Particularly noticeable is the rising cost of meat and dairy, stemming from global increases in the prices of staple grains or cereals (as they are most commonly called). Not only do these cereals represent more than half of most countries calorie intake but, they are also used as feed for livestock. In fact, 700m tonnes of grain are used to fatten animals each year. An unsurprisingly high number when you consider that China alone with is fast expanding and increasingly carnivorous population (of 1.37 billion) consumes the equivalent of 240 million cows, or 600 million pigs, or 24 billion chickens.

And the bad news doesn’t stop there! No longer are escalating food costs constrained to grains, proteins and dairy. Recently, there have been warnings that the price of tea will increase as a result of droughts in Kenya. Restaurants are inevitably going to decide on a strategy of how to deal with these increases.

Do they increase the prices on their menus to cover the rising food costs and risk alienating the cash-strapped consumer or find cheaper alternatives to certain menu items in order to try and lessen the impact on margins? Alternatively, do they keep discounting in place and their prices low, resulting in significant impact on profits?

It’s a difficult question and one to which I don’t believe there is a definitive answer. Having spent over 8 years in restaurant marketing I have been privy to many a conversation debating these very options and have seen them implemented with varying degrees of success. As it would appear, so have many of the celebrity chefs.

Channel 4 recently broadcasted Dispatches: the truth about food prices and Michael Roux Jnr, of Roux at the Landau talked about his concerns of food prices on the program; “…a fillet of beef in January was costing me £19 a kilo it is now costing me in June £26 a kilo. So that is a huge increase and as yet I haven’t put my prices up to sale for the customers so I’ve swallowed that increase – and it is painful. The next increase will be a big one. It is something that as restaurateurs we are worried about and we have to pass this on. And it’s something that we have to live with, I’m afraid. The price of oil and the price of feed for animals, for example, have gone up – it is a worrying time.”

Only time will tell if the strategies restaurants implement will be a success. However, with no sign of the recession going away, the time to start making these decisions is now.

You can follow Louise on Twitter: @LouiseTweeting

Posting videos is a great way of giving people an insider view of what goes on in your restaurant. Whether it’s cookery tips, interviews with the staff or an inside view of what goes on in the kitchen, creating videos can be a great way of enabling customers to engage with you and to give you an advantage when it comes to booking a table.

And it doesn’t have to be expensive. YouTube is traditionally a place for homemade videos made on a shoestring budget. You don’t need special lighting, cue cards or an action clapperboard (unless you really want to use one). A simple handcam such as the Flip will suffice, with the shaky image and unscripted dialogue adding to the video’s authenticity.

For ideas on how you can use YouTube as a restaurant marketing tool, you might like to check out these YouTube channels:

BR Guest Restaurants – This collective of bars, hotels and restaurants in theNew York area has already posted 90 videos of events, cookery classes and chef recipe demonstrations.

Staff Canteen – This is aUK based community for chefs to share their recipe ideas. Amongst the videos, you’ll find John Williams from The Ritz demonstrating how to cook lobster and Gary Jones of Raymond Blanc’s La Manoir showing off their signature dishes.

Cornish Fishmonger – They’ve been delivering fresh fish toCornwall for over 25 years, and amongst their collection of videos you’ll find tips on how to fillet a mackerel, how to prepare crab and the journey the fish takes to get to your door.

Mermaid Oyster Bar – Along with recipe ideas and a bio of one of its chefs, you’ll find a video of customers talking about the family atmosphere and great food to be found at this popular seafood restaurant. Getting customers involved is always restaurant marketing gold.

Firstly, your Tumblr posts can be published automatically to Facebook, saving you from having to create original posts on either platform. Secondly, Tumblr offers a much more visual approach to blogging compared to other ‘wordy’ blogging tools. More than half of the posts on Tumblr are images and photos, making it popular with fashionistas, artists and bloggers with a creative spark.

Reason number three is that Tumblr’s popularity is rocketing. It grew 218% in popularity last year and now attracts over 9 million visitors everyday to see its quirky, patchwork quilt of posts.

So if the thought of sitting down to write 300 word post fills you with dread, but photographing a delicious plate of steaming noodles is more your bag then Tumblr is for you.

