How to Make Money Working at Home Making Restaurant Placemats

Have you ever eaten at a restaurant that had advertising on its paper placemats? Now be honest—didn’t you read every one of those ads while waiting for your food? Everyone does. That is why it is easy to get businesses to advertise on them. A restaurant’s clients are a captive audience! This translates into a great business opportunity for you. Do you want to know how to quickly and easy set up your own restaurant placemat business? This article will show you how.

Count Your Costs

Your first step is to figure out how much the placemats are going to cost you. This is the key to setting your advertising prices. Call around to different printers in your city or town and get several quotes. Just be careful—some of these printers also run a placemat business as one of their services. They won’t to do work for a competitor!

The printer is going to want to know the dimensions of the placemat—11x15 is a good size—and whether you will be using color. Color costs more. Get a price for 5000 placemats. This is generally the smallest number you can print at one time.

Count Your Profit

Now that you know how much the placemats will cost, it’s time to see how much money you can make. This depends on two factors:

1. The number of adds you can fit on a placemat and
2. How much the businesses in your area are willing to pay for the ad.

Let’s say that the ads will be 2 inches by 2 inches each (if someone wants more room they have to pay for another square of space). This equals (approximately) 34 ads on your 11x15 placemat. To find out how much you should charge to cover your costs, take your production costs and add 30% for your overhead. Then divide this number by the number of ads you have.

For example, if my placemat costs are $600, I would add on 30% for such things as delivery costs, gas, etc. This makes my total cost around $720. Divide $720 by 34 ads and you get $22. Each space has to cost $22 just to cover your costs.

But you don’t want to just break even, you want to make money. Call up other placemat businesses in your area. Pose as a customer and ask how much the company charges for an ad. Pretend that you can’t make up your mind and get a whole range of prices. Do this with at least three companies in your area. This tells you how much the market in your area will pay for an ad.

You now know how much to charge for your ads—it can range anywhere from $50-$100. This gives you a profit range of $980-$2,680 per 5000 placemats. Not bad, eh?

Find Your Customers

Before you spend a dime you need to talk to restaurant owners in your area. Concentrate on the little “Mom and Pop” restaurants. Why would they bother to take what you’re offering? You’re giving them free placemats. Tell them you will have their logo (or anything they want) printed on the placemats for free. If the owners don’t seem eager, offer them a $50-$100 incentive.

Find Your Advertisers

You will want to talk to every business within a few miles of each restaurant you are going to target. Don’t bother with the bigger chain stores—their advertising is handled by a national office. Go to locally owned video stores, coffee shops, dry cleaners, real estate agencies, community groups, and local clubs.

Tell them about how reasonable your costs are compared to advertising in the yellow pages or local paper. Their ad will run as long as the 5000 placemats last, and they are putting their business right in front of the people who would most likely patronize them. Come up with a list of at least four benefits and practice saying them in a confident, upbeat tone.

Anybody could run a home-based restaurant placemat business. If you are friendly, persistent, and like to persuade, you can run a successful business. What are you waiting for? Start your placemat business now and watch the money come in.