5 YouTube Marketing Strategies to Promote Your Restaurant

Share Your Recipes

Each chef has his/her own unique recipes that they guard with their lives. However, many restaurants share the same recipes for certain dishes and add little twists to make it their own. Sharing some of your recipes with the world will create a string bond with your brand. Your clients and targeted audience will be interested in replicating the recipe then try it at your restaurant to make sure that they are doing it right.

YouTube gives you an opportunity to create and share videos of your famous recipes. This will put you on the map give you exposure to foodies searching for creative dishes. This will also help you interact with your potential clients by answering their questions and giving them expert advice.

Show Off Your Kitchen

Invite your diners to your kitchen via aesthetic videos explaining how the food is prepared. By showing the art and craft happening in your kitchen you will connect with your client via trust and transparency. Your videos will also appeal to food lovers who will be able to see the passion and effort put in each dish you serve.

You could also use simple production and video editing techniques to give your videos an extra aesthetic edge. With the right tools you will be able to turn a simple food preparation video into an exceptional cooking experience and use YouTube to spread it to the world. 

Teach Cooking Skills

Create videos containing tips and tricks about cooking and share your knowledge and technique in the kitchen. Teaching home cooks how to prepare and present food properly gives you a great opportunity to increase your reach and build your brand’s authority.

Your videos will also add value to your audience and may even go viral among food enthusiasts.  Sharing your experience allows you to build a loyal community for your brand and restaurant and build a special connection with your audience.

Uncover Your Supply Chain

Creating a video about your supply chain provides transparency to your customers as they would know what they are eating and where it came from. The internet has made information accessible to millions of people around the world; as a result, many diners, nowadays; prefer to trace the origin of the food they are served at restaurants.

Famous brands around the world have adopted this as part of their advertising strategy. For example; McDonald’s has collaborated with Grant Imahara to show the viewers the factories that Chicken McNuggets allowing to see how they are made.

Broadcast Tasting Contests

Introduce your new dishes to your clients and broadcast a tasting contest to add the winning dish to the menu. YouTube’s Live feature is a great way to stream your content and allow your viewers to interact directly with you and vote or comment while watching the video.

5 Effective Online Marketing Strategies for Restaurants

Online Marketing has become essential for restaurants in 2021, with hundreds of trends popping up every day and millions of customers using and depending on social media to make their purchasing decisions.

Still, online marketing is not all about social media and, there many other channels that can help you get free targeted traffic for your restaurant. And with some optimizations you will be able to convert your visitors into satisfying customers. So to make use of those online marketing channels, here is what you need to do.

1- Create A Website for Your Restaurant

Having a website for your restaurant is not part of online marketing per se, however, it is the base on which the whole process stands.

In order to start your endeavor in restaurant marketing, you have to have a digital presence first, that is why having a website is a must. A smooth professional website reflects your brand to your online audience and gives your restaurant authority in your industry.

Your website will need to be backed up by an efficient online ordering system to provide a hassle-free ordering experience for your customers.

Taker provides restaurant with an online ordering system that is tailored and customized to increase the efficiency of your restaurant operations and provide you with several marketing tools to enhance your online presence. In addition to your own restaurant website, Takers gives you the option to have an app for your restaurant, which will help you reach your customers easily and send customized notifications based on their preferences.

Those features among others help you create your own online tribe and increase your customer satisfaction.

2- Use Local SEO Practices

Local SEO is used to make your restaurant website rank for searches related to the city or district where your restaurant is located; e.g. “Where to Eat in Jeddah”  “Burger restaurants in Riyadh”. There are many practices used to improve your local search ranking including; keyword research, titles and content optimization … etc.  You can easily find a checklist of the best practices to rank locally and apply them to your website to increase your website’s relevancy and get the targeted traffic.

3- Build Your Social Presence

You can’t compete successfully with other restaurants without having a strong social media presence. There are several social media platforms and you have to choose the platform that works best for your restaurant and country. In some countries Facebook is more popular than other social media platforms. In others, Instagram and Twitter take the lead. It is important to understand your audience and reach to them through a strong social media plan on a related social media platform.

