New marketing firm helps level the playing field for small businesses by using technology to cost-effectively deliver marketing insights and services for growth.

Columbus, OH -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/12/2020 -- For the small independent businesses that have historically relied on classic marketing strategies like newspapers and radio advertising to drive foot traffic and sales, it can be nearly impossible to compete with larger, faceless corporations with in-house ad agencies and marketing budgets in the hundreds of millions.

Enter Ohio-based Cornerstore Strategy, which utilizes new technologies and approaches to overcome the limitations of costly, traditional marketing projects and market research. It was founded by a former brand manager and marketing director with experience in new product development, food & beverage and consumer goods. The start-up seeks to deliver consistent insights and guidance in the most cost-effective way possible. The company offers a range of customized marketing services—or individually priced project-based 'gigs'—for independent restaurants, coffee shops, bars and even yoga studios.

Perhaps the most unique gig offered is a menu engineering analysis, which has been shown to help restaurants and other small businesses increase their profits by as much as 15% by understanding the underlying costs and contributions of each menu item and making adjustments in menu pricing, layout, descriptions and design; all factors that subconsciously influence the decisions of customers.

Another gig provides predictive eye-tracking analysis which can provide small business owners with valuable insights about what is mostly likely to catch customers' eyes on a product package, shelf, menu or advertisement. For businesses looking to drive publicity and word-of-mouth marketing, the firm offers an online press release writing & distribution gig which includes syndicated distribution to over 400 online sites.

For businesses seeking services outside of the standard gigs, such as for custom market research, Cornerstore Strategy's pricing structure includes individual company consultations or project-based pricing, which typically starts at $100 per hour.

Depending on the service, there is also a sliding scale for start-up businesses who aren't yet "established enough" to warrant such a high hourly rate. In time, the company plans to expand into new services including digital marketing, website design, copywriting and content creation.

See the full details of Cornerstore Strategy's marketing gigs at https://cornerstorestrategy.com/services

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After menu engineering research on Chinese restaurants across America, Cornerstore Strategy reveals a big opportunity to improve sales.

Columbus, OH -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/02/2020 -- Cornerstore Strategy specializes in making restaurant, bar and coffee shop menus more profitable through the use of marketing psychology and menu engineering. In September the company set out to better understand Chinese takeout menus and find opportunities to improve their profitability without changing the underlying dishes served by the restaurants. What they found was surprising.

"In our research, we found the typical Chinese restaurant's take-out menu contains between 180 and 250 priced items. That's a lot of items, or more importantly, a lot of choices for a customer to make," said Brad Mason, the company's founder. But most of these choices are just variations of a smaller set of entrees. The extremely long menus are manageable for the kitchen staff, but as an abundance of psychology studies related to choice and marketing have shown, these choices place a burden on customers. Counterintuitively, more choices seems to increase the likelihood customers will order less or not at all.

The company identified a useful trend toward menu simplification being used by major brands in recent years to improve customer experience and increase sales of key items, without completely removing any items. Cornerstore Strategy's analysis found that most Chinese restaurants could reduce the number of priced items on their menus by up to 61% simply by consolidating each entree's variations into a single, more detailed and descriptive listing. That equates to 'eliminating' 110 items from the average menu without fundamentally changing the availability of any dishes.

"We focused this research on Chinese takeout menus because they are remarkably similar from one independently owned restaurant to the next and there are over 45,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States. But this guidance could easily be applied to restaurants of any type. It's so important to keep the menu simple and concise," said Brad.

You can find more details on the findings along with simple steps for how to put them into action on Cornerstore Strategy's blog.

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Restaurant marketing agency uses artificial intelligence to instantly produce a remarkably creative dinner menu complete with entrees, cocktails, desserts, and even prices.

Columbus, OH -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/16/2020 -- Cornerstore Strategy has successfully created a complete restaurant dinner menu using advanced machine learning and AI technology. The tool generated, without human intervention, an entire restaurant's dinner menu using only its AI engine with a few simple example menu items as inputs.

Cornerstore Strategy specializes in making restaurants, bars and coffee shops more profitable through the use of marketing psychology and menu engineering. However, this is the first time they have used text-based AI technology in their work, purely as a proof of concept. While the final results included some occasionally unique ingredient choices, the appetizers, entrees, desserts and cocktails generated by the artificial neural network are remarkably creative and realistic.

The menu created includes a title, simple description and a price for each item. Among the many dishes generated were a honey pecan chicken served over rice; grilled shrimp dressed with pesto-roasted broccoli and drizzled with pine nut oil; and ranch chilaquiles with cotija cheese and toasted corn tortilla chips. The most expensive entree proposed by the algorithm was an artisan wild mushroom burger with toasted pecans, aioli and brie for $25.

The AI-generated cocktails were more adventurous than the appetizers and entrees and came with expressive names. Among other ingredients, the 'Ekuzma' cocktail is made with rye whiskey and roasted pears, the 'Baked Animal' contains bacon-infused bourbon and Nocino, and the 'Wild Wander' is carried by volcanic pisco and chrysanthemum tea.

To see the full AI-created menu, visit cornerstorestrategy.com/new-blog/ai-menu

"AI is simply a tool restaurants could use to generate new and interesting ideas, building from the great dishes and concepts already in place," said Brad Mason, founder of Cornerstore Strategy. "The AI systems available are quickly becoming exponentially more sophisticated and increasingly difficult to differentiate from human-generated content. Rather than fear it, I'm excited about this technology's potential to magnify our own creative abilities and help us innovate more rapidly."

To learn more about Cornerstore Strategy, visit cornerstorestrategy.com

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