While marketing is the main purpose for restaurants, the main purpose of attempting food challenges for customers is to have FUN!! If your challenge is a lot of fun and continues to stay fun, then people will keep attempting it. If your challenge is boring and you don’t really ever put any effort into making it fun, then people will not attempt it. The success of your challenge depends on how fun you make it, and it really is that simple. Here are some things you should do and ways to make sure you keep the challenge more fun for everyone:

Keep the price reasonable – A challenge is not fun if the person is worried about having to pay a lot for the challenge if he or she loses. It’s understood that a challenge will cost a little more than a regular meal, but it’s pretty easy to tell when a meal really isn’t worth the price tag. Make sure to price the challenge so that it is still a pretty good value even if the person does lose, and people will have much more fun taking the challenge.

Keep your social media followers updated – Your social media followers will enjoy seeing pictures of challengers and then also finding out the results afterwards. Make sure to post about the challenge every week so that there is never a long period of time where the challenge is basically forgotten about. Even if you haven’t had a food challenger in 2 weeks, keep posting about the challenge so that it never seems like it to your online followers. Make your posts interactive too so that your followers can comment and respond. For example, post a photo of a challenger before he or she begins and ask “Do you think our challenger will win?” If you have a larger number of followers, you will get a good number of short and simple responses. Keep the buzz going about your eating challenge and people will keep coming in to try it. People want to join in on the fun, & more will keep coming!!

Make your restaurant’s Wall Of Fame a BIG deal – To get more challenge attempts, you need to make it seem like being on your Wall Of Fame is actually a BIG and exciting deal. If your Wall Of Fame is way in the back so that nobody really even sees it, their is no honor is that. On the other hand, if people walk into your restaurant and one of the first things they see is a massive board full of photos and names, they are going to wonder what all of those people did to get on the board. More than likely, they will be so intrigued that they will take the time to find out what the board is all about. If everyone walks into your restaurant and has this same experience, some of those people are going to want to get their photo up on the wall too. The frequency of attempts will increase too as the number of names and photos increase. Make being on the Wall Of Fame like an elite group that everyone needs to try to join, and that others are missing out. You will get a lot more challenge attempts.

These three points are the main things that really make a food challenge fun and exciting because they spark excitement all around your restaurant and social media. If you keep the buzz about your challenge going and never let it slow down, then your restaurant will see a world of difference in the daily atmosphere and online. Keep these three points in mind along with all of the other points made throughout this Marketing A Challenge section, and your challenge will definitely be successful which will do wonders for your restaurant in general.

Thanks for reading about marketing a food challenge and why you must keep it fun for everyone!!

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If you want to get your food challenge off to an incredibly quick start so it can begin to build momentum and start working for you in your marketing campaign, the best thing to do is to host a kick-off food challenge contest. As you learned by reading Defining An Eating Challenge Contest, a food challenge contest is the combination of both a food challenge and an eating contest where 2 or more individuals or teams compete to see who can finish a specific quantity of food (food and/or drink) first. In this case, the specific quantity of food would be your food challenge. You can find out all about hosting the actual event by reading all of the articles featured in the Hosting A Contest section. There are over 27 different articles to help you. For the purpose of this article though, here are all the marketing benefits that you will receive by hosting the kick-off eating event:

More people means more exposure – Hosting an event like this requires the help of many different people in addition to the multiple contestants that you need to find for the actual competition. More people involved typically means that there will be a larger amount of exposure meaning that the news of your food challenge will reach a larger amount of potential customers. That is the main goal of the event in the first place!!

Competitions are even more newsworthy – Eating contests typically happen only once per year while food challenges are available all year round. Therefore, eating contests have a much higher chance of making the news since there is only 1 opportunity to cover the event. While covering your contest, the news will also be mentioning your new food challenge, so you are killing to birds with one stone by hosting the competition.

Contests are more “share-able” – Contests are more newsworthy than everyday challenges, and they are also more “share-able” via social media too. Especially if you have a good prize package for winners, people will want to share your event and contact their friends who they think might be interested, so that they know about it too. Another thing is that some people will want to enter the event, but they don’t want to enter it alone, so they will share your competition hoping that somebody will want to enter the event with them, reaching more people.

