bank employees who feed meters. However, increased enforcement made it worse. It simply changed the negative brand attack from ""can't find a place to park"" to the more memorable experience of ""found a place for $15.""
Bad news travels fast
Two hundred tickets a week create over 10,000 negative brand experiences each year. This constitutes a form of direct advertisement, especially if you consider that, each year, 10,000 people will tell five other people about their negative experience. It's not long before 50,000 people hear all about how difficult parking downtown is. A successful branding campaign has been born, and is innocently carried out by our elected officials and employees of the city of Lexington. This experience allied itself with other misconceptions, one of which is that downtown is unsafe.
Creating a brand is hard and expensive, but undoing a negative brand is more difficult and impossible without a well-funded group effort. Just one little restaurant's attempt to survive does not a brand make.
We've been hearing about parking being the issue for downtown for many years, but I don't think we really understood how negative it was. I surely didn't, because I live downtown and typically minimize the negatives. I can find parking, because I'm willing to drive around the block 20 times.
More universal appeal
As a result of the UK market studies and our own, we widened our target demographics to include suburban dwellers by altering our menu to include Kentucky comfort food at lunch. We also added pizza, bison burgers, pasta and stir fry dishes that had more universal appeal at dinner. And we did an overhaul of our image with new logo and design elements, moving a step away from our previous ""ethnic"" appeal. We changed our name to Natasha's Bistro Boutique instead of Natasha's Cafe and Balagula Boutique, to clarify our brand.
Taking inventory
We did an inventory of our assets and found that, aside from really good food at a good price and smart, contemporary decor, we had a kitchen full of musicians and performers, and a loyal customer base that included more musicians, performers, poets and entertainers, as well as teachers, doctors and lawyers. We also found a space that we had already paid for, but had not been using — our restaurant after 9 p.m.
So, we embarked on an event-oriented campaign using our paid-for space at night. We donated it to performers for concerts and shows. They kept all the money they earned, and we functioned as a concession to sell food. We created a new venue. Last year, our fifth year downtown, we hosted over 100 music events and produced 15 small-run theater events, totaling almost 100 nights of events. This translated into approximately 10,000 customer experiences (including many new customers as well as repeat business). Interestingly enough, the majority of these customers did not live downtown. For a better idea of what events we offer, take a look at our events calendar at www.natashascafe.com/html/cnews.html.
For us, entertainment is indeed a cost-effective strategy in making our restaurant ""a destination."" This could be seen as a kernel of downtown Lexington's new ""arts and entertainment"" brand. This has been our survival strategy, and I believe it is downtown's best strategy in the face of overwhelming evidence of what vibrant cities look like and how the appeal works.
What's needed? Leadership and vision We need to envision a vivacious small city with an entertainment brand that will attract new companies to the area with their tax dollars. That means we'll see many more galleries, restaurants, outdoor markets, bike trails, dog runs — venues for various activities, all bustling with people. But before anything happens, we need to stop the negative branding campaign innocently carried out by the city. I would recommend stopping enforcement until the parking solution is addressed comprehensively. We would rather have too little parking than have tourists and guests to our shops and restaurants have negative experiences. I believe after inventorying our assets, we'll find that millions of dollars have already been spent in building the entertainment infrastructure downtown. What we need is serious marketing of the existing galleries, restaurants and shops, instead of temporary venues and street fairs. We need to embark on a well-funded marketing and public relations campaign with billboards, interstate signage, radio, television, press, and magazine articles touting downtown as a destination. We need to unseat that negative brand and help our suburban neighbors move away from the perception of downtown Lexington as being an expensive, unsafe area, better viewed from the review mirror than the sidewalk.
You're invited
As a result of all this, our in-house theater group has become an independent entity, and is now operating and staffed under its newly acquired 501c3 status.
The Balagula Theater performs on our stage, as well as having sent productions to North Carolina, Harlan, Berea College and Morehead University in the past year. Most recently, Balagula Theater opened the longest running, off-off-Broadway play, called ""Line,"" which received a wonderful review and played to full houses.
On December 19 and 20, there will be a ""Baby Shower for a Theater,"" which will include a free performance of our production ""Power Plays,"" written by Allen Arkin. A portion of proceeds from that evening's dining will go to the theater. You're invited! Call (859) 259-2754 for reservations.
I'm not suggesting that all restaurants can turn into night clubs. This is simply our story of how hard it has been to survive downtown and our solution. Since we opened in 2001, 500 more seats were created in new restaurants downtown. One out of three has closed and more have reopened, perpetuating a cycle of opening and closing that adds to the negative brand: can't park, unsafe, and risky for business. Asking entrepreneurs to invest in the creation of more entertainment and shopping venues is risky and simply generates more bad publicity when they close or get in trouble. More venues, restaurants and galleries will come when they see a healthy downtown economy — with parking.
1. Fix the parking.
2. Aggressively market existing entertainment community (Shops, galleries, restaurants, and downtown malls are all entertainment.)
3. Attract new businesses. They will join us when they see our success.
Gene and Natasha Williams own and operate Natasha's Bistro Boutique (www.natashascafe.com) on the Esplanade in downtown Lexington.