If your currently existing food challenge is just not getting the number of attempts or amount of excitement that you expected, you need to decide what needs to be done to improve the challenge so that more people become interested in participating. As you learned by reading It is OK To Improve The House Rules, you need to decide whether to keep the challenge how it is and hope that things change for the better, or whether you can just simply adjust one or more of the challenge rules to make it more attractive and defeat-able. In some situations though, it may be best to just end your current challenge and start over from scratch. Then you are able to redesign a completely new and different challenge that will better fit your restaurant menu and clientele. There is no shame in that, and sometimes doing this can benefit your restaurant a lot more than continuing to struggle with your old under-performing challenge. Just consider it a learning experience.

If you have not already, make sure to read The Main Reasons Food Challenges Fail. If the problem with your challenge is that the price is too expensive, the time limit is too short, or that you just stopped promoting it, those are all fixable and there is no real reason to just start over from scratch with a brand new challenge. Simply fix the minor issues and move on. If the problem is that the challenge does not fit your restaurant and clientele, or that it’s way too large, these are not just easy fixes. If there is no simple way to make the challenge smaller without totally changing the challenge, such as taking away a side item or patty of meat, you may just need to end the challenge and start over. If your clientele just doesn’t want to eat that much of the food type you chose for the challenge, but they would try a different type of challenge, then you definitely need to start over and create a challenge that your customers will actually attempt. By starting over, you can use your new knowledge gained from the previous challenge and create a brand new one that people will actually want to attempt and get excited about. Achieve the successful marketing power you were aiming for originally!!

If you decide that you are going to end your current challenge and begin a new one, the best thing to do is to keep your previous challenge available until you have the new challenge confirmed and ready to announce. Since not many people are trying your old challenge anyway, this won’t be a big deal or inconvenient for your staff, so do not allow a period of time where you just don’t have any challenge available at all. You definitely do not want to ever have your old challenge available along with the new one, but there is no reason to even let your customers know that you are creating a new one because nobody liked the old one. Just pick a good time to announce that you will be hosting a new challenge and will no longer be offering the old one. Most customers will not think twice about anything and will get excited about the new challenge coming up. Also, you should not get many people complaining about the old challenge no longer being available since not many people were attempting and order the challenge in the first place. If you are coming to the end of a season, or especially if the end of the year is coming, these are typically good times to switch. If you are changing up your menu soon or making any changes at the restaurant, this would be a good time to make a switch too. The choice is up to you.

Starting over with a new challenge can be very beneficial for your restaurant because it allows you to start fresh with a new attitude, and it allows you to move on with new changes while leaving old mistakes behind you. If the atmosphere around your restaurant is beginning to feel stale and boring, switch things up and get things feeling fresh and exciting again. This will invigorate both your staff and customers. Use the feedback from customers along with the articles in the Creating A Challenge section to design a new challenge that your customers will get excited about and want to attempt. Once you have your new challenge in place, you can move on with your new marketing campaign and build your challenge into what you were originally aiming for in the beginning.

To go back and view other Improving A Challenge articles, click here.