It’s an opportunity to create an advertisement video – It is critical that you make a video to help advertise your challenge online, and filming the kick-off challenge contest is a perfect opportunity to make that video since it will be a lot more fun and exciting to watch than if just one person is explaining and/or attempting the eating challenge. Your online followers will enjoy it too. You will have people excited before the challenge, and you will also have people excited after the challenge if you post a video showing the results. The video creates a permanent record of the event, and it will be available for people to watch years after the challenge began.

You are able to establish the challenge record – Pending that somebody beats your challenge during the kick-off event, you will have established the current record for your challenge. Even if the record really doesn’t matter for your kind of challenge, using the record in your marketing is a fun way to promote it because it sparks competition since somebody is surely going to want to beat the record just for their own self-joy and pride.

As you can see, hosting an eating challenge contest can do wonders for your new food challenge and can allow you to reach many more people to let them know about it. It not only advertises your challenge, but also the restaurant in general since many of the people hearing about your competition may not have ever heard of your restaurant in the first place. To find out how to host the actual event, please check out the Hosting A Contest section. Following the articles in that section while planning your event will better ensure that your entire community will hear about your challenge and know that it is available and ready for them to attempt it. A kick-off food challenge contest can do wonders for your restaurant’s marketing and you should definitely consider hosting one. The more people that know about your food challenge, the more successful it can become.

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There are currently over 3,000 existing food challenges in the database, and I had to spend time searching online and calling the restaurant for each particular detail of every one of them. The out-of-date database that I started with though had easily over 4,000 food challenges in it. Many restaurants have tried to start a food challenge since Man v Food first premiered in 2008, but many of those challenges have failed because the restaurants just didn’t really know what to do or how to set it up so that it even had a chance to be successful. As you learned in Man v Food’s Effect On The Restaurant World, the television show has inspired many bars & restaurants around the world to create new food challenges, but it never taught any of them HOW to do it.

Since these restaurants don’t know HOW to create, promote, or host a challenge, they then don’t even know WHY their challenge is not getting many attempts or maybe even none at all. The owners eventually decide to end the challenge and then make themselves feel better by claiming that a food challenge just won’t work for their particular restaurant and that the challenge not working wasn’t their fault. In reality, it was definitely their own fault because a food challenge can work at any restaurant/bar if it is designed correctly to fit the particular restaurant hosting the challenge. If a food challenge is failing or not living up to its fullest possible potential, there are probably multiple reasons why. When going through the initial database and figuring out which food challenges no longer existed, I made sure to study each failed challenge to figure out WHY before crossing it off the list. These are the main reasons that most eating challenges fail or under-perform their potential capacity:

Too expensive – People won’t want to try your challenge if it costs way too much if they lose. There are some steak challenges that cost over $100 American dollars, and there are many other challenges that cost over $50 American dollars. These don’t get nearly as many attempts as cheaper challenges. The higher your price is, the less people that will be able to afford to attempt it. If your food challenge is too expensive for your customers, even if it is still a good value at the price it is now, you may have to create something that is more affordable.

Too large – You can award 1 million dollars as the prize for winning your challenge, but that prize doesn’t matter if nobody can beat your challenge. People will not try your challenge if they know they don’t even have a shot at getting through half of it. The larger your challenge is, the less people that will be able to finish it in one sitting. Challenges that can only be finished by professional eaters are not smart challenges. If nobody is trying your challenge anymore, it may just be too big, so you need to create something a little smaller that is “beatable.”

Time limit too short – If a challenge is just too big, the prizes and time limit don’t matter because people can’t eat that much. If the time limit is too short for the size of your challenge, then the prize also doesn’t matter because people cannot eat that much food that fast. People will not try your challenge if they know they definitely won’t be able to finish within the time allowed, if at all, so you may need to increase the time limit to give people more hope. Its much easier to justify raising the limit rather than lowering it. If every person is complaining that the time limit is too short, and especially if people have quit trying it, you should listen.

It doesn’t fit your restaurant – Some challenges don’t get attempted simply because the food isn’t good or nobody wants to eat that much of a particular item. The challenge item needs to fit your menu. People aren’t going to want to eat a burger challenge made by a Mexican restaurant, just like people will not want to try an Asian soup challenge made at an American diner. Along the same lines, your customers may just not want to eat 5lbs of the food you chose, but they would try if it was something else. Just because you like something does not mean everyone else will. If nobody is trying your challenge, it may be because it doesn’t fit your restaurant, so you need to create something else more fitting. Ask customers which type you should pick, and try that.

