Hospitality
Hired to lead all sales and marketing initiatives for a 35-store restaurant chain.
Rice Garden
Marketing Manager
Year
2010 - 2012
Achievements
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Led all marketing and sales initiatives for 35 restaurants, including marketing, budgeting, creative, production, reporting and media optimization. Developed business tools to improve individual restaurants’ business performance.
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Developed roadmap (menu) and executed strategic marketing plans to meet sales targets and increase brand awareness.
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Increased same-store-sales by 11% within a year, resulting in the first year of positive growth in 3 years.
Increased email membership by 200% through promotions, store personnel training, and social media tie-ins.
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Reviewing and understanding our company P&L was essential to track our sales performance and manage our marketing budget.
Product Management
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Rice Garden’s menu consisted of key staples and new menu items that launched and rotated each year. Together with the Operations and Food Science teams, I worked on bringing new menu items to life, including improvements in ingredients, recipes, and packaging.
Brand Marketing
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I established and managed all social media accounts, responding to customers, and directing how the brand was presented to the public.
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Increased email membership by 200% through promotions, store personnel training, and social media.
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Launched and managed our customer loyalty program
Company Operations
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In addition to leading all marketing initiatives, I also supported the Operations team and helped to create consistency and quality standards across stores.
SOP (standard operating procedure) documents
Sourcing and designing Uniforms and Packaging
Mystery Shopper Program
Recipe and Prep Books
Nutrition Facts
Testimonials
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I had the absolute pleasure of working with Ellie when I was the President of Rice Garden. Ellie was a valuable and important member of the Rice Garden team. As a Marketing Department of 1, she learned and adapted very quickly, and took charge of all marketing initiatives for our restaurants (35 stores at the time). She negotiated substantially lower fees for our website, email marketing, and other vendors, and launched marketing programs that cost very little money while providing a positive ROI. She is very efficient and works well independently, but also adds a tremendous amount of value in a team environment. Hopefully, I'll have the opportunity to work with Ellie again.
Carlos Bernal, Chief Executive Officer at Areas