In September we look forward to the leaves changing, cooler weather, and the start of the apple orchard season. Did you know September is known for more then just these things? In the world of food September is the national month for biscuits, breakfast, California wine, chicken, honey, mushrooms, organic harvest, papaya, potato, rice, and whole grains!

There are so many ways you can celebrate these national days of food! Have you thought about doing a wine and food pairing dinner to feature those California wines? You could even highlight a new breakfast item on your menu every week! Just a thought, why not combine 2 of the national foods by creating a dish featuring honey roasted carrots?  If you need a new idea to feature a potato, why not try a potato fan? Make sure to tag and share your ideas with restaurant logic, we would love to see your restaurants in action!

Download the images below (right click and save as). Then upload some engaging offers to your social media!

The post September is the National month of… appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

So, what’s the ‘right’ answer here? Should you give up 20+ percent of your margin to get your business on these platforms? If so, which should you choose? What about pickup? Sounds like you could use some clarity. 

The ubiquity of smartphones and plethora of apps has created a seismic shift in how consumers discover restaurants and order food. We are ever changing into a convenience economy. Services like DoorDash, UberEats & GrubHub are exploding in response to how consumers want to dine. The bad news is that the invitations to get left behind are multiplying everyday. The good news is, so are the opportunities to reinvent a few things in your own operations so you don’t get left behind. 

The fact is, online delivery services are growing. 

13.5% in year by year growth of online ordering

Online delivery is expected to account for 30% of the total restaurant industry growth by 2022

79% of millennials (ages 18-34) have ordered food delivery via an app

Millennials are 3x more likely to order food for consumption at home than their parents are

So you may be wondering, will app ordering reduce my dine-in business?

The answer? People, especially millennials, aren’t eating out less, they are cooking less. Because of this, restaurants that have an online ordering experience actually have the chance to capture an even bigger market share. Just 11% of restaurants currently utilizing online ordering apps felt that it impacted their dine-in business in a recent survey. While 67% of customers who have placed an order online will visit the restaurant more frequently than those who have not. 

Ok, so you’ve decided you’d like to see how online ordering & delivery services can grow your revenue. Here are the next steps we recommend: 

1.  Make sure you have your own online ordering platform.

Most POS companies today have an online ordering option as part of their service or as an add-on; you typically just need to pay credit card processing fees instead of commissions. Start by contacting your POS company to see what options are available. Be sure to embed online ordering into your website and add links on social profiles, Google my Business profile, and online review/directory sites Yelp & TripAdvisor. By doing this, customers who already know they want to order from your restaurant will be able to order directly and will save you 20+ percent on commissions. If your POS company doesn’t provide online ordering options, check with third party integration platforms like 411Eat.

2. Sign up for the delivery services available in your market.

We recommend signing up for as many of the local delivery services as possible. While Door Dash, Grub Hub, Postmates, and Uber Eats collectively own 92% of the food delivery market, you may have local companies to put on your radar as well. By being on all of the available delivery platforms in your market, you will have the ability to gain the largest number of orders as a varied percentage of consumers/demographics may use each of the services available. While you will be on a variety of delivery services, we recommend that you do not actually promote their services. Simply let them bring new customers to you. If you’re wondering how to select and promote your delivery partner, keep reading.

3. Pick your delivery partner to link on your website and online profiles.

We recommend selecting the delivery partner that offers the lowest commission rate on orders originating from your website. Once you have made your selection, be sure to use the link they provide on your website and online profiles. Remember, not all online orders are delivery, don’t forget about takeout! We recommend adding an order online/ order pickup/delivery button to your site. Once that is clicked, we recommend prompting your customer to select takeout or delivery. If they select takeout, route them to your internal online ordering system (from step 1), if they select delivery, link them to your delivery partner (example on the next page). By doing this, you’ll be able to offer online ordering and delivery at the lowest possible cost to you.

ProTip: Aggregator services like Chowly and Ordermark will consolidate all orders from delivery services so you only have to manage one source of incoming orders (these services also integrate with a number of POS platforms).