You can’t set it and forget it – The 4 reasons above are obvious reasons, but this is a major problem too. Many restaurant challenges fail simply because the restaurant just created the challenge and then forgot about it. If you don’t push the challenge, nobody will, and therefore the challenge will cease to exist because people don’t even know the challenge is available. Marketing a challenge never officially ends, and you can’t just promote it for a month and then expect people to just continue trying it. If you don’t care to promote it, people won’t care to try it. It really is that simple. Remember that it’s all about effort and you get out of it what you put into it.

There are obviously other reasons that food challenges fail or under-perform their potential, but these are the main 5 reasons. Some issues like the time limit being too short are fixable, but others basically require you to start a new challenge, using the new knowledge you gained from your previous challenge not working for you. If people didn’t try the challenge simply because of the food type you chose, make sure to pick something that your customers will actually want to eat this time. You don’t really learn from winning, so don’t get upset that your challenge did not work on your first try. Now that you have a better idea of how to design and market your challenge, both from past experience and from FoodChallenges.com, either fix your challenge or create a new one so that you can start seeing the real benefits that come from hosting a successful food challenge.

Thanks for reading the main reasons food challenges fail and for checking out FoodChallenges.com!!

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The most popular reason that restaurants with failed challenges give to explain why they ended their food challenge is that the challenge just “fizzled out” or “lost its luster” over time and people just stopped caring about it. This reason is not an answer, but it is a very lame excuse. A challenge does not just “fizzle out” on it’s own. A food challenge is just like a vehicle in the sense that it won’t run on it’s own. Your car or truck will not get to its ending destination without you pushing the gas pedal and steering it in the right direction. Your food challenge will not drive your marketing campaign if you are not pushing it and steering it in the right direction either. If you hide your vehicle in a garage and let it sit there without telling anybody it’s there, it will never get used and will continue to deteriorate. A food challenge does not lose it’s luster unless its host quits maintaining it and no longer tells anybody that it exists, which allows the luster to quickly deteriorate, and it definitely will.

A challenge losing it’s luster is not a valid answer, and is just an excuse for not solving the real problem. Most likely, the actual reason that the food challenge failed is one of The Main Reasons Food Challenges Fail. If one of those 5 problems exist and are not fixed, then yes your challenge will continue to deteriorate until you decide to end it. Even then, the real reason is because you stopped caring. If you don’t care about your food challenge continuing and actually promote it to your customers, then your customers will not care about it either and will not attempt it. Most new customers won’t even know the challenge ever existed, especially if you never even cared enough to add your challenge to the menu or table advertisements. If you want your customers to attempt your challenge, you have to put the effort in and give them a reason to want to. To do that, follow all of the tips throughout the Marketing A Challenge and Improving A Challenge sections. When you create and begin your food challenge, you are basically committing to it and “marrying” it. If you don’t put in the effort to make your real marriage work, it will definitely end in divorce. The same goes for your food challenge too. It will end if you don’t continually put in the effort necessary to make it successful. Remember, You Get Back What You Put In.

Thanks for reading why food challenges do not just lose their luster and using FoodChallenges.com!!

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There are many things that you should do on your own as the restaurant owner without asking for a lot of customer feedback, but then there are some situations where you should ask your customers what they think. Your customers are the people that come to your restaurant and buy your product which allows you to put food on your own family’s table. If your food challenge follows pretty closely along the guidelines and standards found throughout this Promoters section, and you don’t really think it violates any of The Main Reasons Food Challenges Fail, and you just are not happy with the number of attempts it is getting, then ask your customers what you can improve about the challenge to get them to want to attempt it. Is there something that needs to be changed or would a totally different kind or type of challenge be more attractive to them? You can ask via social media or you can just ask your customers what they think while at the restaurant. Just know that if you ask a question, people will probably answer it, so be ready to listen to and consider the feedback that you receive.