To give you some ideas, here are some foodie Tumblr blogs:

marinaoloughlin.tumblr.com – The Metro’s resident restaurant reviewer shares witty posts on the travels, trials and tribulations of being an incognito food critic.

scanwiches.com – A food porn blog dedicated to the humble sandwich. A guilty pleasure for those that enjoy seeing their food cut in half and photographed Damien Hirst style.

baconbaconbacon.tumblr.com – As the title suggests, this blog is ‘all about the bacon’. You’ll find an assortment of bacon related insanity. If the idea of wearing a bacon bracelet whilst eating a blueberry bacon cupcake before cleaning your teeth with bacon toothpaste sounds intriguing, this Tumblr blog is worth a look.

artinmycoffee.com – This blog showcases how adding a splash of cream to your coffee is, indeed, an art form, with pictures of unicorns, pigs and leaves all floating in their foamy awesomeness. If you’re lucky enough to be presented with one of these cups, you’ll be forgiven for letting your coffee go cold.

londontastin.com – This blog chronicles the author’s journey through the capital’s Michelin starred restaurants and supper clubs, whilst finding time to stop off for afternoon tea at the Dorchester.

You can find lots more food related Tumblr blogs here to while away an afternoon. And if you’d like to share any interesting foodie Tumblr blogs, please post a link in the comments.

Working out the ROI of social media is a puzzle marketers are feverishly trying to solve. Thankfully, there are lots of tools you can use to measure what your fans and followers are doing to the very last click.

Here are a few social media measurement tools you can use to gauge the success of your social media restaurant marketing strategy:

Twitter

1. Twtalyzer – This free tool gives you a score and an assessment of the your Tweets’ impact. Simply type in your Twitter handle to get stats on your ‘impact’, ‘influence’ and ‘clout’.

2. Tweetreach – This popular tool shows you the overall exposure, reTweets, mentions, replies and impressions of your Tweets. Tweetreach is perfect for tracking the success of one off campaigns, as demonstrated by this report for The Ship’s Scotch Egg Challenge.

3. Twittercounter – This gives you a longer-term view of your Twitter account’s growth. You can see how your followers have grown over the weeks and months, and see which types of Tweets might be costing you followers.

Facebook

4. Klout  - Similar to Twtalyzer except Klout can also be used to track your influence in Facebook. It gives you information on the size of your network, how many people pass on your posts and which topics are most popular.

5. Pagelever – Whilst Facebook does provide stats for pages they are very basic. Consequently, Pagelever coins itself as ‘Facebook Insights on steroids’ with extra info on fan growth, page views and the popularity of your posts. You can also see demographic information on your followers, which is handy for finding out whether you’re attracting the right people.

Analytics packages

6. Viralheat – With three pricing plans, this is a more advanced tool than the free ones. You can use it to get more indepth info on the reach of your Tweets and to find people who are ‘influencers’ and have lots of fans and followers – in other words, people you might like to invite for dinner. You can monitor mentions of your restaurant to see what you’re doing right or wrong, as well as spy on what your competitors are doing.

7. Market Me Suite – This free social media dashboard enables you to manage all your social media campaigns in one place. You can schedule and post updates to all your accounts (including LinkedIn) at the same time, identify who is talking about your restaurant and engage with them promptly.

8. Google Analytics – With GA you can setup profiles to track visitors from Facebook and Twitter and see how many convert into bookings (you can find a guide to setting up profiles and goals in this post).

9. Add Livebookings booking tool on Facebook – Another option is to simply install our booking app directly onto your Facebook page so people can book a table without leaving their Facebook session and so you can easily track your page’s contribution to bookings.

These tweets effectively ‘steered’, in real time, a customised ‘day of the dead’ car to the locations with the most tweets. In addition, anyone who saw the Day of the Dead car and Tweeted a picture of it to @benitoschat received a discount on food in store. At the same time, the media team at Unity were on the phone to journalists securing coverage, dropping meals to radio breakfast shows, setting up above the line opportunities, and amplifying instore promotions.