4. Update to-go packaging and marketing materials.

Whether your customers order takeout or delivery, their impression of your restaurant is shaped by the packaging and presentation of your food. Are you still using styrofoam boxes? May be time to consider alternative options. We recommend branded packaging wherever possible. Additionally, offering an advertisement or card with each order that goes out the door promoting your internal online ordering system with a discount for their next takeout order.

EXAMPLE OF AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE ORDERING LINK & PROCESS:

1. Add an ‘Order Online’ button displayed prominently on your website.
2. When Clicked, prompt the customer to select pickup or delivery.
3. Route ‘Pickup’ to your internal/ POS-provided online ordering portal. Route ‘Delivery’ to the 3rd party delivery platform that gives you the lowest commission rate.

RESULTS FROM A RESTAURANT WHO HAS IMPLEMENTED THE STEPS ABOVE. AFTER ONE YEAR:

50% increase in takeout/delivery sales

40% of online orders come through the restaurant website vs. third party sites

Overall $250,000 increase in total sales across 3 locations

We hope this has been a useful guide in how to maximize your profits with takeout and delivery. If you have questions or would like to discuss further, please contact the Restaurant Logic sales team by emailing hello@restaurantlogic.com or by calling 866.846.9353

The post How to Maximize Profits with Online Ordering & Delivery Services appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

The truth is sometimes simpler than we make it out to be and it comes down to two words – brand storytelling. In this case, restaurant storytelling is an important aspect of differentiating your establishment from so many others in your local area. Let’s take a look at several things you can do in order to boost your business’ popularity, drive sales and customer engagement through some simple storytelling techniques.

• Define your Establishment’s Story

When it comes to brand storytelling, it really doesn’t matter if you sell sushi, pizza or traditional Greek cuisine to your customers. What matters is the story behind your business and how you came about to open a restaurant in the first place.

Your own personal story leads into restaurant storytelling perfectly, allowing you to add a touch of warmth and family values to your otherwise ordinary food establishment. Take a moment to reflect on why you opened a restaurant, what led you to the fateful moment and how you have grown since it happened.

Put it all on paper and make sure that your customers can visibly see and read small tidbits of the story behind your establishment. These can be placed around your restaurant, on your website or even on the menus themselves. Once you do so, your engagement rates will spike thanks to a touch of humanity and family values being present in the restaurant.

• Train your Staff to Represent

Depending on the scale and complexity of your establishment, as well as the number of restaurants you run, you will have to train your staff accordingly. This is important in restaurant storytelling since each of your staff members has to represent the values and principles you previously set in stone.

It’s important not to beat these things over their heads, however, as their employment experience still needs to be enjoyable enough to warrant their loyalty to your business. Small things such as catchphrases, polite behavior and adequate customer servicing should be highlighted above all else. Once the picture adds up, your customers will have a lot of positive words to say about your establishment both to their friends and online review websites.

• Create a Social Media Presence

Speaking of online presence, social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are ripe for picking. Your restaurant storytelling can easily seep into social media platforms where you can post quality images of your cuisine, atmosphere and general internal culture moments.

Ashley Graham, social media manager at PickWriters spoke highly of brand storytelling on social media: “People talk to their loved ones all the time on Facebook and Twitter. This can be used as a marketing advantage since everyone likes to share content with their friends and acquaintances. Placing an emphasis on social media brand marketing can lead to fruitful engagement and word of mouth in very short timeframes.”

These can help your cause tremendously since there are fewer and fewer “home-like” establishments around the globe. Large fast food chains and instant gratification establishments are a dime a dozen at every corner, meaning that you can use this to your advantage. Differentiate from other restaurants in your area and category by emphasizing your establishment’s look and feel, as well as the enjoyment behind consuming your tasty cuisine.

• Encourage Customers to Tweet & Tag

Even if you have social media pages with your brand’s name on them, they mean very little without social proof. In marketing terms, social proof represents user-generated content which is then used to further your marketing efforts.

What this means in practice is that you should encourage your customers to tweet, share and tag their activities during their stay in your establishment. You can encourage this through clearly defined hashtags, calls to action around the restaurant and invitations to do so in the menus themselves.