If your challenge is not getting the attention you were expecting or the number of attempts you were hoping for, and you are still pushing and advertising the challenge each and every week, then chances are you are probably getting a few complaints about the challenge which may explain why your challenge is not taking off. 100 people complaining may be wrong if there is 100,000 people saying everything is great, but if more people are complaining about your challenge than attempting it, you definitely have a problem that you need to direct your attention to. Find out what the complaints are and then decide the best way to solve the issues. You may just need to reduce the cost a few dollars, increase the prize value, or raise the time limit. On the other hand, you may just need to start over altogether with a new type or kind of challenge. There definitely are times when it is just best to start over, and that is no big deal. It’s only a big deal if you continue to promote and market a food challenge that is not working. You are not only wasting your time, but you are also showing that you are ignoring customer complaints so people will just stop supporting your restaurant. If you don’t care, they won’t either.

Even if your challenge is successful and getting a lot of people attempting it, you should still ask challengers afterwards what they thought about the challenge and what you can do to improve. Nothing is ever perfect, and everything can be improved. Is one of the ingredients too salty? Were the fries overcooked? Take the customer feedback into consideration and then make necessary changes. Show that you appreciate your customers by trying to make them happy, and they will continue to support you. If a customer asks for a different kind or type of food challenge, and then you do it, that person is more than likely going to attempt the challenge and then promote the challenge to his or her friends in return for you making the changes. If you keep your customers happy, they will happily continue supporting your restaurant. Put in the effort to seek feedback from customers if you are wanting your challenge to achieve better results.  If you ask, they might just give your the answers you are seeking. Then you will know how to make your challenge more successful & get many more attempts.

Thanks for reading why you should listen to your customers for feedback & using FoodChallenges.com!!

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If you currently have an existing food challenge that is not performing as well as you’d like, there are three different options you can choose from. The first option is to keep your challenge the way it is, keep promoting and advertising it, and keep hoping that things change and people start attempting your challenge more. The second option is to figure out how to adjust the challenge to make it more attractive to your customers so that more people start attempting it. The third option is to end your current challenge and start over with a new and improved challenge that is more suited for your restaurant and clientele. The best option to choose just depends on the situation, and yes there are even times where it would be smart to keep things the way they are and wait for things to get better. Before deciding to completely start over with a new challenge though, you should definitely see if you can fix the situation by changing a few of your current challenge’s “house rules” and adjustable details. The solution may be as simple as just increasing the time limit, so it’s worth consideration.

As you learned by reading Listen To Your Customers For Feedback, you should seek advice from your current customers and the few people that are attempting your challenge now regarding what you can do to improve the challenge and make it more attractive so that more people get excited about it and attempt it. If you ask the right people, you will get quality feedback that you can use to figure out what to do next. If you are lucky, all you will need to do is adjust and improve one or two of your rules for the challenge. If your time limit is just too short, increase the time limit to make the challenge able to be defeated. If there is just some silly rule that nobody likes which really does not affect the outcome of the challenge, get rid of it. If people know the meal isn’t worth the cost, adjust the price to make it more reasonable. You may have 500% profit included in the price of something, but if nobody ever orders the item, how much money did you make? The answer is most definitely zero!! You are much better off pricing the challenge so that you sell more with reduced margins.

You may have all of your challenge rules on your advertisement image and maybe even on your video, but know that it is still okay to change your “house rules” if that improves your challenge and makes more people want to try it. Just adjust your image and post it with the updated details. Don’t worry about the video if it has already received a lot of views and is ranking high on the local Google searches. SEO matters a lot more than minor details of the challenge. Even if your adjustment doesn’t involve the rules and just involves taking off 1 of the burger patties or eliminating one of the side items to make the challenge smaller, that is ok too. Just adjust your marketing materials and announce the changes in your challenge. Let your customers know that you appreciate their feedback and that you want to have a food challenge that they can all be excited about. Your community of supporters will appreciate that and share the improved eating challenge, giving you a reinvigorated marketing campaign. Don’t feel that you have to keep and stick with the original details you started with. You may be the owner, but you are also a salesman too, and you need to do what it takes to sell your challenge to the customers. If there are so many issues with your existing challenge that you think it may be best to just start over, that is okay too. Please make sure to read Sometimes Its Best To Just Start Over to find out when you should do this.

Thanks for reading why it’s okay to improve the house rules and for using FoodChallenges.com!!

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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.