This simple but effective campaign achieved a social reach of nearly 800,000 – enough to get @benitoschat trending on Twitter! It helped secure 556 new Twitter followers and generated over 2,000 retweets, from the likes of McFly, Lisa Snowdon and TimeOut London. At the same time, we secured 13 pieces of media coverage in our target media and mentions on national radio breakfast shows.

The activity was a huge success, helped drive brand love and we saw an immediate positive impact on sales at our Oxford Circus store, to the tune of a 25% increase. We are confident that the brand awareness generated by the campaign will lead to it being a fantastic commercial success in the weeks and months to come. We can’t wait to do it all over again next year.

Ben Fordham, Benito’s Hat co-founder & director

About Ben

Aged 5 Adventures in the kitchen began with Mum.

2000 Arrived in Texas and discovered real Mexican food and fell in love with it as well as one real Texan woman.
2001 Returned to London and fully understood that while my favourite city in London gets an extremely undeserved ‘bad food’ rep it was lacking two things: i) good quality, fresh Mexican food, and ii) good quality, reasonably-priced food (the space between fantastic high-end food and McDonalds was pretty empty).
2001 (March) Started life as a lawyer nonetheless.
2002-2007 the plan to open a Mexican restaurant in London went from vague possibility to real probability.
2007 (February) travelled to Oaxaca to go to cooking school with the incredible Pilar.
2007 (June) a chance meeting on a tube with the manager of Green and Red (a good quality, but sadly now departed, Mexican restaurant on Bethnal Green Road) got me moonlighting in their kitchen every Saturday night for the next 6 months while my legal career limped on.
2007 (December) Felipe, Green and Red staff member, approached me to say his dream of starting his own restaurant in London isn’t going to happen so he is returning to Mexico in Shoreditch – and the partnership was born.
2008 (July) Benito’s Hat opens in Goodge Street
2008 (September) Marina O’Loughlin writes a review that puts us on the map.
2009 (July) Benito’s Hat first birthday party closes down Goodge Street.
2010 (July) Second Benito’s Hat restaurant opens in Covent Garden.
2011 (April) Third Benito’s Hat restaurant opens at Oxford Circus.

Christmas is a time when people are most likely to visit somewhere new. So it’s a good idea to pull out all the stops to attract new diners and then to entice them back again in 2012.

1. Promote your Christmas menu and activities on Facebook and Twitter – Over the last year you’ve (hopefully) been attracting fans and followers in social media. Now is the perfect time to harness the word of mouth power of these networks to spread your festive offers and to get diners flocking through your door. You’ll find some restaurant marketing tips on advertising special events on Facebook in this post.

2. Provide customers with a voucher to dispel the January blues – January can often feel like an extended hangover. People have partied and spent too much, and are now shying away from splashing out on dinner. So when you’ve got them in your restaurant use it as an opportunity to promote your plans for January. Why not offer your guests a Christmas gift in the form of a special voucher for January. As well as fill your tables in a slow period, attracting diners back gives you another chance to convert them into loyal customers.

3. Harvest email addresses – The key to attracting diners back again and again is (along with great food and service) ongoing restaurant marketing activity. Along with the receipt and after dinner chocolate, provide a form for customers to offer feedback, complete a short quiz or enter a prize draw in exchange for their email address. You can then send them recipe ideas, restaurant news and promotions to build rapport and entice them back to book another table.

4. Attract Christmas shoppers in the early evening – If your restaurant is located close to a shopping area then why not try attracting weary shoppers with the offer of warm soup, coffee or mince pies. This helps to fill your restaurant in the quiet early evening period and gives you an opportunity to tell them about your Christmas menu and any special events you’re hosting.

5. Promote your restaurant as the perfect place for final Friday drinks – On the last Friday of December offices traditionally empty out into the bars and restaurants to start their Christmas holiday with a bang. Why not send leaflets to local businesses and email your contacts in the local business community to promote your restaurant as the perfect place for after work drinks. You could sweeten the deal with free mince pies and mistletoe to give the evening a festive buzz. You can find more tips on reaching out to your local business community in this post.

One of these is getting coverage in the local media. The fact is that while there are millions of people on Facebook, there are millions more that aren’t. And as crazy as it sounds, many people still read local newspapers and listen to local radio stations to stay in touch with what’s going on. In fact, it’s often touted that more people read local newspapers than the national broadsheets.