4- Start your Restaurant Blog

Blogging is a powerful strategy to generate leads and drive sales. In fact, many studies show that blogging continuously can increase lead generation by 89%.

Creating food related sharable content will aid your customers in making purchase decisions and will also support your local SEO efforts. Creating a blog for your restaurant requires patience and commitment, but is always rewarding on the long run.

Here are some tips to help you start your restaurant blog;

Be Unique: your audience will love if your blog posts are creative and original. Share new recipes and information about your restaurant and engage them in the food making process.

Be Relevant: Know your audience interests and create content that appeals and adds value to them. Answer their questions and respond to their comments in an easy creative way. This will help you clear any misunderstanding and will show that you apply transparency policy at your restaurant.

Be Versatile: be versatile in your content and how it is presented. Blog about different topics and hop on food trends to engage your customers. You should also present your content in diverse ways including; videos, text, images, infographics… etc.

Go Beyond Publishing: Share. Share and Share. Share your content on you social media platforms. Share it to related website, contact influencers to share it on their social media pages,  do whatever you can to spread your content and make it go viral.

Keep it Open: You don’t have to do all the work by yourself,  get other food bloggers to write on your blog and create your own food blogging community.

5- Use Email Marketing

Restaurant owners can easily take advantage of email marketing to collect data about their customers and use it to provide a more personalized ordering experience.  Building a targeted email list will allow you to know more about your customers and cater to their needs and preferences.

Here are some effective ways to build your email marketing data base:

  1. Offer voucher or discount for customers who provide their email and/or phone number.
  2. Ask your customers to provide their emails and signup for your newsletter to get the latest offers and discounts.
  3. Offer a free drink for customers who provide their email while ordering on premises or takeaway.
  4. Offer special discounts for customers ordering via newsletter.

There are many other ways to collect customers’ emails and understanding your customers’ behavior would help greatly in finding and applying the right way.

How to Choose a POS System for Your Restaurant

Getting a new system for your restaurant can be daunting especially when you are overwhelmed by the endless options existing in the market. Deciding on the vital features for your restaurant will help you narrow down the options and ease the selection process.

When selecting a new POS there are 4 main features that you should keep in mind;

Smooth User-centric Experience

Almost all POS types available provide the same functions which are; collecting and calculating fiscal data. But each POS type differentiate from the other in the way the data is stored, accessed and personalized.

Each POS system has its own layout, user interface, and operating system. You should choose one that can be easily navigated by your employees, that way you can save time and money spent training new employees to use the system.

Moreover, you should consider investing in a POS system that includes marketing features such as loyalty programs tools. You can use the system to collect customer’s phone numbers and link them to their accounts then reward them for their frequent visits. This loyalty program will increase customer satisfaction and provide data on the preferences of your customers. 

Further, you have to make sure that your POS saves time and makes you operate efficiently. If your system is hard to navigate, this will waste your staff and customer time and will cut the time that could have been used to grow your business. Your POS system shouldn’t take more than 3 minutes to navigate.

POS Mobility

An ideal POS system should allow you to record sales and inventory whenever and wherever you are. Mobile POS systems give you access to business data and information from any web browser. These Cloud-based systems allow you to get all key transaction data with a simple click of a button.

Many restaurants today provide their services in different locations and provide food catering services. You can even find a modern restaurant in the format of food trucks and pop-up restaurants. That’s why restaurant managers need to decide on the amount of mobility needed before choosing a particular POS system.

POS Reporting System

Your chosen POS system should provide elaborate and detailed sales reports that are accessible and customizable to your restaurant needs. Your sales reports should ideally include your best-selling categories and items and the cost and margin to effectively measure your ROI. In addition, those reports should track sales by time and department to optimize your operations and adjust your staff schedule.

Many POS systems provide additional features such as;

  • Inventory: Real-time inventory data
  • Payment: Payment methods used and taxes applied.
  • Customer Data: Customer order history and preferences.
  • Reservation options: Via Integration with your reservation system.

POS Security:

Even if your POS system has the best features and capabilities; all this means nothing if your customers’ payment information isn’t secure. In order to get a POS with proper security features, you have first to check all the industry regulations and standards concerning security. If your POS doesn’t meet the minimum qualifications for payment security, it will be rendered useless by your customers.