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This is the most extremely rare problem of them all, since most restaurants bite off more than customers can chew, but every now and then restaurants will create a challenge that is too easy. There are two types of issues that can stem from a challenge that is too easy. In some cases, just too many people are winning & therefore the restaurant is losing money by hosting the challenge the way it is. If you decided to award the meal for free to winners, and you are getting more people winning than failing, then you are probably losing money by having the challenge, and no restaurant has every started a challenge hoping to lose money. Even if you charge for the meal and award a free shirt to winners, if too many people are winning the free shirt and your costs are not being covered because you didn’t expect to give away that many shirts, then you need to do something about that situation too. The other issue that may come from a challenge being too easy is that customers that have beaten your smaller challenge are wanting you to create a tougher challenge for them. This happens with spicy challenges sometimes. A restaurant may think its sauce is completely ridiculously spicy, but the customers may not agree and you will have a few that want you to make it even more intense. There are positive ways to handle each situation and satisfy both your finances and your customers. Here they are in case you have this problem.

If too many people are defeating your challenge, the best thing to do is simply make it tougher while keeping the same rules. If your spicy sauce just isn’t spicy enough, make it hotter. If everyone is beating your triple patty burger challenge, make it a quadruple patty burger challenge. Don’t just take the cheap way out and add more french fries. Just make sure not to get carried away and then make the challenge too tough. If too many people are beating your burger challenge with a 2lb (1kg) beef patty, you can’t just add another layer and increase the challenge by 2lbs (1kg) while keeping the same rules because that change is just too significant which changes all of the dynamics of the challenge. In a case where you can’t just simply add to the challenge to make it tougher, you may just need to adjust the rules. If your challenge has a time limit of 30 minutes and you are getting too many winners, evaluate the average time that it is taking everyone to finish the meal. If 80% of the people are taking over 23 minutes, change the time limit to 20 minutes, and then you won’t have as many winners because people can’t eat that fast. You may even make the challenge into more of a speed challenge by making the time limit only 15 minutes. Just don’t get carried away and make the challenge time limit too tough to beat. This is a much better solution than raising the price so that the cost losers pay makes up for the people winning. Customers will not appreciate that, and you are not the federal government, you please avoid that.

If the situation occurs where your current smaller challenge is doing great and getting a lot of attempts, but there are a few people that have beaten the challenge and want a tougher challenge, evaluate how you can make a tougher challenge while connecting it to the existing challenge. You don’t just want to make a new and larger totally different challenge because that will severely damage your marketing efforts. Consider the example used above involving adding an additional 2lb burger patty. You can’t just just add another 2lb patty layer while keeping the same rules, but you can add another challenge level. You can keep the existing challenge the way it is, but you can add another level to the challenge with a higher time limit and higher valued prize. For example, if somebody beats your 2lb burger challenge in under 20 minutes, they get a free shirt but still pay for the meal. If a challenger wants to try the 4lb (1.8kg) burger challenge, he or she can get the meal free by finishing in under 40 minutes. If you cannot just add a layer to the challenge, let challengers try to eat 2 of your current challenge, and award a higher prize while allowing additional time to finish. If too many people are finishing your 4lb burrito challenge and getting the free shirt and 50% discount, then let diners try to eat 2 of them and award them with the burritos free and a gift certificate. Make sure to keep the challenges connected by just increasing it or doubling it so you can maintain a focused marketing campaign & not 2 separate weaker ones.

Those are all great solutions if you discover that you created a challenge that was too easy for people. Your customers will definitely understand too as long as you let them know that you are making changes. If there is any one thing to take away from this article, its that you SHOULD DEFINITELY NOT just start adding in food without telling people. If you advertise a 2lb burger with 1lb fries, don’t just one day start serving your 2lb burger with 3lbs of fries. The most disappointing thing for eaters is when the challenge sitting in front of them is twice as big as the challenge advertised in all of the restaurant’s photos. If you just start adding food to everyone’s plate just to make the challenge harder, people will start to get very upset and your challenge and restaurant will start getting a bad reputation. It’s so obvious when restaurants add in food just trying to ensure that a customer fails the challenge. It has happened to me many times, and I make sure to give the cooks trouble after I still win. If you are adjusting your challenge, make sure to announce the changes and adjust your marketing materials. If you are adding another challenge level, make sure to announce that too just like you would any new challenge. Just make sure to connect the two challenges and advertise them at the same time. If you are just adjusting the current challenge and adding a little to make it more difficult, it is okay to raise the price as long as you don’t go overboard and make it too high, just like any other detail. Follow these guidelines if your challenge is found to be “too easy” and you will see great results that are both lasting and profitable!!

