It’s not easy to succeed in the restaurant business (60 percent failure rate according to an Ohio State study), but it certainly doesn’t help when restaurants spend little to no money on advertising, marketing, public relations or don’t even have basic information available, and this latter point is what I’d like to address.

I like Qdoba (though not as much since it got rid of my favorite burrito, the chicken mole), but its opening today of a new location on Park and Regent Street is a good example of a bad launch. This is a chain restaurant with marketing power. It has developed a Web site, a Facebook page and multiple Twitter accounts, for example. Yet, it failed to provide the address, phone number, hours, etc. on any of the above media. That’s like saying, “We have a new restaurant somewhere in the downtown vicinity–hope you can find it and that it’s open if you do!”

Every day on Twitter Qdoba kept announcing how many days left until this location opened. I think the staff could have easily updated the Web site with this BASIC info. I even direct-messaged the Qdoba Twitter account twice to seek this information, and I received no response.

I could see a local mom & pop restaurant not having the time or staff to remember to list their address, phone #, hours, etc., but a corporation like Qdoba? That is simply pathetic.

In later blog posts, I’ll show how many restaurants think not spending any money on advertising, marketing and public relations won’t hurt business.

UPDATE, July 30: Guess who finally responded to my inquiries? I now have the address, phone # and hours. Better late than never!