Restaurant marketing is the specialized practice of promoting and growing businesses within the food and beverage (F&B) industry. It encompasses a range of strategies and tactics designed to attract and retain customers, tailored specifically to the unique characteristics of restaurants.

Just like any other marketing discipline, restaurant marketing needs to adhere to fundamental principles: a clear vision aligned with business goals, a well-defined strategy, an actionable operational plan, and consistent execution. These principles ensure that all marketing efforts contribute to the overall success and growth of the restaurant.

When creating a marketing strategy and marketing plan for your restaurant, there are several important areas that you need to focus on:

Website Management

This needs to be search engine optimized (SEO) and to have an engaging user experience. Since you are working in the restaurant market, you know already that imagery plays an essential role in appealing to users and attracting customers to your establishment. Therefore, you need to make sure to utilize high-quality media (professional photos and videos) that show the richness and diversity of your menu, as well as the experience that people will get at your location.

First, it is important that your restaurant has a presence on the social media platforms that your targeted audience is most likely active. If your focus is to attract more Baby Boomers clientele, then Facebook is where you should be. If Gen Z is more of your target, then Instagram and TikTok are more relevant for you. Constant posting with a consistent look and feel, and tone of voice is important for your brand. However, you should encourage User Generated Content (UGC), as this strengthens your brand through real experiences and builds your credibility.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that you need to be active on social media, and engage with your followers. Especially Gen Z is 99% more likely to recommend your restaurant if you respond to their DMs in a timely manner.

Customer review

A customer review can make or break a restaurant. Before deciding where to go out to eat, people tend to ask friends and family, search online for restaurants near them, or simply check by the type of restaurant that they want to frequent, and then check the reviews it has.

In fact, a study conducted by Harvard Business School indicates that a 1-star increase in Yelp reviews leads to 5-9% increase in revenue.

Restaurant marketing trends

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

To paraphrase Chandler’s forecast in Friends, from about 20 years ago ‘So It Seems Like This AI Thing Is Here To Stay, huh?’

Love it or hate it, AI is becoming more a part of our everyday life than we even begin to understand. The wise thing to do is don’t resist, but on the contrary, befriend it, understand what it can offer you to boost your business.

The use of artificial intelligence in the F&B business is not new, with restaurants having used rudimentary forms algorithms for inventory management, to optimize stock levels and predict demand, laying the groundwork for AI-driven solutions.

Currently, we’re seeing F&B businesses integrating AI technologies across multiple operational areas, like:

Supply Chain Optimization:

AI-powered predictive analytics helps optimize inventory management, reduce food waste, and improve supply chain efficiency. Polaris ERP’s inbuilt AI technology goes even further, indicating which supplier practices increased pricing, so it can alert you in a timely manner that your costs might increase, helping you avoid unnecessary extra expenses,

Customer Experience Enhancement:

AI-driven chatbots, personalized recommendations, and virtual assistants enhance customer interactions and satisfaction. You can see this in action while checking a short demo of Polaris ERP’s AI-Powered Menu Engineering or Food Cost Calculator.

Recipe Development and Innovation: AI algorithms analyze vast datasets of food-related information to create new recipes, optimize existing ones, and identify emerging food trends. With Polaris ERP’s AI-Powered Food Cost Calculator, you receive the much needed help to keep your recipes consistent, and offer the same level of excellency to your guests every time. It also offers you the possibility to test with new ingredients, or reach the optimal profitability, by indicating recipe optimization.

Real-time insights: AI-driven analytics, predictions on expenses and profitability, as well as customer satisfaction are all possible with using AI-Powered restaurant software. Polaris ERP is currently the only solution in the market offering this capability, allowing you to check insights from across all your data points (revenue, expenses, profits, cashflow), for any or all branches, in a single report, in seconds. No guesswork, but real data, backed up by AI recommendations on how to optimize your business for faster growth,

Short-film video content

With the increased popularity of Instagram Reels and TikTok, or YouTube shorts, we’re seeing more restaurant chefs, staff, and even restaurant managers and owners joining their teams to perform in trending and creative videos that highlight the service and offerings in their establishments.

This is catchy and engaging, helping to create a connection between the restaurant and their targeted audience in a relatable and friendly manner. Furthermore, as video content accounts for over 80% of internet traffic (Cisco Visual Networking Index), you are more likely to reach and engage with potential new customers through this format than stand alone imagery, for instance.

Restaurant ERP

An ERP (enterprise resource planning) is an advanced software that comprises all your organization’s systems (sales, accounting, inventory, procurement, supply chain, CRM, finances, HR, or Marketing), all in-built. The difference between a restaurant ERP and regular restaurant software is that all these systems are already available, which means that each system communicates with the others, without having to login in different systems, remembering a multitude of passwords, and experiencing delays from specific systems, which impact how all systems communicate.

Regular restaurant management systems require integration with accounting software and/or inventory, while procurement, supply chain are handled in separate systems. It requires a lot of manual work to analyze the data from across all these data sets, and this can lead to errors, wasting of time, and lots of technical glitches.

Having a restaurant ERP instead of a regular restaurant management system helps you scale, because a restaurant ERP allows visibility into multiple branches, letting you handle marketing through delivery apps across all branches and brands. A normal restaurant software can’t provide this. In addition, with a restaurant ERP, you can easily understand when it’s the right time for you to grow, or cut expenses, depending on the data coming instantly from your analytics reports.

How can an ERP help you optimize your restaurant marketing

Integration with third-party delivery apps

Integrating your restaurant’s website with third-party delivery apps can significantly enhance your marketing efforts, because it will give you access to a much wider audience. You can highlight promotions and special offers, or share events, to bring the clients inside your restaurant.

A restaurant ERP allows you smooth integration with delivery apps, so that you don’t have to deal with order errors, delays, or technical glitches. In addition, you have access to customer insights, like what promotions worked best, what timings are most profitable, what menu items are most popular, and so on, helping you to optimize your operations and menu accordingly.

Inventory and Menu Insights:

ERP systems track inventory levels and analyze sales data to identify popular dishes. This information helps to inform which menu items are most popular and profitable, as well as which are not. This information is very useful in designing promotions around high-margin items or managing special items effectively.

Such insights also help restaurant managers redesign recipes for menu items that are not so profitable and not so popular either, and then test them to see clients’ reactions. Once the newly re-designed menu items pass the taste test by more than 80%, they can be re-introduced in the menu, with special promotions, such as either ‘Chef’s Choice’, or ‘Voted as the Most Popular’, etc.

Enhancing Customer Experience

Polaris ERP helps you find out what your customers like, by looking into their past orders. Like this, you can create personalized recommendations, and suggest complementary items or new menu offerings based on their preferences.

Similarly, based on customer purchase history and behavior, you can enable targeted promotions, offering relevant discounts or promotions. This will be beneficial for your customers, who will be informed about the promotions you run for their favorite menu items, and also for you, as you will create a deeper relationship with your customers.

Alongside loyalty programs, through which you create personalized rewards and exclusive offers, you will have returning customers, and this will increase your overall revenue.

You may also be interested in:

How to Choose the Best ERP for Your Restaurant

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Elena Cazacu

Data-driven content expert delivering impactful strategies through informative, commercial, or story-telling formats for over 17 years, generating demand through search engine optimized organic content. Expertise areas include marketing, tech, and F&B, among others.

Restaurant Marketing: Trends and Tips to Grow Revenue in 2024

What is restaurant marketing?