Pacci Ristorante at Kimpton’s Hotel Palomar in Midtown Atlanta found a way to make winners of both guests and the house with its recent breakast promotion. The Northern Italian eatery had already become a hit at dinner, being named an Esquire top new restaurant when it opened last year, but it was perceived by locals as “too fancy” for the earlier dayparts. Marc Taft, GM of Kimpton’s restaurant division, knew that perception needed to change, and breakfast seemed a good place to start.

“We figured breakfast was the low-hanging fruit, since restaurants here weren’t competing for that business,” Taft says. “So we focused on a strategy for getting more people through the door for weekend breakfast and brunch.”

Chef Keira Moritz led the restaurant staff in a brainstorming session that resulted in the Scramble Gamble, a weekend breakfast and brunch promotion that would run from mid- July through the end of August. To participate in the Scramble Gamble, the guest flipped a coin with a Pacci employee (usually Moritz) after the meal for a chance to win a free entrée ordered from the featured menu. One person could flip for the entire table, or each person could flip for his or her own meal.

The potential freebies were limited to seven or eight selections, mainly containing low-cost, high-profit ingredients, such as eggs, toast, potatoes, and flour. The average price of these dishes ranged from $8 to $12. More elaborate brunch dishes, beverages, and desserts were not included in the promotion. Taft says the odds of something being free led to pricier orders per person. After all, if breakfast might be free, why not go ahead and order that Bellini?

Once the promotion was defined, the next step was to spread the word. Pacci’s pastry chef suggested the idea of making a sugar cookie resembling a fried egg. The team attached a restaurant business card to each, delivering nearly 5,000 cookies door-to-door to nearby multiunit residential dwellings and office buildings. Within the hotel, the cookies were included in baskets at the concierge desk and the restaurant’s hostess stand, and weekend guests were treated to them in their rooms.

During the first two months the property was open, Pacci counted only about 10 weekend breakfast or brunch covers a day. With the launch of the promotion, that number rose to 60 to 70 per day. The afterglow remained after the promotion ended, and 50 covers per weekend day became the norm.

But what about the cost of the freebies? During the promotion, Moritz reports, Pacci comped about 40 percent of its 800 weekend breakfast and brunch covers. But given the exponential increase in the number of covers, the high profit margins on breakfast items, and the average check increase, the promotion turned out to be quite profitable, she says. It’s also a staff-pleaser; perhaps surprisingly, tips increased significantly during the promotion, and the restaurant plans to repeat it at the same time this year.

Playing off the success of the Scramble Gamble, the restaurant has introduced Lunchtime Lotto from January 1 through July 31, 2010. Scratch-and-win cards are given to every diner, and possible winnings range from 10 percent off the restaurant bill to a free weekend stay at the hotel. The cards do double duty as data collectors as well. By filling out information on the back of the card, guests are automatically registered for a two-night stay at any Kimpton hotel in the country, with airfare and dinner included. “Our lunch covers have tripled without discounting per se,” Taft says. “We didn’t want to go [the discounting] route, because you don’t want customers to become coupon-crazy.”

Laura Powell has covered the travel industry for nearly 20 years. She appears on television stations across the country as a travel expert and blogs at www.dailysuitcase.com.

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