There can be a lot of fear mongering in the news when it comes to new technology and its potential for replacing people in the workplace, or removing the human touch consumers expect from businesses like restaurants . While automation is replacing more repetitive tasks in restaurants, it’s more common for technology to recreate the kinds of work restaurants do — and help them make experiences feel more personal for guests, not less. You can do this in ways beyond mining guest data to send targeted promotions. Case in point: Ford Fry, the founder of Rocket Farm Restaurants, recently told Entrepreneur that he has gone from not knowing what Instagram was to hiring a team dedicated to the restaurant group’s online presence. That has involved tasks like curating Spotify playlists that embody the restaurant brand and are played for visitors to the restaurant’s dining rooms and website. Whether you have a dedicated team managing your online presence or not, how can you use tech tools to boost the connections you make with guests — and the connections they can make with each other? Social media planning and posting can feel like a one-and-done exercise: Conceive of eye-catching content, post it, hope for the best and move on. But if you’re strategic about your posts – and simply aware of how people respond to your brand – you can generate a response that’s far larger than any individual post. Take Chipotle’s recent experience on TikTok with a menu hack shared by two content creators on the platform. Late last year, the pair’s review of a Chipotle steak quesadilla with fajita veggies touted a do-it-yourself dressing made from the brand’s chipotle-honey vinaigrette and sour cream. So many people tried to order the off-menu item that Chipotle decided to promote it as a limited-time offer on its app and website this spring. When you consider potential contests, invitations to share menu preferences, or other outreach to customers via social media, think a few steps ahead. How might you use guest feedback to not only reward people for their loyalty but also demonstrate your own engagement with the people who enjoy your food most? In the third-party delivery world, it can be easy for a restaurant brand to get lost – or even just diluted in a sea of other dining possibilities. Uber Eats recently announced that it is weeding out several thousand virtual restaurant listings that are basically replica menus being promoted under different virtual brands, Restaurant Business reports. This is allowing some restaurants to occupy a larger digital footprint than they merit, while crowding out smaller restaurants. While the step is a positive for smaller restaurants with a single brand, it also underlines the power of branded apps for restaurants looking for footing in a crowded market. According to the research site FinancesOnline, the number of people using food delivery apps in the United States is expected to reach 54 million this year, up from 44 million in 2021. Restaurants must have a strong online presence, and yet it’s becoming more difficult (and important) to stand out. As a recent whitepaper from Fast Casual emphasizes, relying on third parties for digital ordering can cost restaurants money and opportunity. Bad service from the third-party provider can be perceived as a negative experience with your restaurant. By farming out the ordering and delivery process to third parties, restaurants also lose valuable customer data they could use to build loyalty with their guests. If you don’t already have your own branded app, consider partnering with a provider that can allow you to connect with customers, build your loyalty program, sell gift cards, connect with them through geolocation and build an overall online and app-based ordering experience that you can control. Restaurant reviews – both positive and negative – pack a punch. TripAdvisor found that 94 percent of U.S. restaurant diners base their dining decisions off of online reviews. The sweet spot for ratings is four stars and higher: According to Review Trackers, consumers don’t trust businesses or restaurant operators with reviews of less than four stars, and 33 percent of diners won’t eat at restaurants where the ratings on Yelp, TripAdvisor and Google are lower than four stars. A Harvard Business School study found that restaurants can boost their revenue by 5-9 percent for every star added to a Yelp review. Playing reviews to your advantage requires a deft response, particularly to your negative reviews (though potential brand ambassadors may be hiding out in both your positive and negative reviews). A thoughtful, calm, well-written response can turn a bad review on its head and make a reader – if not the reviewer themselves – want to give you a try. In a recent report from Modern Restaurant Management, Izzy Kharasch of the restaurant consulting company Hospitality Works advises operators go back through two years of online reviews for their restaurant and respond to each one personally. Thank the person for bringing a problem to your attention, apologize for not meeting their expectations, and invite them to contact you personally. Ask them back to your restaurant and check on them personally – you may or may not want to offer a free appetizer or round of drinks. Your treatment may motivate them to post a positive updated review and to recommend you to friends. While you may have a slick website that represents your brand well, it’s only as good as its ability to draw people to your site and communicate the information they need. Is your website attracting the traffic you’re looking for? First, focus on the local. In your About Us section, talk about your location – how you landed in your neighborhood and what background you have in the town or city – so hungry people nearby are directed to you when they search for restaurants online. Most restaurants have room to improve when it comes to optimization on Google My Business. Consider what factors about you might appeal to guests, from having a deck with a view to being a multigenerational family business. Finally, write website copy that incorporates keywords that are likely to be picked up in a search, but avoid cramming too many of them into a paragraph – not only does that feel