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

It’s one thing for a restaurant to boast about an undefeated challenge if over 100 people have attempted it and the closest person was just a few bites away, but it’s a different story when a restaurant is boasting that nobody has even gotten close. The reason the first restaurant is having so much success is because people at least know the challenge can be beaten because people have gotten within a few bites. The customers have hope that they themselves can become the first person to defeat the massive challenge. If a really large challenge is getting a lot of attempts (breakfast challenges), 90% of the time its because the challenge is pretty cheap and it’s still a great value even if people lose because there is just so much food and they then have leftovers to take home. The price of the challenge in this situation matters much more than the prize because most people will have to pay the price anyway and not many people even have a prayer or shot at winning the prize awarded.

No matter what kind, type, or size of challenge you create, at least a few people will attempt the challenge in the very beginning simply because it is a challenge and those people want to try to beat it. If you tell people they can’t run up a mountain, some people are going to try to run up the mountain just to prove it can be done. You may get 30 people to try the challenge the very first month, but if not one of those people get even close to finishing 75% of the meal, then your amount of attempts will continue to decline and eventually you will go months without any challengers. What value does your challenge have for your restaurant if nobody even attempts it? It’s one thing if you have a 30″ pizza challenge that is actually a menu item that you sell a lot of normally, but it is an entirely different story if you have a challenge item that just never gets ordered because it costs too much and nobody can come close to beating it. You may be able to boast about having a challenge that cannot be beaten, but remember you are also boasting about having a challenge that is not making you money. People that boast about records do that to make themselves feel better about not getting paid for their work.

Another thing to keep in mind is that as FoodChallenges.com increases the popularity of food challenges and also increases the number of serious competitive eaters that attempt them, there will be some eaters that can eat a lot more than others. Just like there is a star ranking system for challenges, there is a ranking system for eaters too. A 5 star eater is a person capable of eating more than 8lbs (3.5kg). Currently there are 5 star eaters that treat eating like a hobby and they do 5 star challenges without charging an appearance fee or anything. As opportunities continue to be created for everyone involved with  “the movement,” top eaters will begin to realize their value and they won’t be doing 5 star challenges for free anymore. If you feel the need to create a really “unbeatable” challenge that only top level eaters can defeat, know that there will be appearance fees necessary to attract those eaters. Owning a restaurant is a business, and for the better eaters, eating will soon become a business too. Any 5 star eater willing to do your challenge for free more than likely will not be sponsored by FoodChallenges.com. So if you don’t even have a cash prize involved, you may want to rethink your plans and design a challenge that regular customers can come close to finishing. Otherwise, don’t expect much success.

Starting a challenge that is unbeatable due to a ridiculous time limit is easily fixable. Creating an unbeatable challenge because it is just so big is not. Making the time limit 2 hours instead of 1 hour does not make your massive challenge that much more winnable. The speed of an eater has a geometric value. Eaters are very fast in the beginning and then they continue to eat slower and slower as their capacity fills up until eventually they are taking 1 or 2 bites every few minutes at a snails pace. Because somebody eats a 3lb burrito in 10 minutes, that does not mean that the same person can eat a 6lb burrito in 20 minutes. A person may eat 5lbs of a giant 6lb challenge in the first 20 minutes, but then it may take 20 more minutes to finish that last pound. Increasing the time is not some magical thing that makes your challenge easier to beat. If an eater can’t beat your challenge in 90 minutes, that person can’t win in 3 hours either. This is definitely by far the biggest misconception that restaurant owners have about competitive eating. Speed drastically slows down as the eater reaches his or her maximum capacity and “hits the wall.” When that point comes, he or she can only eat so much more. Giving that person an extra hour to finish the remaining 2 lbs is not going to change anything. That person will not finish.

If your challenge is unbeatable, nobody will attempt your challenge no matter what the prize is. The prize doesn’t matter if you can’t win. The same goes for your challenge. The amount you make from each challenge does not matter if nobody attempts it. If nobody is attempting your challenge, there is also no customers bringing groups along to watch them take the challenge. Having an “unbeatable” challenge is a lose-lose for everyone involved, so please create a challenge that is actually able to be defeated. For a large challenge with a good prize, you want many people to get halfway, with quite a few getting 75% of the way, with just a few people coming within a few bites, with a very elite few people actually winning. If you have no real prize other than it being free, it should even be just a little easier so that more people are willing to try it. If after reading all of this article, you still want to create an “unbeatable” challenge, please let us know when you create your food challenge. You can be featured as one of “The Dumbest Food Challenges In The World.” If you like money though and you want people to try it, hopefully you have chosen to create something a little easier that is “winnable.”

