whats the best way to collect email addrees at a restaurant?

Well I've seen before in some Japanese Restaurant (which I go everyday) have a jar filled with bussiness cards and you can take from there or put your bussiness card there...etc.

organize a contest distribute coupons to everyone and each participant will definitely put his email adress

You should do a business card raffle, this way you can collect the info and award a prize.

Set up a loyalty program with the client? Maybe a "sign up for monthly specials" or something like that. Craft an incentive that will not only get email addresses and phone numbers, but will deliver value to the customers.

hohoho...what do you say??

Restaurant..it's Easy...you can make a website with opt-in...then promote to their the buyers...after they eat in your restaurant...

you can place your website address in the top your billing and offer to them that there is more info for your Restaurant menus and discount....

Good Luck ^_^

You could:

- get a list and call it (like you suggested) to gather emails of interested parties. That would work MUCH better with businesses than consumers. It would be a pretty good waste of time with consumers. With businesses you could hit offices and ask the sec if they want to opt in (for lunch specials/chiro/salon).
- You could do the jars collecting business cards
- You could attend, or hire out someone to attend functions (clubs, dinner hour, wedding expos etc) to give out a coupon in exchange for an email address...or they could just go around asking for emails for whatever service industry "Hi, are you interested in spa services? Great, let me get your email address and we'll send you a coupon for a new local spa!"
- You can buy a list of targeted emails. This option is sketchy, because they won't be opted in (unless you pay for that), they'll just be emails scraped usually, and most of them will be wrong...and the other ones will get marked as spam if they don't expect it.

That's just a few ideas...you'd need to tell us what niche you are targeting for more specific ones.

I like the business card advice.

Thanks guys

E-Mailing any receipts and then within that e-mail you could have a large opt-in at the top of the email to your loyalty/reward scheme or to be kept informed of anything

Simple, Buy One Get One free of a product (entree, drink, dessert, etc...) in exchange for an active email. The unique coupon code for the BOGO gets sent to the email, that verifies the email is active.

Make the coupon code unique per individual email, so you can track who is using the coupons in the restaurant. Send the active coupon/email users more smaller value BOGO coupons than the original email capture BOGO coupon to keep them coming back into the restaurant.

IMO one of the best sales pitch for a restaurant is Kids Eat Free with a paying adult, small kids don't usually eat very much food.

Maybe a nice suggestion would be that you have a loyalty program with a nice pay off. When you visit your restaurant for X number of times you get a free diner for you and a few friends. Make sure the x is high enough to still profit when they get the free diner. The nice thing is about letting them bring their friends is that you introduce new people to the restaurant who might also participate in the loyalty program. Viral marketing offline style.