Digital is quickly redefining how consumers engage with food and beverage brands and how these brands interact with their customers.
According to a survey from management consulting firm BCG, nearly 60% of restaurant users have downloaded one or more restaurant apps and almost two-thirds of restaurant users are members of at least one restaurant loyalty program, up from 55% in 2014.
If you’re a (wannabe) restaurant or cafe owner you better be well prepared for the irreversible trend in which your customers will always be connected to their smartphones and not only expect great food and great service but also a great “connected experience” with your brand.
To help you navigate through the digital jungle, the team at Loopy Loyalty set out to create the ultimate guide with eight essential steps to ensure your restaurant or cafe ready for the digital age.
Get your domain name and email sorted:
You don’t want to be running a business from a Yahoo or Hotmail email address. Using a free email service doesn’t signal trust and professionalism to vendors, partners, and most importantly: your customers. You’ve most likely already been through the hard part of coming up with a great name for your restaurant, food truck, bar or coffee shop so now it’s time to take that important first step in bringing your business alive on the world wide web and register a domain name for your business. There are many domain name extensions available these days but we recommend either register a .com address or a domain name in your country extension such as .ca for Canada or .nl for the Netherlands. If your domain name is already taken you can consider adding the word restaurant or cafe or the name of your city. So if your restaurant is called Tasty Tacos but TastyTacos.com has been taken already you can try to register TastyTacosRestaurant.com or TastyTacosToronto.com
An available .com domain name only costs you around $10 to register for the first year and there are tons of registrars out there such as GoDaddy.com where you can get a discount on the first year registration when you do a quick Google search for “GoDaddy discount code”. Our recommendation however goes to Google Domains for their no hassle, no tricks approach transparent pricing, great customer support and most importantly: each domain name comes with their custom email solution G-Suite so you will have your branded email address such as you@yourcompany.com sorted right away.
Another great reason to choose for Google Domains is their easy integration with popular website builders Wix, Squarespace and Weebly which brings us to the next step.
Launch your website.
One of the very first things you should do is make sure to get your restaurant or cafe online with a fully functioning website. More than 80% of Americans look up dining locations, directions and hours of operation online and over half order takeout or delivery directly from the restaurant’s own website. Luckily, thanks to the rise of website builders, creating a modern, beautiful looking website that works well on all devices has become a lot easier and less expensive than the early days of the web where you had to find a web designer and then pay for hosting and each time you wanted to update your website.
Our recommendation has to go to Wix for the main reason that they offer a website builder specifically created around the needs of restaurants and cafe’s and comes with specific niche restaurant templates and built-in ordering and menu creation features. And with pricing between free to $24.50 per month, it’s super affordable.
Some alternatives to Wix we can recommend are Squarespace and Weebly.
List your business online.
When it comes to bringing more hungry customers into your restaurant, one of the best ways is to reach them is online when they search for their preferred cuisine and location. It is important to list your restaurant or cafe on quite a few places including review sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor and Foursquare but the most important listing you will be submitting by a long is shot is your “Google My Business” listing. With more than 5 billion searches each day, Google outperforms every other search engine there is and when people start their search for a place to dine-in, take away or order from, they usually start with Google.
Creating your Google My Business listing is easy and free and it’s also a great way to start generation reviews for your business.
Get social. Get connected.
This might seem like a no-brainer to some but you would be surprised to find out how many restaurants or cafes lack a social media presence. With many consumers now preferring social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook over email or phone to contact businesses with questions, praise, or complaints you can’t afford not to have a presence on at least the big three: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Facebook is popular among somewhat older dinners and is often used to message a business with questions about menu items, reservations or opening hours. Twitter is great for mobile food businesses such as food trucks to quickly share their location with hungry followers and Instagram offers a great opportunity to connect with and market your amazing dishes, milkshakes or cocktails to a young and influencing audience by way of sharing pretty pictures.
Choose your Point of Sale (POS).
In the fast-moving restaurant business, a good point of sale system is one of your most important assets. A reliable, fast and easy to use POS is like having your own team of minions working behind the scenes, making sure everything’s moving along quickly and efficiently. To remain on top in today’s super competitive food landscape, you need a POS system to help you run your restaurant or cafe efficiently. The challenge however is to choose the right POS for your business from the many companies out there.
If you’re a small, quick-service restaurant or cafe with a single location we recommend you check out Square. This popular Point of Sale syncs up payments, tipping, analytics, and much more. It backs up your data automatically and is free to download for both Apple and Android. Something we like a lot about Square is that tipping is built right into the POS, which makes it easy for customers and better for your bottom line.
Other POS software we like includes Revel (very suitable for multiple locations and full-service restaurants), Toast, which can be used by all restaurant types, including full-service, bars and food trucks and TouchBistro which was developed by people from the restaurant business.
Set up a customer loyalty program.
Remember Blockbuster? At its prime, it was the go-to company for renting movies and games. But Blockbuster failed to accept change, failed to embrace innovation, and this ultimately led to its demise in 2010 when it declared bankruptcy. This is exactly where paper and plastic loyalty cards are heading so if you’re considering creating customer loyalty software or a stamp card to turn visitors into loyal customers there’s only one way forward: Go digital. Go mobile!
Well, allow us to blow our own horn real quick. With Loopy Loyalty you will stay ahead of the curve and grow customer loyalty with your very own mobile loyalty card. Our loyalty marketing software helps thousands of small business owners across 24 countries compete with big players every day. You design a digital stamp card in minutes that puts your restaurant or cafe right alongside your customers’ credit cards in Apple Wallet and Google Pay without them having to download an app. You can even send targeted messages straight to your customers’ smartphone & lock screen or automatically trigger location-based notifications when your truck is near a customer’s location. How cool is that?
Let the robots take care of inventory management & food costing.
One of the greatest weapons against profit loss is to know your food costs. Food cost determines you restaurant’s profitability. It is what a plate is being sold for on a menu versus what it costs to prepare the plate. It is incredibly hard to run an efficient kitchen if you do not know how much product you have to work with so getting the right tools with helping you manage this process is essential. When you start out a simple spreadsheet should do the trick but once you start growing you will find that the need to streamline your ordering and inventory process starts to increase so you can keep kitchen operations organized. If you’re at that point in your business we recommend you check out SimpleOrder which is an easy-to-use restaurant inventory management software, making food-costing and all that goes along with it simple and effective.
Alternatively, you can also look into Toast, the popular POS we mentioned earlier which also offers excellent restaurant inventory management software.
Manage reservations and guest relations like a boss.
Terrific customer service is super important in the food & beverage industry. And while the face-to-face interaction with yourself or your wait staff is the most obvious opportunity to impress your customers there is (of course!) some great technology out there that can assist you in helping to create a long-lasting impression and build strong relationships with your customers.
For small restaurants we recommend Tablein. A popular software tool that allows you to take reservations directly from your own website or Facebook page, manage your reservations with a simple calendar tool and get all sorts of nifty insights and analytics on your restaurant such as busiest hours and more. If you have a larger operation or multiple locations you might want to consider chatting with someone at New York-based reservation and guest experience platform Sevenrooms which has developed a top-notch all-in-one reservation, seating & guest management solution that is used by some of the leading restaurant brands across the globe.
