• Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Special Offers
Business Intelligence Info
  • Business Intelligence
    • BI News and Info
    • Big Data
    • Mobile and Cloud
    • Self-Service BI
  • CRM
    • CRM News and Info
    • InfusionSoft
    • Microsoft Dynamics CRM
    • NetSuite
    • OnContact
    • Salesforce
    • Workbooks
  • Data Mining
    • Pentaho
    • Sisense
    • Tableau
    • TIBCO Spotfire
  • Data Warehousing
    • DWH News and Info
    • IBM DB2
    • Microsoft SQL Server
    • Oracle
    • Teradata
  • Predictive Analytics
    • FICO
    • KNIME
    • Mathematica
    • Matlab
    • Minitab
    • RapidMiner
    • Revolution
    • SAP
    • SAS/SPSS
  • Humor

3 Ways to Safeguard Your Restaurant’s Online Reputation

July 18, 2019   NetSuite

Posted by Brady Thomason, NetSuite Solution Manager, Restaurant & Hospitality

A healthy online reputation is absolutely critical to the success of a business and restaurants are no exception. Consider this: 75% of respondents to the 2019 Brand Disinformation Impact Study report that the public reputation of a brand will impact their purchase decisions.

At the same time, the public reputation of a brand can be largely outside of its direct control. In the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, 65% of participants named search engines as their most trusted source when performing research on a business.

Regardless of where and what potential guests hear about your restaurant, public perception has a significant impact. Among companies responding to Deloitte’s Reputation@Risk 41% experienced a negative reputation event and reported a corresponding decrease in brand value and revenue.

But there is an upside: for restaurants participating in a Harvard study on Yelp reviews, those included received a 9% increase in revenue based on every one-star boost in their Yelp rating. That means there could be an 18% difference in revenue for a restaurant with a 3-star rating and one with a 5-star rating – a difference that could make or break any small business.

So how can busy restaurant owners work to establish, maintain and protect their online brand reputation to maximize sales and minimize negative brand events? Here are our top 3 recommendations:

1. Ensure Consistency Across All Channels

Restaurant owners strive to create a strong brand presence inside their brick-and-mortar outlets. A strong color scheme, images and menu design that fit the brand, and themed decorations can all work in unison to convey the brand message. But if that brand consistency doesn’t translate to the online sphere, it can wreak havoc on a restaurant’s online reputation.

Let’s say a potential guest hears about your restaurant and runs a Google search to see what comes up. Maybe there’s an address, a photo of your restaurant, and a link to the website, but no online ordering mechanism.

Then the guest tries searching on Facebook or Yelp and finds a page with no menu images and a different phone number than the Google listing. There’s nothing there that conveys the brand presence you’ve worked so hard to build inside your restaurant. Now what?

In order to create a unified brand presence, restaurants must consider every platform potential guests might interact with. That list can include the Google business page associated with your restaurant, your restaurant’s website, Yelp listing (and associated reviews), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter accounts, and GrubHub and Favor ordering systems.

Take a look at Torchy’s Tacos, a local taco chain in Austin, Texas. It has a very distinct brand presence which is equal parts dirty, decadent and devilish. And the chain really nailed cross-channel consistency, as evidenced by the listings on nearly every platform. Here are a few:

Torchy’s Google search results:

Google%20Screenshot 3 Ways to Safeguard Your Restaurants Online Reputation

Torchy’s Facebook page:

Facebook%20Screemshot 3 Ways to Safeguard Your Restaurants Online Reputation

Torchy’s Yelp page:

Yelp%20Sreenshot 3 Ways to Safeguard Your Restaurants Online Reputation

And its brand consistency continues across Favor, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube.

2. Develop an Easy, Intuitive Website

Having a website that is consistent with your restaurant’s brand promise is one thing, but making it simple and straightforward for potential guests to find what they need is a totally different ballgame.