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This article was inspired by two different recent occurrences, and the purpose is to explain why going “bigger” is not always the best decision and how sometimes using “less” can bring a whole lot more benefits to your restaurant. I went to a local restaurant to watch my friend take on a 10lb sandwich challenge along with a partner so that I could personally get a better understanding of how massive the challenge really is for when I take the challenge in a few in a few months with one of my friends. The restaurant awards a team of two people $100 and the meal free if they can defeat the entire sandwich within 1 hour, and they will give a person $500 if he or she defeats the challenge alone with no help. While watching them take the challenge, I had a brief discussion with the manager about the challenge, and I soon realized that he was absolutely clueless. I have seen some challenges that were advertised as being 10lbs (4.54kg) but were not really a legitimate 10lbs, but this sandwich was definitely 10lbs or more. I started talking about how massive the challenge was and how it was a good team challenge, and then joked about how stupid a normal person would be for thinking they can do it alone. He then started to explain how he didn’t think the challenge was that big, and that any legitimate “professional” should be able to beat it by themselves. Needless to say, I was very stunned by his ignorance.

There are less than 10 professional eaters in the world that can beat a true 10lb challenge on a given day, and just because a person ate a 10lb burrito, that doesn’t mean that he or she can eat a 10lb burger or sandwich. I explained this to him, along with how none of those people even live around St Louis, and he seemed very surprised and doubtful. I then asked him how many people have tried it solo, and he said only a few, and that only 1 person had gotten within a few pounds (a pro from Ohio). There has not been a team that has beaten the challenge either, and my friend’s team was not the first, falling just short of completing it within the 1 hour time limit. While the manager was laughing at how they did not complete the challenge, I was laughing at how much money his restaurant was NOT making by hosting the challenge that hardly ever gets attempted or ordered.

The other instance inspiring this article was seeing a Facebook post by a restaurant near Brighton, England. A restaurant started a challenge called Brighton’s Biggest Burger Challenge which had a 50 ounce burger patty with a massive bun and a mound of fries. This challenge was actually brilliant because it got the restaurant featured in a lot of English newspapers and the Facebook post was shared hundreds of times, so it really was a great publicity stunt, but at the end of the day there is hardly anybody around Europe that has a chance at beating the actual challenge. Also, the restaurant just shared a photo with no information on it other than the actual challenge meal. Like I mentioned in Create An Advertisement To Display, for most people that saw the shared Facebook post, nobody even saw any information that actually significantly advertised the restaurant. It did lead to newspaper articles though, so that part was successful, but at the end of the day the challenge won’t bring in much actual revenue for the restaurant because nobody will be able to defeat the challenge so people will stop attempting it within a few months of starting it. Just because that sized challenge can work in a large American city, that doesn’t necessarily mean it can work in Canada, Europe, or Australia, so think about that.

When I was young and dumb playing high school football (American football), I too thought that more weight and size was better. I gained over 100lbs (46kg or 7 stones) in just 1 year, hoping that it would make me a better football player. While it did get me noticed a lot more by universities and helped me lift heavier weights in the gym, that much extra weight made me a lot slower too, and football is a game of speed & quickness. Looking back, I wish I had stopped at 60-70lbs because the final 30lbs were very unnecessary which caused me to be less productive as an athlete. This same theory goes for food challenges too. You may want to have the biggest food challenge around, but the bigger the challenge is, the less people there are that will want to take the challenge. People can talk about your challenge all day and night, but unless people are actually buying it, you are not making any money. While you are boasting about having the biggest burrito challenge in the country, that restaurant owner that you created your challenge larger than may be boasting about his bank account because their challenge gets attempted five times more often than yours. We know the winner of that battle!!

If you have a challenge that is too big and does not get many attempts, consider either getting a 2nd smaller challenge or just stopping your current challenge and creating something smaller that more people will want to attempt. I have watched many small restaurants with extra large challenges shut down, and I don’t want you to be the next, so remember that a bigger outrageous challenge may get you noticed more, but it won’t necessarily translate into you making more money. Bigger is not always better, and sometimes less is definitely more!!

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