Marketing Between Illusion and Reality… Where Do You Start?

Ahmed Samir Ragab, Food Marketer, Founder & MD of Food-Xperts

In the world of restaurants and food industries, the same questions keep coming up: How do I market? Why have my sales dropped? What plan will bring me back into the game?

The truth is, the problem isn’t the question itself, but the way we think about it. Too often, marketing is reduced to a random ad or a social media post. But real marketing is a journey—one that begins with the market and ends in the customer’s heart.

And here’s the golden rule: the first step is always to understand the market before expecting the market to understand you. How can you ask people to get you, when you haven’t taken the time to get them? The market isn’t a chaotic arena—it’s a network of minds, experiences, and expectations. If you don’t decode it and speak its language, it will simply ignore you.

That’s why, before any ad or campaign, some tough questions must be asked. Who exactly is our customer? What do they really need, and how does our product or service meet that need? Then comes the harder part: how many of them are out there? What’s the true size of this market—not in theory, but in numbers you can rely on? And within that, what’s our realistic potential share? Until you can define and quantify your customer, you’re not looking at a market… you’re only guessing at one.

Once you have that clarity, the next layer becomes cost: What does it take to reach them—through branches, distribution, or communication? After production, operations, rents, and marketing expenses, are we still profitable? Or are we fighting a losing battle from day one?

And what about competition? If we succeed, will a stronger, established competitor copy us, plug our idea into their existing production, sales, and marketing machine, and take the market we opened? Is this a market with such low entry barriers that dozens will follow us in—and we’ll be the first to exit?

The most dangerous moment for any restaurant or food brand is when sales decline. That’s when excuses appear: the customer has changed, the market is tough, competition is fierce. But the harsh truth is simpler: management stopped studying the market, stopped refreshing their understanding of it; the customer experience stood still; prices no longer reflect real value; or worse, there was no plan at all—only improvisation.

A strong marketing plan doesn’t need hundreds of pages. It can be written in just a few, if we honestly answer the big questions: Who is our customer? What makes us different? How will we reach them? What message will stay in their mind? And how will we measure success?

At the end of the day, marketing success is not a mystery and not a magic formula. It’s about honesty with the market: to know it before it knows you, to understand it before asking it to understand you. And then, to move forward realistically, within your true capabilities—never stepping into a market bigger than what you can actually handle.