How to PR a restaurant
With people eating and drinking out last year as much as they did in 2016, getting consumers through the door should be an easy task for restaurants. However, with the number of restaurants in the UK rising rapidly over the past five years, competition has never been more intense.
A study by Future Shock found that the number of food-led outlets in the UK grew by 13.5 per cent between September 2011 and September 2016.
In 2016, more than £74m was spent on eating out in restaurants and cafes in the UK. That figure has grown steadily year-on-year following a slump in 2009. The Future Shock study also found that nearly half (46 per cent) of consumers surveyed said they eat out weekly.
Despite consumer confidence falling to a level last seen in the immediate aftermath of Brexit, according to a poll by market researcher GfK, sales within the hospitality sector grew by 0.6 per cent in July 2017 compared to July 2016.
However, restaurants are also facing external competition from a growing number of home delivery services, such as Deliveroo, Just Eat and Hungry House, as well as meal prep services such as Hello Fresh and Gousto, which promise consumers the chance to enjoy restaurant-quality meals in the comfort of their own home.
So, how to reach those all-important customers in a saturated market? By upping your PR game, of course.
It can be difficult to know exactly how to generate media headlines for your restaurant – after all, unlike some organisations, as a business restaurants don’t naturally produce a frequent stream of ‘news’.
However, that’s not to say nothing is happening and no-one knows the latest updates at your restaurant better than you. Start with the basics – think about your venue, your food and your staff. If you’ve revamped your menu, redecorated or employed a new chef, let people know about it. Many restaurants continue to train and develop their staff over time, potentially resulting in a low staff turnover, so celebrate those achievements and milestones.
PR is all about creating brand awareness. Targeting the local media in your area and the hospitality trade press will help to get your name out there; generating headlines will lead to you establishing a trusted brand reputation, thereby continuing to generate headlines and conversations as more people take an interest in your offering or pay you a visit
Eating out is a social activity and, as a restaurant, hospitality is one of your key selling points so the two go hand in hand. All good relationships are based on trust – people want to go to a venue where they trust they’ll get the best experience; that includes eating good food and being looked after by friendly staff. So, highlighting the human aspect of your business, as well as the food, is a good way to get people through the door.
One of the best, and easiest, ways to cultivate your brand reputation is by taking advantage of tools at your disposal to generate your own PR, such as social media. Unlike traditional print or even digital PR, social media puts you in control. You can decide what people see and hear about your business so utilise it to your advantage.
Many people visiting a restaurant for the first time often do so based on word of mouth recommendations or online reviews. Sharing photos of your food and staff members as well as engaging positively with customers, both old and new, is a great way to build engagement and get people talking about your business.
Positive interaction with one social media user can also increase your reach to potentially thousands of prospective customers. On Facebook, for example, a ‘like’, ‘comment’ or ‘share’ will show up on the timelines of the followers of those engaging with the post, opening up your business to a whole new audience.
It’s important, therefore, to think about the image you want to portray. Think about the language you use in your posts and how you speak to people – you want to keep things consistent. Being friendly and chatty in one post, but then flipping a lid when someone posts a negative review (we’ve all seen the headlines…) could be infinitely detrimental to your business, alienating customers with just one simple click of the ‘post’ button.
Take the time to invest in good imagery. You don’t need to hire a professional photographer (unless you can afford it), but ensuring your imagery accurately reflects what the customer can expect pays dividends in the future. Again, we’ve all seen the ‘before and after’ shots from people who have received a meal which didn’t quite match the standards they were expecting…
As well as an engagement and PR tool, for its users social media is also fast becoming a key search tool. We’ve all sat there thinking of the answer to a question before deciding to just Google it. The phrase itself is ingrained in our culture now. However, social media wealds its own powerful influence when it comes to internet searches.
A channel like Instagram, for example, attracts 20+ per cent of all internet users between 18-65, with 90 per cent of those users under the age of 35. The average user also spends 257 minutes a month searching through the 70+ million photos which are uploaded daily.
With stats like that, it’s no wonder that people will often search for a company’s social media profile before its official website, to get a better understanding of the business and what can be expected.
In fact, a 2012 study by Search Engine Land found that 72 per cent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, while more than half agreed that a positive online review increased the likelihood of them using or visiting a local business.
That being the case, it’s also worth you taking the time to do a few searches of your own. Finding local ‘influencers’ and journalists on social media and perhaps inviting them to have a meal in the restaurant can, again, open your business up to hundreds, if not thousands of new followers as they tweet and post about their experience.
Overall, PR’ing a restaurant is no different to PR’ing any other business if done properly. One of the most important considerations before embarking on any PR campaign, is to create a strategy outlining your aims and goals. By doing this, you can think ahead to upcoming events/milestones which may be of interest and topics that will get people talking about you.
Having a cohesive strategy in place, covering actions for both traditional PR and social media, will help direct your PR activity moving forwards and ensure the information going out consistently matches the brand image you want to portray.