inauthentic, but it doesn’t optimize SEO either. The off-premise restaurant experience has become as important as the on-premise experience. What does yours say about your restaurant? A new report from Fast Casual indicates that inaccuracies in digital orders can most often be traced back to one place: the kitchen. It said many restaurant brands experience 15 percent lower guest satisfaction on digital orders. Improving upon these outcomes is about having a more unified solution for managing and fulfilling business coming from multiple streams. Your kitchen display system is a key tool in helping you manage the flow and throttling of orders, as well as in allocating team members to manage tasks accordingly. There is just something about online videos that make a person engage. A study from Animoto found that Facebook videos generate 10 times more comments than other kinds of posts. A separate study found that Instagram videos receive 38 percent more engagement than image posts. (This likely explains why Instagram, which originated as a place to share photos, has somewhat controversially been trying to reinvent itself as a video platform in recent years.) And every platform wants to be TikTok right now for its ability to motivate people to not only watch entertaining content but also share it with friends. Video should be a key part of your marketing strategy because it can help you build stronger connections between the people who prepare your food and those who enjoy eating it. And they can be very brief – Animoto suggests small businesses post a good number of videos that are 15 seconds in length – with a hook within the first few seconds. Consider the talents on your team and how you can showcase them in ways that connect with people. Have a creative chef? Have him share his favorite cooking hacks, or interesting takes on how to work with a food item in different ways (the #TortillaTrend on TikTok is one example). Do you have a dish that can be customized in dozens of ways? Share some diverse examples – or better yet, ask your viewers to vote for their favorite or share their own concoction. Do you plate your dishes in visually striking ways? Create a contest in which you challenge your viewers to share their own outrageous platings. Who knows? You might just become a viral sensation and give your restaurant a valuable boost in traffic. The habits and tastes of the couple who dines with you on a Friday night are likely much different from those of the parent who brings his child in for lunch with you on a Saturday. So your outreach to these guests must be different too. As Paytronix CEO Andrew Robbins recently said, “Fifty percent of people are day-dependent. The day they make a purchase is hugely important.” Getting the day right when communicating offers to them, he says, can make marketing to these guests 50-58 percent more effective. Your loyalty program, therefore, should be able to make guests feel like you’re interacting with them personally (without them noticing you’re doing so at scale). For example, if a guest loves getting takeout from you on a Friday night and she tends to ignore emails, you’ll have an easier time securing her order if you tempt her on a Friday afternoon with a text message that includes a link to (and even a visual of) her favorite order. It’s a much easier “yes” than a blanket email for a new lunch combo deal – though directing that to a certain subset of your guests may work perfectly. When you get guests to sign up for your app or to other forms of communication from you, how far are you able to drill down on their habits and preferences? Consider not just what they like to eat but when, why and how they like to hear from you. More data from them should equal more detailed customization from you. In the past few years, restaurants’ virtual storefronts have become more important than their real-world storefronts. Your online presence — particularly your online menu — must not only provide viewers with the information they need to place an order. It also needs to be found easily in an online search, then it must present information in a user-friendly manner that is suitable for viewing on a mobile device and doesn’t require visitors to do a lot of scrolling and clicking to find what they need. In a recent Forbes report, Oleh Svet of the software provider Computools advises restaurants have a mobile-optimized version of their menu in a small file size that loads quickly — since hungry people don’t like to wait. Svet says trying performance tests like Lighthouse or PageInsight can help determine how well an online menu is doing in these areas. Optimizing the menu for search engines is important too. Svet recommends using AWS S3, AWS CloudFront or another content delivery network to help. Your guests – and sudden boosts in sales – can come from unexpected places. That’s especially true at a time when a restaurant can be observed from afar in a range of online channels, unbeknownst to an operator. Take the recent example of the struggling Las Vegas restaurant Frankensons suddenly becoming a viral sensation after it emailed out a plea for visitors. It caught the attention of a social media influencer who visited the restaurant, loved the food and posted a glowing TikTok review. Now, the owner of Frankensons has a better problem – trying to meet the steep rise in demand for his food. An MGH survey published in late 2022 found that 53 percent of millennial TikTok users had visited a restaurant after seeing it on the social media platform. Research from TouchBistro about the state of the restaurant industry this year indicated that while Facebook is the most popular platform for social media promotion for restaurants (62 percent of operators report using it for marketing) and Twitter isn’t far behind at 59 percent, only 40 percent of restaurant operators report using TikTok for promotion. When you consider your marketing efforts for the year, think about the stories you can tell, what makes your brand special, and how you can translate it using videos, photos and words through a mix of channels – including but not limited to social media. Your most loyal new guests might find you where you least expect it. |
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