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Husband and wife team Rick and Jari Searns, of Williamsville, N.Y., have been entrepreneurs for almost their entire working lives — roughly 45 years. They have successfully launched and sold three staffing companies, one of which was an Inc. 500 company, and co-founded and currently own two marketing companies. They founded RestMark in 2013, spent roughly six months on software development, and formally launched in February 2014. RestMark offers a package of marketing products and services, the cornerstone of which is an online restaurant directory called dine365.com.
The Searns knew that if their idea worked, it could be easily replicated in other markets.
They chose the restaurant industry because it’s made up of a lot of small, independent businesses that, as Rick put it, “know a lot about restaurant operations and management but don’t know much about marketing.” Restaurateurs, he found, would jump from vendor to vendor for advertising, social media marketing and promotions, but they weren’t getting the bang for the buck they needed — assuming they even had the buck to spend. (Many smaller restaurants don’t.) The Searns also found during their research process that restaurant owners knew they needed some sort of social media presence, but other than having a Facebook page, seemed at a loss about the best ways to maintain it.
The Searns wanted to take the best features from existing lead-generating companies (like Groupon) and restaurant databases (like Zagat’s), and package them together.
Participating restaurants get a free listing in dine365.com online directory. If they want to add features, they can opt for the Self Service package, which allows them to enter coupons for deals, specials and events into the RestMark system on their own. The full-service model provides all the self-service features plus marketing consulting, articles featuring the restaurant and email list building.
Once proof of concept is reached, the Searns hope to launch local restaurant directories in “as many other geographic markets as possible as fast as possible,” as Rick put it. The forecasted plan for each geographic market launched goes from $0 revenue to $3 million or more with a bottom line forecast of $1.8 million for each market after five years, he said.
In the first six months, the company signed 2,343 restaurants, which populate the dine365.com database with listings and free display advertising.
So far, there are 169 self-service customers. Because that part of the business is growing slower than projected, the Searns added a third tier, email marketing services, which includes an “opt-in” email list and a monthly newsletter. It was a shrewd move: The email marketing service is generating the greatest number of inquiries.
As serial entrepreneurs, the Searns were fully aware that any startup that required the development of sophisticated software prior to launch would require a significant amount of time before generating positive cash flow. That’s one reason why the couple personally funded 100% of the startup investment; they could be patient, and tweak the business model as they saw fit, without investors clamoring for quick profits.
Now that the revenue stream has started to develop, the Searns are evaluating whether to bring in outside investors to fund the hiring of additional staff and to put any additional tools in place to speed up growth.
Here are some of the lessons they learned:
Main image: iStock; inset image courtesy Rick and Jari Searns
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