Social media remains a potent tool that several companies currently rely on to grow their businesses. Although the food industry is late to the party, many restaurants are increasingly prioritizing social media use to great effect.
How does a successful social media campaign translate into more money for these restaurants? And why are brands like Wendy’s experiencing significant increases in popularity, revenue, and patronage from millennials? Luckily, we’re here to help with some vital insights. Below are specific ways that a restaurant’s social media success translates into greater profit.
Ratings mean revenue.
Today’s customers strongly consider ratings and reviews when choosing businesses to patronize. Therefore, social media ratings and positive reviews are a significant driver of profit for restaurants. A one-star boost in a restaurant’s rating on platforms like Yelp reportedly correlates to a potential 5%-9% revenue increase. Consequently, positive social media reviews help restaurants to build good reputations faster and more efficiently. Information about the restaurant spreads quicker than it ordinarily would without social media.
However, your overall service quality must be top-notch to secure the ratings of satisfied customers. Customer service, food quality, and packaging are all essential to customer satisfaction with restaurant services. Since packaging is central to the customer experience—especially for take-out restaurants, finding the right food containers for your restaurant is necessary. Good packaging supplies retailers, such as GoFoodService, can help with this need.
GoFoodService provides all the appropriate food containers and packaging supplies that modern restaurants and other hospitality businesses need. These supplies include to-go boxes, takeout containers, disposable food bags, and food storage containers. These supplies aren’t only affordable but are sourced from top industry brands like GET, National Checking Company, American Metalcraft, and Pansaver. Their food packaging supplies cater to a wide range of restaurant sizes and range of food offerings. GoFoodService has a robust, customer-centric business approach rivaled only by its dedication to providing clients with the best products. What’s more, they are reputable, trusted, and experienced, supplying many restaurants countrywide for over three decades.
Customer Updates
Several experts agree that modern restaurants can use social media for direct and indirect self-promotion to increase patronage. Platforms like Instagram and Twitter allow you to spread the word on what’s new in your restaurant with pictures and video clips. You can also post updates about recipes, current offers, promotions, new menu items, and current offers. To engage your customer base even more, you can occasionally post updates about how you prepare special dishes.
Giving background information on chef specials also offers customers unique insights into your business operations and deepens relationships. You can also use social media to show your customers how seriously your business prioritizes crucial social issues. Environmental friendliness is now central to business, and sharing your practical ways of achieving sustainability helps you win over many. For example, proper disposal of used cooking oil is vital to any restaurant’s operations. Using reputable oil recycling companies, such as SeQuential, is the best way to address these concerns.
SeQuential presents practical and sustainable solutions for restaurants that question how to dispose of used cooking oil. They collect and recycle waste fats, grease, and used oil, and leftover oil, turning it into clean-burning biodiesel fuel. SeQuential primarily partners with restaurants, food processors, and other businesses, but they also dispose of oil for household chefs countrywide. Proper disposal of used cooking oil can be done at convenient drop off locations or through free oil collection containers. Their pick-up schedules and containers make the whole process convenient and hassle-free. The resultant biodiesel that your oil is used to make is sustainable and environmentally-friendly. Therefore, restaurants can recycle large amounts of vegetable oil and other oils better and more sustainably, all at zero cost. SeQuential is also a known industry leader, transforming the cooking oils of several restaurants and businesses since 2008.
Develop a niche.
Businesses need to have a strong niche within their respective industries to thrive, and restaurants are no exception. Social media helps restaurants establish and promote niches that increase their appeal to a specific clientele, increasing patronage and revenue. Several niche communities and groups are lying dormant on social media, ready to be tapped into. For example, local vegan restaurants can locate vegan groups and individuals on social media using hashtags.
Regularly uploading social media accounts with vegan menus and dishes with hashtags improves visibility within this specific customer base. Therefore, such restaurants can quickly benefit from increased popularity and patronage from their target consumers. Restaurants advertising themselves as a hangout location for sports fans can regularly post about upcoming games and recent results. Sports fans will quickly spot this restaurant and flock to it to enjoy their favorite sports surrounded by good company. As a restaurant owner, you may not always have the resources to make your own cooking show to establish your niche with clients. Therefore, social media is the next best thing you can rely on to improve your visibility and patronage.
Better Customer Service
Many business experts agree that social media is now a non-negotiable aspect of the modern business’ customer service strategy. Social media affords restaurants great opportunities to deliver next-level customer service that creates more satisfied customers. Nowadays, modern consumers take their complaints and concerns online, highlighting their experiences with businesses. These revelations typically go viral and can damage your restaurant’s reputation if satisfactory damage control isn’t performed soon enough.
By monitoring multiple social media platforms through applications like Hootsuite and ViralHeat, restaurants can discover what customers are saying. This feedback is crucial to optimizing your business operations’ critical areas to make your restaurant deliver better service to customers. Restaurants can also respond to customer inquiries in a more timely manner using social media rather than other traditional means of communication. Response time is crucial to business operations everywhere, especially in the food industry.
Through direct messaging, chatbots, and other timely response arrangements, brands are always available to their customers. Any inquiries and complaints can be acknowledged and responded to quickly to improve clients’ experience and promote customer retention.
To conclude, social media now has a significant impact on multiple industries, including food services. Using the above-listed points and several others, modern-day businesses can harness social media’s influence to increase their customers and profits for business growth.
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