Starting, Owning and Marketing A Restaurant Blog|Starting and Owning a Restaurant - Construction, Planning, Marketing, Opening and Managing a New Restaurant

In the last couple of posts we have discussed the relatively new impetus for restaurants to involve themselves in sites like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and several other networking type sites. The positives and negatives have been outlined.

For our new restaurant we decided to take an approach that:

• Involves a greater percentage of our customer base.
• Takes less time that to maintain, although a much greater initial time commitment.
• Allows community wide involvement.
• Brings together many different elements of the area.
• Eliminates competition for the same audience. (Chains cannot compete.)

We decided to develop a blog that will offer local (neighborhood), news, events, information, feedback and networking with all the various social groups. You can visit this blog as it is built. The name is Maggie’s City Center.

The real bonus is that most of our customers can participate, not just the ones who happen to subscribe to one of the social networking sites that have become prime media for the chains to distribute their coupons and build their brands.

After much of the content has been set up and we are ready to publicly  unveil it, a marketing plan fr the blog will be detailed to get the word out to the community. Visit the site and let us know your thoughts and comments.

In a previous post (April 3, 2009 - Restaurant Social Networking), I wrote about sites like Twitter, Facebook and Yelp. These social networking tools allow you to build personal relationships with people who share your interests and want to talk about the same subjects - hopefully, your restaurant.

The key point I was trying to develop was that a restaurant owner only has a relatively small amount of time to devote to social marketing (and/or networking). Running a restaurant consumes a huge part of your day, leaving only small inconsistent amounts of “free” time to work on marketing projects. Large restaurant chains embrace social networking sites as a method to build their brand. The chains have staff they can assign to this part of their marketing plan. Independent restaurants rarely can afford such a luxury.

In the case of our new restaurant, we want to use Internet social networking, but achieve these goals:

• Reach as many of our customers and potetial customers as possible.
• Use as little time as possible to commit to the long term project.
• Get the community involved including groups, charities and municipalities.
• Interact with all segments of our demographic.

The location of the restaurant is in a small suburban town adjacent to one of the largest commercial markets in Florida (Tampa Bay area). The location happens to be within several blocks of the intersection of several other communities, which all have their own identities. This crossroads location can be a networking nightmare or we can use it to our advantage.

We are going to research the development of a blog to tie the whole area together as one marketing community for us and our other business networking users. Sound complicated? Not really. A blog could;

• Keep track of events in all of the surrounding small communities.
• Allow our business customers to offer their services online.
• Become a focal point for charities to advertise their events and fund raising projects.
• Become a focal point for new residents to find information about the multi-community area.
• Allow our guests to have interactive comments about our food, service and dining experience.

Remember that all of the businesses, charitable groups, social clubs and similar organizations have employees, members, sponsors and participants that we want to reach. That allows us to have a broad communication approach to a large part of the potential customers and existing guests located in a wide radius of the restaurant.

The downside to our plan is the time commitment initially is significant, but in the long run, customers, business partners and community social groups will supply fresh content on a routine basis. It takes only minutes to update a blog, leaving more time to other operations of the restaurant.

More about our research, plan and progress coming in future posts.

As the 90 day mark approaches from the day we opened the new restaurant, it is time to focus on more marketing tools to get communication deeper into our demographic. One of the options is Internet social marketing. Essentially that involves establishing a presence on sites like MySpace, Yelp, Twitter and Facebook.

The publicity in hospitality magazines offers glowing reports about how useful these sites are for retaining customers and networking to gain new ones. I decided to do a little research on these sites and their potential. My research was limited to:

• visiting the sites named above.
• looking at the options, uses and types of postings.
• talking to a few restaurant owners that I knew were using these sites.
• reading the latest information from industry publications.

On the positive side, restaurants can easily and quickly get involved. Most have a quick form to fill outanswering questions either about you or your business. This is your “profile” that is displayed and returned from a searchable database. People who share your similar interests, location and contacts become your personal network. You can chat with the members of your network and comment on any subject you want to search - including your restaurant. As other people join in, they become part of your network.

Almost all of the social networking sites work about the same way. Most have cute names and phrases that go along with things you do on the site. On Twitter, the height of cutesy, a post is called a “tweet”. Very clever. Each site can become addictive and amusing, but the issue is value as a marketing tool.

On the negative side of entering the Internet social networking arena, consider these issues:

• Relatively few of your customers and prospects are being reached. While these sites are very popular and gaining strength, the reality is that your demographic should be 18 to 32 to maximize the value.
• As you get more involved, time becomes an issue. Are these sites worth the amount of time it takes to maintain a presence and communicate with your network members? Can you spend your time in a more productive manner?
• Are you willing to respond to negative and positive reports on your restaurant regardless of their truthfulness, validity or importance?

After considering all the options, for us, the time versus reward isn’t there. I am a firm believer in email marketing and feel that many of the same things can be accomplished using email, surveys and direct contact with a lot less time committed. If your prospects cover a whole spectrum of age groups, income levels, locations and ethnicity’s, many are not part of the digital communication revolution. You have to continue to communicate your message to all customer groups.

The restaurant owners that I talked to who have gotten involved with social networking websites offered a mixed bag of comments. Some were sorry they started because the time expands as your contacts expand. Each takes personal response and attention. One owner told me he had a disgruntled employee write several bad reviews of his operation on Yelp. This caused the owner to refute the dismal reports and forced daily monitoring. You can write whatever you want on the Internet. That is the price of digital freedom!

The bottom line is that we will monitor the value equation of Internet social marketing and ignore the rantings of restaurant marketing “consultants” who say this is a great tool. We will plan our next email and media campaign with the time we would have been “tweeting” on Twitter.

For more restaurant marketing ideas, visit On a Wait, a marketing blog.