This type of marketing is nigh impossible without actual customers, so it will add a lot to your storytelling efforts moving forward. Anyone who visits your social media pages will be able to see satisfied customers eating tasty food in a warm and friendly environment. It will not only drive your customer engagement rates forward but also place your restaurant on the competitive map with other establishments in your local area.

• Offer Loyalty Incentives

While not a storytelling technique in itself, loyalty incentives add a lot to your overall customer engagement. Small tokens of appreciation such as discount coupons, points toward certain rewards or even free sweets at the end of each meal add a lot to a food establishment.

This type of customer servicing is bound to spread positive word of mouth about your restaurant, leading to more customers and an increase in popularity and revenue. It will also keep satisfied customers coming back for more of your delicious food, friendly atmosphere and high-quality servicing which are now staples of your establishment.

Don’t Fix what’s not Broken (Conclusion)

It’s important to note that restaurant storytelling shouldn’t change drastically over time like it does for corporate businesses. Instead, restaurants should play on the cards of tradition, established values and consistent quality. Don’t make the mistake of changing your brand, values or story suddenly with no explanation or reason.

People like to eat and dine at places which feel familiar, nostalgic and inviting to them and their friends and families. Once you figure out the correct route for your restaurant’s image, make sure to maintain it for the foreseeable future. That way, the word of your establishment will spread over time and give you the much-needed customer engagement needed to keep the doors open.

Kristin Savage nourishes, sparks and empowers using the magic of a word. Along with pursuing her degree in Creative Writing, Kristin was gaining experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in marketing strategy for publishers and authors. Now she had found herself as a freelance writer.  She observes with a special interest how the latest achievements in media and technology help to grow readership and revenue and shares her opinion. You can find her on Facebook and Medium.

Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/selective-focus-photography-of-open-signage-1036857/

The post Restaurant Storytelling: 5 Tips to Drive Customer Engagement appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

The hospitality industry is booming as it has never done before and the arrival of the internet and especially content marketing has only enhanced this growth in the market. Previously, the only real thing you could find online to do with hospitality was reviews and booking features, but now there are entire blogs and networks dedicated to this sector.

Surprisingly, there are  a ton of people out there looking for information on restaurants in their local and nearby areas to make sure their next restaurant experience is unforgettable.

Whether you own a restaurant and handle the marketing, or whether you’re a freelance blogger with interest in the restaurant, here’s everything you need to know about creating valuable content that we’re confident potential customers will enjoy.

Create a Topics List

The first thing you’ll want to do is to create a list of all the topics that you’ll want to be covering on your blog. Of course, this can change depending on what type of restaurant you are and what services you offer, but some of the main topics that you’ll want to be covering will include;

Recipes
Local news
Staff
Food envy/love/inspiration
Sales and promotions
Education (How-to)

Some of these topics may seem a little ‘out there’, but these can all evolve around what your business currently offers, and what they’ll be offering in the future. Also, for more topics use Google Keyword Planner to search keywords which your potential customers are looking for. With a strong restaurant presence online, you’ll want to make your customers feel immediately at home as soon as they walk through the door.

Creating Your Own Review

Many restaurant owners simply rely on review sites, such as Google, Yelp and TripAdvisor, to advertise their reviews and the experience they offer. However, there’s no reason why you can’t start harvesting your own reviews from customers that can then be used in your website and blog content.

Whether you choose to collect these reviews in person, online or through your social media profiles, this can be valuable content that can hugely benefit the success rates of your business. When formatting your reviews, you can use sites like Academadvisor as a writing guide to make sure it’s perfect and readable. There are tons of ways to present content which will drive customers to your restaurant.

Creating a Central Hub for Business

A blog is an extremely worthwhile marketing tool for a number of reasons, most commonly because it can become the hub of your restaurant’s online presence. On your pages and within the content you’re creating, you can link to your promotion page, your booking system, your contact page and your social media profiles.

This helps to create a fully immersive and integrated network for your restaurant that users can navigate with ease and find everything they could be possibly looking for. The better and more connected this experience is, the happier and more satisfied your customers will be.

