Selling Eating: Restaurant Marketing Beyond the Word Delicious

This book dares ask that and many other fundamental questions about getting customers to care about your brand.

Hopper draws on twenty years of restaurant communication experience to offer recommendations that range from brand positioning and the “The Seven Very Specific People Your Restaurant Needs to Reach,” to actionable advice like “Three Things Every Menu Should Do,” “Eighteen Separate Restaurant Marketing Moments,” “Fifteen Forbidden Food Words to Never Use,” and many more insights.

“This is a great read for those in the business who need a refresher, or people who are just starting out,” says Kim White, CMO of White Castle. “Sometimes those of us who do this every day get set in our ways—Selling Eating helps us see our competitor’s advertising through a fresh lens…. I’m giving copies to everyone on my team.”

Selling Eating is all about how to communicate motivating, compelling, sales-building “deliciousness” without merely repeating the word “delicious” a bunch of times.

Brand Personality. Advertising. TV ads. Food photography. Content marketing. Social media. Kid’s programs, packaging opportunities, dealing with online reviews: it’s all here, along with advice about answering bigger questions of positioning and branding course correction. Selling Eating also contains extensive examples of the power of language in restaurant marketing, including ways to avoid the cliché terminology common to ads in the restaurant category.

Hopper introduces you to restaurant marketers, ranging from celebrated food photographer Michael Somoroff to renowned researcher Bob Drane. He holds up campaigns from Domino’s, Jack in the Box, Outback, Panera, Burger King, Applebee’s, Wendy’s, Ruby Tuesday, Taco Bell, Texas Roadhouse, Subway and many more—and points out strengths and weaknesses.

With a forward by Russ Klein, former CMO of Arby’s and Burger King, the book has received praise from prominent restaurant industry figures.

Paul Barron, CEO of Foodable and author of The Chipotle Effect, says, “I regularly see restaurants struggle with the exact issues this book covers… Fun to read, and instructive.”