Creative Marketing & An Empowered Staff Drives a Strong Comeback at The Vault Taproom

It's fair to say that restaurateur Kyle Wolfe was pretty well put through the wringer by the pandemic.

"We saw a reduction in monthly sales ranging from 35% to 75% depending on the month/stage of the pandemic," Wolfe recounts. "We've had to lay off 90% of staff three times due to government restrictions, then stop and restart in-house dining the same number of times, deal with changing regulations -- sometimes on a weekly basis -- and variable customer sentiment and retention."

Helping him survive and now thrive: RestaurantOwner.com.

"I've primarily utilized RO to pull down formalized documents for training and operational needs," Wolfe relates. "RO is great for providing these templates as you don't have to reinvent the wheel. It's much easier to adjust templates than it is to try and create your own.

Shutting Down

Upon shutting down on March 16 and going to take-out and delivery only, Wolfe spent the entire day with his key players in a strategy and planning meeting. They set three goals: "Broaden our market reach, increase revenue potential through the addition of patio seating and a delivery/take-out centric business, and survive."

They doubled-down on their existing third-party delivery services by investing heavily in marketing over those platforms to increase order volume. They created a new employee-compensation model to ensure staffers were adequately compensated "and that we could afford to continue to employ people yet survive financially," says Wolfe.

Management applied for and received PPP, EIDL, state, and local grants, he adds. "We doubled-down on all of our existing in-house marketing avenues including direct-email and mail marketing, Facebook, and Instagram. We extended our reach by investing in marketing while others around us shriveled up their marketing budgets. We also empowered our dedicated employees by putting them into key decision-making and management roles. This increased their feeling of ownership and allowed me to dedicate more time to operational improvements and marketing efforts."

Two major steps stick out among the many that Wolfe took during 2020, he reflects. First, improving the quality of his staff and empowering existing staff members, and second, employing a "very flexible and aggressive mentality" toward changing conditions.

Growing, Increasing

The strategy worked.

As a result of those efforts, the operation has been able to re-open with 50% higher repeat-customer rates than they saw pre-pandemic. Weekly revenues are 80% to 95% of pre-pandemic levels despite operating with only 70 of 110 indoor seats and no patio seats due to weather, no bar seating, and no pre- or post-dinner drinks due to food-purchase requirements.

Says Wolfe, "We increased our third-party delivery revenue by 500% to 700%, successfully completed our patio to increase seating capacity during good-weather days from 110 to 140, successfully opened our quick-serve take-out/delivery concept Piggy Bank -- which is now grossing $200 to $400 daily and growing -- and increased week-day revenues by 50%. We've also grown our in-house direct-marketing list to 10,000 in a little over a year."

For the balance of this year, Wolfe intends to refinance his existing start-up loan to "something a little more affordable to solidify our financial foundation." He would like to take what he terms a "hub-and-spoke" approach to expansion, focusing first on the low-overhead, high-cash-flow quick-serve Piggy Bank concept fed by The Vault's kitchen in a quasi-commissary fashion "to further solidify our financial position before attacking another large project like The Vault Taproom."

Beyond that, he looks forward to a formalization of training procedures and administrative documentation "to make everyone's lives easier" and assist with staff expansion as his brands continue to grow. "That's a big one. I'm sure everyone reading this can appreciate both how boring and how important those systems can be."