10 Restaurants using social media successfully - case studies to inspire your restaurant marketing

April 12, 2020
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Social networking is a really critical aspect of operating a successful company. You can be sure your guests will be blogging, Instagramming, and tweeting about your online company whether your restaurant is currently involved in social media or not. If you entered the conversation proactively, you're far better off, for several purposes.

Managing social networking accounts for several restaurant owners is yet another thing on their ever-increasing to-do list. Social networking is a goal for many in their company growth and something they have integrated into their communication strategy for the restaurants.

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Nowadays, it's necessary to bear in mind that any time anyone enters your social media accounts, they are looking at your restaurant and speaking with one of your employees easily.

If you're managing the online identity of your restaurant yourself, you've assigned the job to a devoted staff leader, or you've recruited someone to be your restaurant's full-time marketing manager. It's often great to gain ideas from other restaurants who conquer the social networking game.

Here are 10 restaurants that are using social media successfully. In this article, we will discuss how these restaurants are using social media to increase the engagement, what good steps they took, and how their sale is increasing by using their social media accounts effectively.

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1. Wave Asian Bistro & Sushi

Wave Asian Bistro & Sushi is located in Mount Dora, FL. In addition to posting high-quality pictures of their deliciously cooked meals, Wave frequently posts videos and images about what's going on in the kitchen behind the scenes. Their following on social media networks is constantly increasing.

People want to see how the food is produced in restaurant kitchens these days in reality. There are numerous, highly famous YouTube series that shows how a restaurant creates a signature meal. Uploading videos or pictures on your restaurant’s social media accounts, demonstrating how food is prepared at your restaurant will quickly impress new customers. The best thing is that you just have to record your kitchen team which is already performing the job your clients want to see.

While shooting, make sure the kitchen is spotless and show off the most mouthwatering dishes. You may opt to demonstrate the whole cycle of creating a dish and post it to YouTube as this restaurant does, but just a 15 0r 20 second video of any dish can be very successful. You want to show off your staff's expertise and abilities, and encourage potential customers to come and sample your delicious food.

These are the Wave Asian Bistro & Sushi'ssocial media channels:

Facebook Instagram Twitter Yelp

2. Sweetgreen

Sweetgreen has created an influential brand focused on healthy and organic produce. Their sleek and elegant designs are apparent with all they do — whether you're on their iOS device, in a shop, or providing social media support. Both their publicity materials use the same colorful imagery and use a relaxed, friendly sound. Even if their emblem is not on the screen, the Sweetgreen symbol is still identifiable.

Sweetgreen has employed Prepostseo tools to get their online identity in the top results of Google Search. Most of the tools are free of cost, and despite being free of cost, pay you well with the results you require.

There's no way Sweetgreen thought through their social networking campaign long and hard and also employed an agency to help. But even without skilled assistance, clear branding and imagery can be produced for your company. It spreads the restaurant name beyond their location's four walls.

Their sales increased shortly after they joined Instagram and started promoting their restaurant's activities by uploading photos and videos. Not just Instagram, they are equally active on all other social media platforms.

They are very active on:

Instagram Twitter Facebook YouTube

3. Chop Shop

Chop Shop executives are actively checking their company profile on Yelp. Nearly every review has a reply from the company, positive as well as poor, with a personal note answering feedback from the reader.

The Chop Shop team has built a straightforward and welcoming online identity by answering critical feedback and expressing support for good ones. They don't hate learning about their shortcomings and make a concerted effort to build on them. Managers see bad feedback as a chance to think about their market and transform disgruntled customers into champions for brands. Also though you can't fix every post on the comment board, it's a smart move to keep in contact with your dissatisfied clients to seek and improve the partnership.

Interaction with clients is very critical in acquiring more customers. Timely response to user queries satisfy your clients and urges them to refer your business point to more people. When customers are happy with you regarding your customer service, they can bring more friends and family members with them, and those friends and family members will bring more clients to you by word of mouth. So start interacting with your social media followers.

Check out Chop Shop's social media channels:

Facebook Instagram Twitter

4. Steak 'n Shake

Steak' n Shake using their Instagram profile to direct visitors to their email sign-up — plus they attach a really enticing incentive: a free "Rock 'n Cheese' n Fries" if they sign up. They are active on more than five social media channels which keep bringing them more and more sign-ups every month.