According to study, grammar mistakes turn 59% customers away. Even those little errors can be very expensive. No matter what content you’re uploading, whether it’s blog posts or social media posts, be sure to check the grammar as this will stand out like a sore thumb. Use sites like Grammarly,  Grammarix or Big Assignments to make sure it’s proofread and edited to perfection before publishing.

Finding Your Restaurant’s Tone of Voice

When it comes to writing content, there are a lot of variables that you’ll want to consider. For example, consider the type of language a restaurant that sells lobster and caviar uses on their website in comparison to McDonald’s.

Marta Belt, a blogger and content writer at Paper Fellows states, “When writing your content, you’ll have the unique opportunity to define the style and appearance of your business by focusing on the words and structure that you’re using in your content. For example, do you want to come across as a formal or informal business? Are you going to be a bit of both? Are you adults-only (bar) or family-friendly?”

In the blog content that you’re writing, pay attention to how you’re wording your sentences as it can have a dramatic impact on the way your business is perceived.

Also, such thing as plagiarism can harm your restaurant’s blog and it relates to your SEO and site’s promotion in Google. To detect if you accidentally plagiarised someone’s content, better use Copyscape or Academized plagiarism checkers before uploading it to your blog. Providing unique, engaging and valuable content will bring more visitors to your restaurant.

Getting Creative with Your Blogs

With everything else written above in mind, now you can start getting down to the nitty-gritty of actually writing blog posts for your website and blog. And the opportunities are endless. Let’s say that you’ll release a new fish menu, why not write a blog post on the menu, stating where the fish is from, a bit of history about the product and how your restaurant is going to use it.

This is a great way to engage your customers in your content and tempt them to come and try it out for themselves. Now apply this concept to every aspect of your menu over time. Where did your beers and alcohol come from? What’re your three favorite desserts? How do you properly eat a certain dish, like crab?

What events are you going to hosting throughout the year? What drink goes well with which dish? What updates will your menu have in the summer, and then the winter? As you can see the possibilities are endless and it’s all about how you want your customers to perceive your business and in what ways.

Before you upload your blogs, it’s essential that you check through them to make sure they are free from errors, typos and mistakes as Australian Help rightly put, this can push customers away by damaging your credibility.

Conclusion

Writing content for your restaurant blog and website doesn’t have to seem like just another job on your to-do list, but more of a worthwhile investment that continues to perform for your business. Once a blog is uploaded, it’s there until you take it down so it could even be an investment that lasts a lifetime.

Author: Brenda Berg

Brenda Berg is a professional with over 15 years of experience in business management, marketing and entrepreneurship. Consultant and tutor for college students and entrepreneurs at Oxessays. She is passionate about covering topics on business development, blogging, content marketing and others. You can visit her personal blog at Letsgoandlearn.com

The post How to Write a Great Restaurant Blog with Valuable Content appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

When asked about their biggest struggles, restaurateurs point to staffing issues, marketing, and online reputation as their biggest challenges. And while these things can sure take a lot of time and dedication to master, one of the biggest struggles we see restaurateurs face is developing their culture. If you get the culture right, the rest of those things tend to be a lot easier to handle. As a good friend of mine says, “culture always wins”. It’s a bit trite but it’s true.

If your culture isn’t good, nothing else matters – you will always struggle to find and keep good staff. Great marketing may bring in customers. Solid online reputation may peak the interest of potential customers. But its your culture that keeps them coming back. In fact, a negative culture will really work against anything good you may already have in place. Your online reputation will deteriorate, and any marketing budget you have might even push you into a further slump as the increased traffic will spread the negative feedback even more through online reviews.

So how do you create a great culture in your restaurant? While I’m no expert at this topic, here are a few things I’ve learned from observing some great restaurant operators:

Culture is defined more by what you tolerate than what you preach.

If you have clear expectations for every member of the team (and have clearly trained on and communicated those expectations), then when someone is not living up to that, correction is needed as quickly as possible.  The rest of your staff knows when someone is not performing, and its extremely demoralizing to your ‘great’ staff when someone isn’t being held accountable – or even let go if need be. The best staff will hate that you won’t penalize the poor performers, and they’ll become frustrated for having to work twice as hard to pick up the slack. And guess what? You might even lose the good ones. When it’s not addressed, that simply communicates to the rest of your staff that the behavior is OK. You can’t, however, have high expectations without high rewards. Easier said than done, but in my opinion, the single most important thing.

