Restaurant communications strategy guide

The food industry has never been a get-rich-quick scheme for restaurant operators—partially due to slim margins, tricky labor markets, and rising costs across the board.

An effective restaurant communications strategy should be your go-to plan, influencing every decision you make and action you take. The content in your restaurant comms strategy supplies the data to:

Define your restaurant’s business goals

A restaurant communications plan supports your business’s goals.

Everyone wants to increase their profits. Turn general goals into a precise plan for success.

Those goals might be set by your customers’ behavior. Nowadays, a customer might pull up your menu on their phone, laptop, or tablet. Perhaps they mute their call and use voice search to find a local eatery that offers delivery.

Customers anticipate that every way they interact with your restaurant will look and feel the same way. You can use that knowledge to define clear business goals.

Each step you take along the way to building your communications strategy will help you reach out to your audience while directly reflecting back on your business goals.

Define your restaurant’s communications goals

What are you known for and how will you communicate that to your audience?

At any given time, your Instagram photo or video of piping hot soup might entice a viewer to check out your menu from their mobile phone. Get the most out of every dollar by understanding how each dollar earns you a return.

Applying SMART goals setting to a business goal

If one of your business goals for marketing includes brand awareness (and it should!), then turn that into a communications objective.

For example, Jessie’s Organic Eatery wants to increase local brand awareness of their new lunch specials on Instagram this quarter, then they would set a SMART goal.

Conduct discovery, research, and segmentation

The restaurants that create and promote content without listening to what their ideal customers need or want are wasting precious time.

Can you communicate how you’re different from your competitors without being snarky or putting another brand down?

With competitive analysis, you’ll identify which platforms your competition uses, what type of responses they get, and how they differentiate their business from your restaurant. Use this analysis to:

Karen Anderson, senior vice president of strategy and consumer insights at Arby’s, told QSR that, “Part of designing your target and whom you want to talk to is about making some choices, and you’re going to prioritize some people over others.” By prioritizing and segmenting your audience, you get the best return on your communications investment.

Create messaging to support your restaurant’s brand vision

Concise, targeted messaging ensures the consistency that attracts your ideal customer and satisfies their needs.

Strategic messaging distinguishes your restaurant from competitors.

Clear messaging eliminates any confusion about why they should dial you up, order in, or drop by. It provides you with a solid position and strong voice. Once your messaging is locked in, you can repurpose it for future content and campaigns, changing it slightly depending on the platform.

Consistent messaging = consistent positioning = consistent customers.

Zero in on your restaurant’s brand voice: the tone you set for how you talk to your customers—beyond the words you say and instead how those words make people feel.

Plus, planning out your key messaging, value proposition, and mission gives everyone in your restaurant clear objectives.

Take into consideration how your core messages perform across a variety of touch points.

Communication standards that apply only to in-house diners hurt your business far more than those that manage to sustain your value proposition across multiple mediums.

Identify the best communications channels for your restaurant

Focus on the channels that will have the greatest return on investment in boosting customers for your restaurant, increasing visibility, and expanding your network within the community.

Consumers want responsive, authentic, and transparent communications from all brands. It’s nearly impossible to stand out if you spend all your time marketing to others without engaging with restaurant guests and providing value.

A restaurant communications strategy breaks down the various digital touch points that influence your audience. For the best results, choose a diverse marketing mix.

Consider these statistics:

Create a content calendar and delivery plan

A content calendar will help your team be even more unified on the message and will give everyone a clear understanding of needed deliverables and timeline.

A well-defined content calendar that lays out platform-specific objectives with a predetermined schedule is crucial. Use your research—which identified the optimal communications channels and timing—to create a mix of content that helps you reach your objectives.

For example, if data shows your restaurant guests use Instagram heavily during the weekend, then look for ways to incorporate additional content during this timeframe. Consider increasing your user-generated content from your audience and staff to boost brand awareness.

Go through an online calendar and search for national events to build promotions around. When a food holiday for smoothies, lobster, or pizza comes around, you’re prepared with content (and hashtags) that capture your audience’s attention.

Show neighborhood goodwill by including local events on your content calendar and promoting non-competing businesses and charities. Search for extra ways to boost sales by mentioning or tagging local business owners, restaurant guests, or staff.

Your content calendar covers online and offline promotions, so fill in how you’ll use direct mail, loyalty, and email programs to extend your reach.

Each type of communications should tie to a specific goal. List how you’ll measure the objective and who will track its progress.

Create metrics and evaluate the plan

A communications strategy is only as effective as the evaluation stage and how agile the team is when it’s clearly time to pivot.

This last step is one of the most important components of the entire communications plan: determine how well your efforts are working.

To accurately evaluate the plan, you need to have a clear idea of your baseline. The research you performed and the SMART goals you developed should give you a roadmap to clearly evaluate quantifiable impact.

Include benchmarks for each of your goals: like the number of new Facebook followers or amount of dollars raised in the last campaign.

Need help? Get in touch!

For more tips and advice from our restaurant communications specialists, visit our blog. 

This communications strategy was devised by our content specialist and research analyst, Jessica Elliott, in collaboration with 816 New York’s team. ©2019 816 New York, LLC. All Rights Reserved.