Email updates are one of the easiest ways to enable visitors to recognize each other and fuel return visits. When a client presents you with their contact, that opens up the broad email marketing world. You will keep in touch and exchange deals, special occasions,birthday promotions, and more. In this way, you will never be out of touch with your customers.

Everyone knows the importance of email sign-ups. It is not a new thing, but email sign-ups are still driving businesses with a boom.We have seen almost every company in the world using this technique to increase their customers. This strategy can be very successful if implemented in the right direction. Don't miss out on using social media to get email sign-ups because social media is the best source to get sign-ups.

Check out Steak' n Shake'ssocial media channels:

Facebook Instagram Twitter Pinterest YouTube

5. Wingstop

Wingstop is a national chain in the United States of America, and they consider user-generated content as the best buddy of their restaurant, which is very true. UGC can be any type of content displaying your brand in a good way including messages, pictures, memes, or tweets created by your guests. As long as you mention the original author in the social networking post, you can repost every user generated content for your restaurant that you find on the web. Wingstop takes advantage of each and all UGCs from amusing videos and consumer messages.

In brief, by taking photos of your company or chatting openly about it, the raving followers do 95 percent of the job for you. Through reposting their material, you interact with them and show your visitors that you are in contact with your network, thus encouraging your clients to learn from their friends that your company is worth visiting instead of you.

If you go through theirInstagram account, you will find that almost every post contains user-generated content. As you can see in the above image, a user has posted about Wingstop, and Wingstop took that post and reposted it with a comment. Now that is very effective because users can see them interacting with customers in a nice way.

Make sure they are in line with your name while reposting videos and other amusing comments for your restaurant. Give credit to the original author before reposting a post about your restaurant.

Check out Wingstop'ssocial media channels:

Facebook Instagram Twitter

6. Sandwich Hag

Sandwich Hag is a fast food-focused restaurant based in Texas. They focus on the growth and encouragement of their employees. You would be thinking about what it has to do with social media. Well, they are using social media very effectively to spread awareness about the importance of employees.

It's also a smart change on social networking to concentrate on your workers. This tells your future customers that you, as people, think for your employees, and you admire their power. Owner Reyna Duong hires her brother Sang at Sandwich Hag, who has Down syndrome. She has also hired many other staff members of differing talents. That is why, several of the Instagram posts about the restaurant featuring their employees illustrate the capabilities of the squad.

Promoting the individuals behind any company is a perfect way to humanize the consumer experience. Posting "behind the scenes" photos or posting amusing stories about the workers will help fans feel more related to the company and the people making it happen.

Sandwich Hag goes beyond the stereotypes in the post above, sharing a significant statement and emotional post about taking time off for the family and friends. This picture was posted to announce the annual break in December. This break was taken for the sake of employees so that they can spend their time with friends and family.

Check out Sandwich Hag's Social media channels:

Facebook Instagram Twitter

7. Mei Mei

Mei Mei is a Chinese restaurant based in Boston. They are boosting their social network interaction by answering interesting questions and providing inspiring answers. Followers are more apt to recall the post's material if they connect with it in some way,such as the fact that Mei Mei has a sweet corn fritters version.

Social networking is more than just asking your fans what's going on with your restaurant. It is about your fans and clients (What do they like and what they don’t?). Platforms likeInstagram, Facebook, and Twitter are the perfect place to involve the clients in an interaction. The query and survey features on Instagram stories are particularly entertaining and enjoyable to use with prospective clients. Instead of only going down the list or clicking on another story, asking questions will encourage followers to connect with your posts and communicate with you.

The type of interaction you establish with your platform is very critical. Some companies tend to go for light-hearted comedy type interactions. Some of them choose social topics to create awareness, and some go for environmental or other types of themes for interaction with their clients. You will come to know that their posts are also a specific theme centric after observing social media activities of various restaurants. These types of gestures seem nothing, but they have a big impact in the long term.

