The good the bad and the ugly in couponing

We have a local restaurant here in town that serves Brazilian food. The food is quite good but it is a bit on the expensive side so I reserve it for more special occasions. In my local paper this morning I saw a ¼ page advertisement for the restaurant – the first time I had ever noticed one of their ads. The restaurant has been around for a little over a year (I think).

The ad offered $ 9.99 all you can eat on Monday and Wednesday nights. Since per person a full meal without beverage can easily cost $ 30.00 that seemed like a good deal – in fact a REALLY good deal. But in the SAME SMALL AD they also had another note saying 5% off with this coupon for orders over $ 20.00. HUH? 5% off of $ 20.00 is $ 1.00. This is supposed to motivate me? Off a $ 50.00 check it’s $ 2.50 – that does not even equal the tax!

This isn’t just bad marketing; it’s plain stupidity. Any positives generated from the interesting offer of $ 9.99 all you can eat (I do wonder what menu items would be available for all you can eat at $ 9.99) is offset by the bizarre $ 5% discount offer. In fact I don’t recall ever seeing a 5% discount for a restaurant ever before.

A different local pizzeria (Planet Pizza) which has several locations in our county does send out coupons upon occasion. But last night when it was duty to pick up the pizza to bring home for dinner I realized I had no coupon around. I recalled that coupons are available on their website. So I went to their website, clicked on the individual location I wanted and was able to download a $ 4.00 off Val-Pak coupon for my order which had to be over $ 15.00 (and was). It was so easy and the store seemed quite content to take the coupon which I told them made me happy. The pizza was great and I got it for less. Win-win.

These were two examples of completely different ways of handling a coupon. The first does not get it, the second does. Make sure if you are offering a value (discount) to your customers you make it clear and easy to understand and redeem. This isn’t that difficult folks.