1. Allows you to showcase your food

We all have that one friend that can’t stop posting pictures of her food on Instagram, don’t we? Sure, it gets annoying but, it gets interaction doesn’t it?

Now, Imagine that food wasn’t just something from the local takeaway or scrambled egg on toast that your friend made herself. Imagine it was restaurant quality food that was posted by an actual restaurant, that certainly wouldn’t be annoying, Would it?

Social Media, when used correctly, can be a direct link to thousands of hungry people that could potentially buy your food. It will give your restaurant the opportunity to showcase your food & entice people into buying your produce. Allow the world to get a glimpse of your casino themed steak restaurant, “High Steaks”.

2. Enhances the customer experience

As mentioned in the previous point, we all have a friend that loves to distribute images of their food on social media & a restaurant is the perfect place for that friend to do that. Jane is dying to share pictures from your Thai restaurant that specialises in seafood, “Thaitanic”. When dining out, people aren’t just paying for their food. They’re paying for the experience. If you encourage your customers to interact with you via social media, you could be contributing to their restaurant experience.

3. Build trust in your brand/restaurant

When encouraging people to share their experience online and your restaurant interacts with it, you are demonstrating transparency and building trust between you and the customer. It shows that you are so confident in the experience you are providing that you are keen for that experience to be shared. If you’re wondering what happens when people don’t enjoy their experience & share it online, our next point will explain how that can be managed too. How do you expect “Tequila Mockingbird” to get started without trust in the brand?

4. Manage customer reviews

So, you’ve had a bit of a disaster. A few of your customers are unhappy with the service they’ve received at your restaurant and have decided to take to Twitter to vent their frustrations. The way this is dealt with can have a huge impact on the restaurants reputation and could actually work out to benefit you in the long run. By being on Social Media, you can tackle this frustration head on by perhaps offering them a complimentary meal, Finding out the cause of their frustration and dealing with it or simply offering them an apology. Social Media allows you to interact with your customers and showcase the management of your reviews to more potential customers. A bad comment about your restaurant can easily be turned into an opportunity to show how good your restaurant is & how efficiently you deal with negativity. Do not let the haters get the best of “Frying Nemo”.

5. Online Table Booking

The beauty of Social Media is that it’s so flexible. Asides from the basic look & structure of Social Media sites, it is more or less controlled by the users. This means you are able to do stuff like online books via Social Media. People can just tweet the time, date & amount of people they want to book in for and you can pencil in that booking online. This brings something very valuable to the customer, convenience. People no longer have to go out of their way to book a table. They can do it whilst scrolling down their feed, something they’d be doing anyway. With, or without the ability to book a table. Make it as easy for guests to reserve a table in your bakery, “Bread Zeppelin”.

6. Fill up seats on a ‘quiet day’

So, you’ve not had many customers in the door and the day’s coming to an end. Why not let your loyal Social Media followers know that there’s a happy hour down at the restaurant, or perhaps offer a discount on their food if they provide a discount code that you’ve posted? Embrace the power of Social Media, don’t ignore it.

There’s hundreds of reasons your restaurant should be putting more effort into the use of Social Media and we hope these 6 will encourage you to start doing so. Don’t pass up the opportunity to improve your restaurant and increase your customer base. Get in touch! and let’s Wok and Roll!

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