Your customer doesn’t always come first, your team does.

Your team needs to know that they are the most important people in the building. If your staff feels that way, they’ll make your customers feel that way. Don’t automatically take the customers side and jump to negative conclusions with your staff, make sure your team knows you have their back.

The post Creating Quality Culture appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

The post 3 Tips To Up Your Restaurant’s Instagram Game appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

Created by Diana Khusniyarova

The post Infographic: Why You Should Add Email Marketing To Your Mix appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

The concept behind this popular phrase definitely has us in a agreement. It’s never fair to form an opinion about someone or something based purely on what is seen on the surface.

However, when it comes to emails…restaurant owners may want to reconsider. Just like a book, if someone is looking for a great read, the first thing that usually grabs their attention is the cover – obviously. Based solely on the cover, a person may decide whether they think that book is worth their time. Unfortunately for those lacking-in-the-extra-something-something covered books, people can easily overlook a book just because a cover or even the title seems uninteresting.

So why not send emails to your restaurant customers with that philosophy in mind?

The importance of crafting great emails is important – but it all begins with the subject line. Like probably many of your own email subscribers, you more than likely archive your emails in batches, or even choose to quickly delete emails that are uninteresting to you. While it may seem like a very small portion of your message, subject lines are the FIRST impression you have for your email recipients. Even more importantly, they’re your ticket for standing out in a crowded inbox.

If you’re spending time on creating unique graphics, tantalizing offers, and great content – but missing out on a well crafted subject line, that’s likely not the only thing you’ll be missing out on. About 47% of email recipients decide whether or not to even open an email based on the subject line, so that lack of a well-thought out subject line could be a costly to enticing your customers.

So, what’s the secret? How do you craft a subject line that is compelling enough to get those high open rates? Here’s a few helpful ideas to help you jazz up those subject lines to increase those click throughs to rates you’ve only been dreaming of.

• FOMO. That’s right, the Fear of Missing Out. Sharing a sense of urgency with your customers in the subject line will encourage click throughs because your customers will not want to be left behind if they hear about something fun going on.  By phrasing a subject line creatively and strategically, you can very easily pique your recipient’s interest, encouraging them to open the email to find out more!
• Simplicity. If a subject line is too long it will be cut off, especially nowadays when so many people are using email on their smartphones. Keep in mind that people scan their inboxes very quickly — so the more clear and concise your subject line is, the better. You’ll also want to think about avoiding complex and flowery text because chances are the inbox scanners out there aren’t looking for beautiful crafted poetry in their subject lines. 
  
• Timing. This can mean a couple of things. The first is perfectly timed calls to action. This could accomplish a variety of things, but if you think about someone who might be sitting at their desk right around noon, do you think they will be influenced by dinner promotions? Well, potentially yes.. But what they’re really thinking about is what they want to eat to get their stomach to stop growling right then. An email subject line talking about lunch plans might be a more productive route. Great ‘timing’ also incorporates trending topics or timely headlines as those will help to relate your brand to the customers you serve. 
• Honesty. People love a great deal, and if you’ve got something you’re offering them don’t be shy about it. However, nobody wants to be known as “the restaurant that cried wolf”, and although saying things like “Great Deal Inside!” or “Special Offer Today Only!” can be effective, you’ll want to use those types of subject lines sparingly so your email subscribers will know to trust your subject lines.

This list certainly isn’t an all-inclusive list of tips to increase your open rates, but it’s definitely a great place to start. Don’t be discouraged when you feel like you’re making creative emails, but have low open rates. Instead think about ways to avoid your emails from being overlooked. so eventually your customers will see that being a part of your email club is pretty interesting after all.

The post Increasing Your Email Open Rates appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

 In an effort to stop public content – post from businesses, brands, and media – from crowding out “personal moments,” Zuckerberg tasked his product development team with helping users find more meaningful social interactions.  Shifting the algorithm from helping users to find relevant content to the primary goal of helping users feel connected to their community, Facebook has made it more difficult than ever for business content to be organically seen in the newsfeeds of users.