Check out Mei Mei'ssocial media channels:

Facebook Instagram Twitter

8. Upper Crust Pizzeria

Upper Crust Pizzeria is a very popular Pizza shop founded in 2001 and based in Boston. They take their pizza very seriously as well as their social media marketing. They have ten shops in America and five shops in other countries, which suggests that Upper Pizza Crust is growing fast. Let’s talk about how they grew from a single shop to an international chain.

If you've got a clever take on the society issues, switching to subjects that are already hot on social media is a perfect way to maximize your posts visibility. That is what Upper Crust Pizza has done and is doing right now. Marketers term this tactic "newsjacking" and using it as a means to imitate the latest theme for others to see. Upper Crust even took the chance to show off their workers. You can check their Instagram profile where they are interacting more and more with their clients by not just posting about the food but employees too.

Story of Upper Crust Pizzeria tells us that if you use social media in the right way, you can convert your small or start-up business to a big one. The kind of success you are looking for is not much far from you if you develop a good strategy like all these restaurants.

These are theUpper Crust Pizzeria Social media channels:

Facebook Instagram Twitter

9. Capriotti's Sandwich Shop

Capriotti's Sandwich Shop is a Las Vegas-based sandwich restaurant that is very popular for its endless taste-fill sandwiches all over LA. Capriotti's partnered up with a local news radio station to give a $100 gift certificate to a fortunate winner who included their mate in their Facebook sharing comments.

There are a million forms of social networking competitions that you can operate on. For both your followers and your restaurant, they are fast winners. The restaurant develops connections with visitors and promotes online interaction by inviting guests to take part in interesting caption competitions, picture competitions, riddles, by naming their mates, fun trivia questions, or fill in the blanks.

The above Instagram post by Capriotti's is a good example of using the current situations and events to promote their restaurant. Look how beautifully they are tackling social distancing things by making a 6 feet long sandwich. Nowadays, people are advised to stay 6 feet away from each other to reduce the risk of catching coronavirus. So, Capriotti's came with an idea, and the best thing is they are making perfect moves on social media. Go through all of their posts to get an idea of how they are growing with the help of social media.

These are the Capriotti's Sandwich Shop Social media channels:

Facebook Instagram Twitter LinkedIn

10. Donna's

Donna's is a restaurant based in Toronto, Canada. Donna's highlighting the vendors that provide the products that make the food so delicious is a perfect way to prove you think for everyone who makes your restaurant fantastic and helps you meet those vendors' clientele. For starters, Donna's restaurant highlights that the bagels are from a local bakery named Harbord St Bakery in their Reuben sandwich, and Harbord St Bakery also shared a post that they're delivering bagels for Donna's for a special.

Both firms are pushing their raving supporters into the company of the other. It's a perfect opportunity to develop the restaurant network in terms of clients and future staff and vendors. In fact, restaurant clientele wants to learn where the ingredients in their favorite meals come from, so if you demonstrate that you are helping certain small companies, you will draw potential clients who are trying to help their neighbors.

Donna's also focuses on the engagement of customers by providing online gift cards, which is the perfect way to get in touch with your loyal customers as well as bringing new ones to the restaurant. Donna's is not the inventor of this gift card or vendor disclosing strategy, but they are implementing these strategies precisely to get maximum engagement.

Below is the Capriotti's Sandwich Shop'sInstagram channel:

Instagram

A graphical overview of these restaurants’ revenue

This graph represents the revenue of all restaurants in the year 2019. All amounts are in million.

Conclusion

Although a lively social networking network may feel like a difficult challenge to create and manage, the bottom line is that it is about people. Social networks have clear contact lines between current and future customers. Using such descriptions of restaurant's social networking as motivation to turn the social media strategy of your company into form.

All of the above restaurants have adopted different strategies on social media for the same purpose, and all of them are succeeding in their respective goals. You can adopt any of the above-stated techniques and methods to bring your social media activities close to your clients, which in turn will benefit you in engaging more and more customers.

About the Author

Lori Fitzgerald writes SEO articles for online business marketers and SEO tools users to make their Google rankings surge. My articles have appeared in a number of websites i.e., eLearning Industry, Calculators.tech and Inside Tech Box. I also contribute articles about digital marketing, SEO techniques, and tech regularly to Prepostseo.com

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