Beyond duplicating the branding from your brick-and-mortar location on the website, potential guests must be able to quickly find what they need and complete any actions easily. Are they able to:

  • View menu items with easy-to-navigate categories
  • Find your restaurant’s contact information (and different locations, if applicable)
  • Make reservations
  • Place online orders
  • View specials like happy hours, fixed-price days, or brunches
  • Submit catering requests

Do all these actions flow seamlessly off your website’s main homepage? Could the online ordering system use an overhaul to simplify the process? Is it easier for guests to use your reservation system or a plug-in from OpenTable or Resy? These are all questions to ask when designing the optimal experience for your website.

Consider Via 313, a Detroit-style, Austin-based pizza restaurant with five locations. Its homepage provides easy access to a variety of menu categories right off the bat. The left nav offers a direct link to the full menu, online ordering from both its trailers and brick-and-mortar restaurants and a list of locations.

website%20screenshot 3 Ways to Safeguard Your Restaurants Online Reputation

Ordering pizza can get complex pretty quickly, with requests for different types of crusts and swapping out toppings. However, Via 313’s online ordering platform makes it straightforward to sub out ricotta cheese for standard gorgonzola cheese on the restaurant’s popular Cadillac pizza:

order%20screenshot 3 Ways to Safeguard Your Restaurants Online Reputation

The only improvement here would be a clear link to large catering orders for groups.

3. Create (and Enforce) a Clear Employee Communication Plan

Restaurant staff are trained on how to interact with guests when they’re on the floor. However, they may not consider the impact of their words when they’re off the clock. And that’s not just talking about your restaurant in particular, it’s anything they say or do.

Anyone who works for your restaurant may update their social media profile on Facebook, Twitter, or any number of platforms to display their occupation, immediately connecting them to your brand on social media. Anything they say can then be affiliated with the restaurant.

Let’s say you run a farm-to-table restaurant that focuses on sustainability in the food chain. Your marketing efforts are consistent across channels. You have an easy, intuitive website. Business is good. Then one of your employees starts tweeting articles in opposition to the sustainability movement. All of a sudden, your brand is connected to the opposite side of the argument, and your guests may notice and take action.

Given the ramifications, it’s critical that brands train employees to use the same discretion on social media as they would when they’re working in your restaurant. Otherwise you might end up with:

  • Employees airing your business’s accounting mistakes on Facebook, as in the case of Triple Play Sports Bar & Grill in Watertown, Connecticut.
  • Staff who aren’t even working for you yet (!) tweeting their choice words for their new job at your establishment, like the Texas teenager who was scheduled to start working at Jet’s Pizzeria in Mansfield, Texas. (She was fired before even starting her job.)
  • A huge backlash on your hands, like Applebee’s experienced with its decision to fire Chelsea Welch, a waitress who posted a photo of a customer’s receipt that included a note about why he doesn’t tip.

Don’t Want to Do It All Yourself?

For a new restaurant with a small staff, finding the time to create the framework for a solid online reputation may seem pretty overwhelming – and nearly impossible. However, there are marketing agencies that specialize in working with restaurants to build, grow and maintain their online reputations.

And even if you don’t have the budget to hire an agency, try working on your restaurant’s online reputation one chunk at a time. The first priority items might be your Google business listing, website, Yelp page and employee communication plan. Next, set up online ordering via a platform like UberEats or GrubHub, and put processes in place to read and respond to reviews.

Make no mistake: safeguarding your restaurant’s reputation will take time and attention from your staff that can sometimes be difficult to divert. However, consider it your insurance policy against brand-damaging events that could impact your restaurant over the long term.

Posted on Thu, July 18, 2019
by NetSuite filed under

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

The NetSuite Blog

Online, Reputation, restaurants, Safeguard, Ways
  • Recent Posts

    • Now make soup!
    • Attach2Dynamics Or SharePoint Security Sync – Choose your smart app for effective document management in Dynamics 365 CRM/Power Apps.
    • 5 jobs that you should apply for this week (before it’s too late)
    • SQL Server authentication methods, logins, and database users
    • DAE solver fails for system of coupled partial differential equations
  • Categories

  • Archives

    • March 2021
    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
© 2021 Business Intelligence Info
Power BI Training | G Com Solutions Limited