So how can you go about getting local journalists and radio DJs to talk about your restaurant? Here’s how:

Familiarise yourself with the local media – Research which local newspapers, free papers, local magazines and local radio stations you can target for publicity.

Create a story – The Ship managed to get national coverage in The Guardian as a result of their Scotch Egg Challenge. Why not try and replicate their success with a ‘cook off’ challenge of your own? Or how about running a cookery evening for parents where you show them how to cook recession busting family meals? Charity events are always popular with the local media because of the human interest angle. In fact, any special event with a unique story behind it can be worthy of getting your restaurant under the spotlight.

Identify who to contact – When phoning up a local newspaper, it’s useful to know the name of which journalist is most likely to cover your story. One way of finding out is to look for relevant articles in the newspaper and note down who wrote it. Another option is to send them a press release about your event highlighting why it would be of interest to their readers or listeners.

There are probably many events at your restaurant worthy of coverage beyond your own blog or email newsletter. So next time you’ve got something big planned, reach out to your local media to get more people talking about your restaurant.

Along with Twitter, Facebook is a website us restaurant marketers get excited about. Whether it’s people posting an update about the delicious meal they ate last night, ‘Liking’ your Facebook page or sharing your special offers, Facebook has great potential as a word of mouth marketing machine.

But sometimes those recommendations need a gentle nudge. This is where the Facebook advertising system comes in handy. It enables you to deliver highly targeted advertising to people in your city, people of a certain age and people who’ve listed  ‘Food and dining’ as one of their favourite activities.

It can also be used to target the friends of people who’ve joined your Facebook page or are attending one of your events, enabling you to harness the power of word of mouth to make your ads more appealing.

Here are some tips for using Facebook advertising in your restaurant marketing mix:

1) Decide what you want to achieve – Facebook ads can be used in a variety of ways. You can use them to attract more members to your Facebook page, to invite people to your special event or to increase traffic to your main restaurant marketing website. Deciding what your goal is will help direct what type of message to write and where the ad needs to link to.

2) Clear copy and call to action – You only have 139 characters to play around with, so it’s important to provide a clear, concise message on what you’re promoting and what you want people to do. Don’t feel that you have to use all the characters though – a bold short message might be enough, such as ‘Don’t be left out in the cold. Book your Christmas dinner today!’.

3) Experiment and test – Facebook provides you with a report on the number of clicks and the number of times your ad has been seen. This enables you to try different types of descriptions and images to see which entice people to visit your website or Facebook page. It’s also a good idea to keep an eye on Google Analytics (you can find tips on using Google Analytics in this post), and see whether there is a spike in traffic from Facebook to your main restaurant marketing website.

4) Harness the power of ‘Likes’ – If you create an advert for your page then it will feature a ‘Like’ button at the bottom and a list of a person’s friends that are already fans. This gives your advert extra power because of the social endorsement. People can also click on ‘Like’ without having to leave whichever page they’re already on.

5) Adverts to promote your event – When you create adverts for special events you can include an RSVP link. This enables people to show they’re interested in attending without having to click through and disrupt what they’re doing on Facebook. Once somebody has clicked on ‘Like’ or ‘RSVP’ you can then send them updates to keep them notified and interested.

6) Create sponsored stories – This is a new feature which enables you to harness word of mouth more aggressively. These ads will appear in the advertising column whenever a friend has taken action on your Facebook page or event. This avoids the risk of people not seeing a friend’s update in their newsfeed when they’ve joined your Facebook group or registered for your event.

Livebookings also provides a way for you to take online bookings through your Facebook Fan Page. To find out how, view our post here.

When you consider that more than 3 in 5 diners find restaurants through an online search, PPC can be a useful restaurant marketing strategy.

Make sure you’re listed on Google Maps first

Before deciding whether to embark on a PPC campaign, make sure you’ve added your restaurant marketing website to Google Maps. When people conduct a Google search within a location (e.g. Chinese restaurants Oxford) then Google automatically provides results from Google Maps at the top.

