How To Market Your Restaurant Amidst A Pandemic
It was recently announced that VAT has been cut to 5% for businesses in the hospitality sector, with Chancellor Rishi Sunak also announcing discounts and incentives for those people who choose to eat out. The pithily worded ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ has graced our television screens numerous times, over the past few days. These changes beg the question of whether restaurants are finally on the up after months of both financial and personal turmoil, alike.
We spoke to Sarah Kauter, MD of specialist food and drink marketing agency, VerriBerri, who wanted to look at the sector’s current situation, and what restaurants can do to better position themselves for the coming months.
Restaurant 2.0
Before anything else, Sarah advises that you assess the market as it stands, currently. Many businesses are, understandably, going to be looking at the situation through a pre-COVID lens, however, the importance of shifting your mind-set to this ‘new normal’ cannot be overstated. Examine your restaurants place in the market; look at the situation as an opportunity for a fresh start. Look to see where you can encourage a wider customer base, because competition for customers is going to be so much fiercer now. Diversifying your target audience, therefore, makes shrewd business sense.
Likewise, assess your competitors and see how they’re positioning themselves. Proactivity is going to be key for restaurants moving forwards, and those who make those brave first moves, in whatever way it may be, are likely to be the ‘winners’ amongst all of this.
The re-evaluation process extends to your supply chain and menu items. Finances are going to be tighter moving forward, and high-value ingredients, which prior to COVID may have been a menu staple, may no longer be fiscally viable. By tightening your margins, you give your restaurant more of a safety blanket. This idea of a monetary buffer is crucial in a period of such ongoing instability.
Embrace The Change, Don’t Fight It
Whether you like it or not, social distancing, and everything that lies therein, is here to stay for the foreseeable future. One of the ways in which restaurants are looking to maximise social distancing and protect their customers as best as possible, is through ordering software. Platforms, such as Time To Dine, offer hospitality and restaurant businesses a complete restaurant management platform.
This kind of software allows customers to order their meals from their phone, reducing the number of ‘paths crossing’ and streamlining restaurant operations in the process. Implementing this technology (and getting used to it) now will stand a restaurant in better stead for the future. At just £25 per month it can also cut your costs by reducing workload in other areas.
Social Media Will Prove Critical
A strong social media presence is important for restaurants in two main ways. Firstly, people are now much less likely to choose where they want to dine whilst out and about. Instead, you’ve got to have hooked them in before they leave their front door. Social media offers one such way of doing that. We don’t need to tell you, after all, the rise to prominence of ‘food porn’ over the past few years. We’d also advocate showing BTS content as well, showing the process as much as the final product. Cooking is meant to be a labour of love and many people want to buy into an experience as much as a plate of food.
The second benefit to social media is that it greatly helps improve brand presence. Because people are going to be so much pickier with where they choose to dine, your restaurant can’t afford to have one of its marketing branches let the side down, so to speak. Well-curated social media accounts (across all platforms) will help permeate that less tangible metric of brand-quality and brand-awareness throughout the general public.
Leverage Other Content To Your Advantage
Sharing tips and tricks online, perhaps installing a recipes page onto your website, for instance, will help elevate your brand’s image and industry-stranding, even if other aspects of the business (such as the restaurant itself) may be struggling. The coming months are very much going to be about playing the long game for restaurants. Whilst the worst of the storm may have been weathered, they need to be smart about their marketing, and working on other aspects of your business (such as your website) is one such way of doing that.
Other Key Considerations
There are several other things worth factoring in when considering your restaurant’s next steps. They include:
Double check your information. With all the madness that’s gone on over the past half a year, it would be very easy to overlook any glaring errors on your restaurant or website. Check your opening and closing times, for example, are they still correct? Update your website with information regarding the social distancing measures in place, and about the precautions your restaurant is taking pertaining to greater levels of hygiene.
Have you got outside space? We can’t stress enough how better-placed you are, as a restaurant, if you’ve got a bit of outside space to work with. Diners will understandably feel safer if they’re sat in an outside setting, so if you do have that space, then make sure it’s optimally set up! Have umbrellas for tables and potentially invest in some heater lamps (it may be warm now, but in the autumn and winter months, these prove invaluable).
Tell people you’re reopening! What good is having endured this all if nobody knows you’re starting back up again. Launch a concerted marketing campaign, involving social media, PPC and, if you’re able to secure it, PR. As part of this, consider ‘welcome back’ discounts/offers. Your reopening will most likely be surreal, and you may get fewer customers than expected, which is why ramping up the marketing around this time is imperative.
Final Thoughts…
If you’re concerned, anxious or nervous about the reopening of the restaurant and hospitality sector, then don’t worry, the whole industry is. For as much as it’s exciting and a more-than welcome return, it’s also unchartered territory for us all. So, be flexible with your approach and be prepared to regularly adapt; it’s going to take time for customer trends to settle, and with the ever-looming possibility of further lockdowns/more Governmental change, having too rigid an approach to your restaurant’s future may end up with you stuck in the mud. Put the right frameworks in now, however, and your restaurant stands a good change of prospering again in the future, and maybe even sooner than you think.