To determine if your selected POS is secure check the following features;

  • Encryption and tokenization
  • EMV Technology
  • Breach protection
  • Anti-fraud services

Choosing the right restaurant POS can either be an advantage o r a liability to your business, so make sure to take your time and choose a system that best suits your business needs.

How to Improve Productivity at Your Restaurant

Efficiency is an important factor for the success of any restaurant management. Aligned business operations make it easier to avoid problems that lead to losing customers, profits and sully your brand reputation. It is difficult to achieve excellent restaurant productivity; however, successful restaurant management has to strive to reach the highest level of efficiency.

Enhancing productivity is accomplished via excellent communication between al teams in your restaurant and implementing cutting edge tools to ease operations and unlock opportunities. 80% of restaurants utilizes operations to assist in running the business effectively. Using the right tools combined with full support for all of your employees will lead to success in today’s ever-shifting restaurant landscape.

In this article we will breakdown the four best way that enables restaurant management to drive well-organized and productive operations. As a restaurant manager you should start with streamlining the front-of-house operations then move to improving back-of-house operations while investing in the right tools and capable talents at the same time.

Improving front-of-house productivity

  1. Staff Training: part of successful restaurant management is to continuously improve your staff talents and capabilities. This is achieved via the right training programs on the latest tools and best customer service practices.
  2. Focusing on Customer Journey: it’s crucial for restaurant management to focus on the customer journey and optimize it to guarantee a hassle-free ordering process. Customer satisfaction is the main goal for any successful business, especially in the restaurants and hospitality sectors.
  3. Going Online: A website and app for your restaurant will make it easier for your customers to order and for your staff to receive and organize the orders. Going online also includes using cloud-based POS to ease the payment process, in addition to many other features and options that can increase the productivity of your restaurant and increase customers’ trust in your brand. Those features include; reservation systems and loyalty programs and many others.
  4. Constantly Optimize: restaurant management has to commit to constantly improving their front-of-house operations based on the feedback received from customers and data provided by comprehensive restaurant analytics.

Optimizing back-of-house operations

Your back-of-house staff is the backbone of your restaurant, they are responsible for the most important thing in your restaurant which is food. Food quality and kitchen and restaurant cleanliness are critical for successful restaurant management. To yield more productivity from your staff your have to invest in several training strategies and technologies;

Comprehensive onboarding program: Your on-boarding training should include everything that is needed from the employee. A detailed on-boarding program saves time spent on explaining operations and policies later on.

Customer-centric operations: your operations must focus on the satisfaction of your customers. So the more you learn about your customers the more you will need to incorporate this data into your operations and use it to update your process.

Inventory Management: Investing in inventory management software will save you the embracement of running out of stock during rush hours. Still, you have to do your research and choose the software the best suits your restaurant’s needs.

Restaurant Technology

Technology is becoming a crucial component of restaurant operations. Today, restaurant management can choose from many solutions to optimize their operations and improve the efficiency of their teams. You can find software systems that keep track of the activities and tasks of your team members and others that provide personalized customer experience and manage your online orders. All you have to do is identify the right tools for your restaurant and utilize them to increase restaurant competency. And before you choose the best restaurant software you have to consider the following;

Ease of access: Regardless of the features and options provided, your chosen software should be easy to use and conveniently provide information to guide your team while using it.

Moreover, if you choose to get an online ordering management system, you should make sure that you could use it to easily update your major operations such as delivery options, payment methods, and menu items.

Cloud-based: Another important thing is that your system should be cloud-based, which allows you to use it whenever and wherever. This is especially important for modern restaurant forms such as pop-up restaurants, Ghost kitchens and food trucks.

Useful Features in One Place: Further, an online restaurant management system should have several features to ease front and back-of-house operations. For example; it should provide an effective way to receive orders online and on-premises. It should also connect your restaurant with delivery companies to increase the efficiency of your delivery process. It should allow you to collect data about your customer and customize it to deliver a better customer experience.

Use the strategies above to build your own plan to achieve efficiency. Even though it is easy to get overwhelmed sometimes, you should always consider customers’ demands and industry trends when creating a productivity strategy for your restaurant.