So now what?  

As a business, you’ve invested time and money into growing your following on Facebook. You’ve created compelling content to share with your community of followers. You’ve developed your Facebook Business Page into a platform for communicating with your customers, receiving feedback from them, and creating incentives for them to visit your restaurant again.  It was already difficult to garner engagement from a too busy, overstimulated, time-starved audience of followers… and Facebook just made it more difficult.

Don’t worry. There are steps that can be taken to help prevent you from becoming unseen!

Advertise

Facebook has one of the most effective and robust advertising platforms available to businesses.  And with 1.32 billion active daily users, it’s safe to say your target demographic is hanging out on Facebook.  Depending on your objective, there are several advertising options to choose from including lead generation, web traffic, simple promoted posts, offers, and for the more advanced advertiser, remarketing and messenger bots.

Targeting your intended audience is easy.  Create custom audiences from Facebook or Instagram engagement, choose specific demographics you’d like to target, display your ad to users who have already visited your website, upload your email list to build your audience… the possibilities are almost endless.

Advertising on Facebook is also relatively inexpensive.  While cost per click has gone up as the market gets more and more saturated, Facebook is still one of the few places you can advertise will a small budget and see definite results. Cost per click varies widely by market and increases as your audience gets more specific, but simple campaigns displayed to an audience likely to interact with your brand can be accomplished for as little as a few cents per click in many cases.

Video. Video. More Video.

It’s no secret, one of Facebook’s initiatives is to be the video platform of choice in the coming year.  If you use video at all in your marketing, you’ll notice that native video uploaded to your Facebook business page already gets exponentially greater reach, and by extension engagement, than any other type of content you’re posting.  Facebook wants businesses to use their platform to upload and share video (as opposed to sharing links from YouTube or other video platforms) and they’re rewarding businesses who do so.

No where is this more evident than with use of Facebook Live.  If you want your brand to stand out on Facebook, go live. And go live regularly.  Facebook rewards you with increased reach and engagement and will start rewarding “repeat viewing” – users who watch more than one of your live videos – with even more reach for your brand.  Do live segments with your chef preparing this week’s special. Create a weekly culinary school segment teaching users knife skills or other kitchen techniques. Come up with a “Go Live” schedule based on knowledge your brand has that your followers will be interested in.  Making sure your segments are at least 20 minutes long is also beneficial, that way Facebook has time to build an audience for you and encourage questions from said audience. Interacting with viewers is the #1 way to reach MORE viewers!

Conversational Content

Mark Zuckerberg himself said that these recent changes are all in an effort to make Facebook a more social atmosphere again.  What this means for businesses is that we must find a way for brands to interact with individuals on a social level; to connect with users personally.  How do we accomplish this? Conversational content. Create content that compels users to interact with your brand and with each other. Pose questions. Ask opinions. Share “behind this scenes” looks into your restaurant and your people. Create content that elicits an emotional response from users and creates a want for them to comment or weigh in. Avoid polarizing topics like religion and politics, but don’t be afraid to be transparent.

As has always been true, likes, shares, and comments = greater reach. Get your team involved in the process. Comments from them will often get the ball rolling. Not so different from an empty dance floor at a wedding reception, an empty comments sections can be a deterrent for users. Nobody wants to be the first to comment. A few well thought out comments from key team members can start a great conversation between your brand and your followers.

Perhaps most importantly, keep it simple and stick to what you’re good at. You’re in the unique position of knowing more about your business and the restaurant industry than most of your followers. You’ve earned the right to share this knowledge. Don’t be afraid to talk about what you do better than the rest!

The post How to Navigate the New Facebook Algorithm appeared first on Restaurant Logic.

We are co-hosting a webinar with our friends from Main Street Hub on February 27th @2pm EST. During the webinar, you will learn 4 key things:

1. How to spread more word-of-mouth on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

2. How to turn website visitors into customers in your restaurant

3. How to attract new customers with your positive reviews online

4. How to team your website up with your social media strategy

The post Free Webinar: Are You Attracting New Customers? appeared first on Restaurant Logic.