So getting onto Google Maps can potentially get you on the first page of results for free. But competition is growing. With so many restaurants now registering, it’s getting harder to appear on the first page of results. In which case, it’s worth giving PPC a go.

Google Adwords Campaign Tips

Set a budget – Decide how much you want to spend per day. It’s a good idea to start with a small amount initially, while you play around and experiment.

Choose geographic keyword searches – Targeting a broad term like ‘Indian takeaway’ on its own will eat up your budget in minutes. Instead, focus on location based searches (i.e. ‘Indian Takeaway Milton Keynes’) so the money you’re spending on clicks is going on people most likely to book.

Target your local area – A recent update to Google Adwords lets you pinpoint the city or region in which you’d like your ads to appear. Targeting people in your local area helps to further ensure your budget is spent wisely.

Keep your ad simple – You only have two lines to play around with. So when writing your ad, make sure it includes details which will attract your target diner, such as a brief description of your food or where you deliver. For example:

Haozhan

www.haozhan.co.uk

modern oriental dining
Top 20 London Restaurants

Gerrard St, London
020 7434 3838

Dim Sum, Thai & Chinese

www.gourmetoriental.com

Delivering toMayfair,Belgravia

Kensington & Chelsea

290 Fulham Road,Chelsea

0800 975 9761

Gauging success – One of the best things about PPC is that it’s measurable to the last click so you can find out whether the investment is worth it. If you use Google Analytics then you can link this to your Adwords account to see what visitors are doing when they arrive on your website. Even better, if you use the Livebookings online booking system you can also see exactly how many extra bookings you gain via PPC.

You’ll find a guide to connecting your Livebookings account with Google Analytics in the appendix of this white paper.

You can also find more information on using Google Adwords here.

They appear and disappear like magic, but there’s an awful lot of organisation that goes into setting up a pop-up and there are many pitfalls for those who don’t tread carefully.

Here are a few tips to bear in mind:

Location – Your success could hinge on finding a location with plenty of footfall and the types of customers you want to target. Festivals, for example, can be perfect for shifting a lot of meals, but only when at festival prices. You also have to think about whose permission you need if you’re choosing somewhere off the beaten track. The Land Registry website is a good place to start, or you can ask the local authority to find out who owns that abandoned portacabin near the bus depot. Also, remember you’ll need planning permission if your pop-up is still standing after 28 days.

Sourcing equipment – Work out everything you’ll need well in advance, so you’re not rushing around for a lemon squeezer on launch day. Along with kitchen equipment, consider how you’ll get supplies of gas, water and electric, and what licences you’ll need.

Managing expectations – Many pop-ups have been launched with hopes of banking a fortune, only for the costs to mount up and reality to set in before aspirations are reduced to breaking even. It’s probably not realistic to see running a pop-up as a lucrative venture. Instead it should be treated as a PR and marketing opportunity to spread your restaurant’s name and to give people a taste for your food.

Menu – Unless you’re planning on using your existing staff, you might be working with a team you don’t know and doesn’t know your menu. To keep everything running smoothly (and quickly), it’s sensible to keep the menu simple whilst still serving delicious food that will entice people to your main restaurant.

Price – You should price your meals according to what your target customer can afford and your location. If you’re at a festival, you also need to consider that many customers might be paying in cash. So have plenty of change or round prices to the nearest note.

Reservations – As always, it makes sense to have a booking system in place on your website. The Livebookings online booking system can be added to your website fast and customised to suit your pop-ups unique theme or brand. For example, our system was used by Pret-A-Diner for their recent pop-up at the London Restaurant Festival.

Promotion – Try and give your pop-up a story or theme that gets people interested. The Dishoom’s pop-up, for example, had the theme of a trippy Indian beach shack. Then do everything you can to get people Tweeting and talking about you in Social Media by talking about your pop-ups unique angle, food and that you’ll only be around for a limited time before you disappear in a puff of smoke.

Before establishing Giraffe, Juliette Joffe was the mind behind the Café Flo chain. She founded Giraffe 14 years-ago this summer with husband, Russel and business partner, Andrew Jacobs who she first encountered as a waiter at Flo. Giraffe employs 1,200 staff across 43 restaurants in England, including five franchises.

