I saw this on TechCrunch yesterday and after all the bad Groupon nightmares I’ve mentioned on Twitter, I thought I should post this to balance things out.
Here are a few things that stood out to me as I read the article and looked into the restaurant.
- Mr. Friedman is a tracking fiend. He tracks what the Groupon customers spend, how much they tip and whether or not they came back again after the deal was over. He’s got solid numbers to back up his opinion.
- He ran the numbers and made the deal reasonable. If you check out his menu (http://grandpaeddiesbbq.com/menu.htm) you’ll see that two people are easily going to exceed the amount of the deal.
- This isn’t the only marketing he does. He’s got Twitter going, Facebook, a email list as well as text coupons. I’ll bet money that he regularly does tv, radio, print, and direct mail too.
Finally, and this is the most important thing, he’s got a great product that he believes in. He’s not begging people to come back. He knows that once he gets them in the door, they’re gonna come back. Awesome food at great prices. How can you beat that?