We too are in a very low population area and are very quiet November through April. Can you serve dinners or teas to the general public? Our license allows this and it does supplement in quiet times. I don't push this in high summer.
A theme dinner at a per head charge that makes the work worthwhile could be an option that can be shared on social media, especially with a 10 sec video to show off a photogenic menu item.
Agree with Mort on taking your brochures to area coffee shops, general stores, museums, funeral homes, chambers of commerce or tourism offices and event coordinators. Give a face to the 'new kid in town'
Are you doing anything differently from the previous owners? Has the local press covered your new ownership?
Have you held an open house for the locals since your acquisition of the property?.
I am 1 month in, so i have yet to create a brochure, I do need to do that, and the previous owner had none. This is such a rural town, I really do not have coffee shops other than Dunkin Donuts nor do we have restaurants ( other than a "family" pub down the street). The Press has not covered the change of ownership, a few local folks have stopped by to welcome me, but not many yet...but then again it has only been 5 weeks and I have been up to my elbows in repairs and things like that to fix up. I am sure i can do a catered dinner and tea should not be a problem.
What am I doing differently than the previous owners? Trying to make money. The previous owners had prices dirt cheap, gave things away, and had NO cancellation policy that people are having hard time with. I am trying to make a living at this, but basically free room and board and no cancellation fee's are hard to beat.
I plan on having an open house soon, like I said, I literally just got here..I will put that on my list and ask some of my fellow Maple Sugar venders for input.
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Old timer now, but my first March I didn't gross enough to pay the February power bill, starting out can be tough, but hopefully it improves with time and experience.
Brochure: I have one and a business card, nice to have that brochure in the Chamber office or a visitors center on the highway, but these days I think working my website produces more for less money. If your previous folks had a website, good, if not a new one will take a bit of time to become noticed by the search engines. I believe in do-it-yourself, costs far less and faster to change and update, need help, reach out, another forum member got me started.
Guests: Are there hotels/motels/other Bnbs in town? Who do they sell to, where do their guests come from, how much do they charge and how are their polices set? If there are guests in town we only need to be better than the competition to get our share of the business, if no one is visiting the area, that can be a bigger job.
Pricing: We all need to make money and pay our bills, yet every location is different, my advice, make changes slowly, any time I made rash changes it hurt me for a period of time. When we started nearly 30 years ago I'd say we were the nicer "dump" in town, most business was overflow when the town was busy, today we battle with a couple of new chain hotels for the top spot on TA, but it takes time.
My goal is to match the large fancy chains on quality and beat them on price and personality, but it takes time. I don't know your prices, costs or competition, only you can make those decisions, however my experience was that if I upgraded and changed prices upward I chased away my guests and then it took me a few years to develop a following of new guests who found the new price a good value, slow and steady wins
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