Technologically, how do you see the future?
According to the sort of techie magazines I pick up at airports, it’s reckoned that, post Christmas, 70% of Britons will carry a smart phone. While the absent-minded may leave home without wallet or keys, rarely will they forget their mobiles. I predict customers will eventually use them to make all bookings and payments. Over the last nine months, people have grown very intrigued by QR barcodes, which were originally designed by Toyota. When we refurbished our restaurants at Hampstead and Wimbledon, we put up A-boards featuring these under the text, ‘show me, scan me, see me’. Every day we’d offer something new, whether it be a free burger or coffee. Curiously, the take-up in Wimbledon was absolutely superb, unlike North London. I find QR codes can create a buzz, particularly when included on ‘Coming Soon’ hoardings.

What is your bugbear?
The world ‘deal’; preferable is ‘promotion’. ‘Deal’ was used abundantly two years-ago when restaurateurs had to coax commerce from a society which had hit a financial wall. Customers would mostly seek-out restaurants offering discount vouchers. Even though ‘deals’ ensure a presence on the front pages of bookings’ websites, we prefer to steer clear of anything which we perceive as devaluing our brand. To this end, throughout 2011, we tried harder than ever to offer consistent value for money, vis-à-vis our ‘Wide Awake’ £5 breakfast and two-courses for £9.95 dinner.

Who authors your Twitter account?
Until a month ago we kept this in-house until the lady in charge moved to pastures new. Now we use Roche PR. Although this transition was one of my biggest concerns, within 48-hours, Roche ‘got it’. Together we endeavour to strike a balance between social Tweets and business Tweets. Roche keeps in touch with our operations managers nationwide and ensuing Tweets vary from ‘who’s going to watch live music at Giraffe, Bath tonight? Music starts at 6:30pm – see you there!’ to ‘Go to Cambridge for our Halloween party.’ We constantly invite feedback and conversation from some 14,600 followers. By contrast, our Facebook presence is managed in-house. But I firmly believe Twitter’s taking over. We also have 250,000 customers signed-up to our website – although again, as with Facebook, that could also pale in Twitter’s shadow…

Where do your bookings originate from?
Our website bookings harness Livebookings’ technology. Customers can reach this through a mobile phone App too, where we gradually receive more and more bookings. We don’t take bookings for brunch at weekends incidentally; we don’t need to – it’s our busiest time.

Can people pay with their phones?
Not yet – and I’d rather not be the guinea pig. Having said that, I recently discussed this with our bank, HSBC. When we take this up will boil down to a complete resolution of my concerns over security primarily, then what costs are incurred. We already see a percentage of transactions taken by credit card companies. While we’re on the subject, we no longer accept cheques.

Do you want an empire of 10,000 restaurants one day?
That’s not our intention! The next major development in our business will be the Giraffe Stop, premiering in the revamped concourse at King’s Cross railway station. It’s going to be predominantly about takeaways. Get noodles and off you go… We’re opening another restaurant in Chelmsford later this month, and hope to open seven or eight venues in 2012. There will be some restaurant casualties as well as good opportunities to pick up a few more. Two years-ago we picked up 13 Tootsies and some Bertorelli.

What’s the secret of your success?
I think Giraffe appeals to almost everyone, which is how we wanted it to appear from the outset. We didn’t specifically set out to be child friendly, but being ‘no smoking’ from day one, with young staff and brightly coloured decor (less so now) meant that image developed in customers’ minds.

Who is your business hero?
I admire New Yorker, Danny Meyer, restaurateur behind Union Square Hospitality Group. I also admire Jamie Oliver who is very clever having taken hospitality to a different level by opening up a whole new parameter of how people cook and eat. Sir Philip Green also comes to mind because a lot of what he says echoes what we say, e.g. ‘there’s no such word as “I can’t” – it’s “I can”’.

From where does your motivation stem?
As I’ve mentioned in articles with The Sunday Times and on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s’ Hour, I think I was born with it. Also, my mum, who was a housewife, said: “don’t ever stay at home and be a doormat”. I’ve always been driven to win, whether it be competing in a running race, or taking the main part in a school play.

Is Giraffe a family business?
To an extent. One of my daughters has always worked for me, although the other escaped to become a beauty therapist! My son, who was our first barista, now owns ‘Monkey Nuts’ in Crouch End and ‘Chez Bob’ in Belsize Park which occupies the same site as my first Flo. My son in law is our operations’ manager.

What inspired the businesses’ name?
It came to my husband as he lay on a beach in Israel. He liked the idea of a graceful but commanding, friendly animal. It’s tall too, with a fresh view of the world. And graphically, you can do a lot with a giraffe!

How do you relax?
By spending time with my three children and six grandchildren. I defy anyone to have a better relationship with their family. It’s not always about the quantity of time spent, but the quality of that time.

Finally, what would you like to say to your customers?
Every January I make sure we e-mail the 250,000 customers on our database for the year that’s gone. It’s vital to thank them for their loyalty.

http://giraffe.net/
http://twitter.com/#!/giraffetweet
http://www.facebook.com/girafferestaurants

There’s no denying that discounting is certainly popular. In our recent Dining Index of 9000 restaurants worldwide, we found that UK restaurants are offering over £135 million every week to recession ravaged customers. And UK restaurants are the most generous inEurope, with an average 50% reduction.

And maybe it’s not such a massive waste of money as many restaurateurs think. Recent research in the US found that discount diners maybe aren’t the fickle floozies we might think. According to a report by Chicago based Technomic:

• Two thirds of discount diners would return to a restaurant where they used a coupon
• 83% would recommend a restaurant where they ate a discounted meal to a friend or family member
• 48% used a coupon at a restaurant they’ve never been before

Based on all these findings, it looks as though discounting is here to stay. So what can you do to turn it from a profit drain to profit generator?

The key is thinking long-term about how you can maintain contact and encourage diners to keep returning:

Get their contact details – In order to keep reeling customers back in for meals, you need to have them hooked on a line (stick with me on this). And the line is simply a means of maintaining contact so you can keep delivering your special offers, recipe ideas, restaurant news and other messages that will encourage them to return. Whether it’s getting them to ‘Like’ you on Facebook, become a follower on Twitter or a reader of your newsletter, you need to establish a line of contact if you’re going to pull them back to book another table.

Offer a ‘bounce back’ deal – To encourage that vital second booking, consider offering a follow up deal for a group booking, such as sixth person eats for free, or a free bottle of wine with their meal. This gives you another opportunity to hook them onto your food and to get their contact details for ongoing restaurant marketing activity.

Run a loyalty scheme – Rather than endless discounting to random people, an in-house loyalty scheme enables you to reward customers over the long-term. We gave some tips on running a loyalty card scheme in this post.

Create exclusive ‘members only’ offers – Offering special meals and running special events for customers in your special ‘diners club’ can be a useful tactic. People like the sense of exclusivity of belonging to a special group, and this can add an extra dimension to your loyalty card scheme.

Deliver a great experience – Sounds obvious, but serving delicious food with an attentive waiting service might be all you need to do to entice people back to book another table and to become a long-term profitable customer.

The Livebookings Dining Index reveals:

• UK diners could save nearly £135 million per week if everyone used dining deals when eating out
• Sweden and the UK offer the biggest discounts, both average a 50% discount
• France is the last bastion of home cooking, where 60% of diners choose French food over foreign food
• Restaurant bookings by mobile are booming, with 44% growth in the first half of 2011
• The most booked celebrity restaurant is Jamie’s Italian, Canary Wharf
• The most booked Michelin Star restaurant is The Fat Duck

2011 has seen a boom in dining deals with British restaurants responding to the economic climate by innovating and creating a market that could save UK consumers £135 million per week. This is the key finding of the latest Livebookings Dining Index. The number of dining deals offered across Europe has increased rapidly this year, with Livebookings, the European leader in real-time reservations and online marketing services for restaurants, seeing nearly 2,000 of its restaurants offering deals on a daily basis.

The Index reveals that consumers have responded to the significant savings on offer by eating out more, with other luxuries such as clothes and accessories taking the hit1. Restaurants are now the affordable luxury after necessities and bills, with going out and dining now consumers’ top spending priorities. 77% of Brits also say they turn to food to cheer themselves up in these times of austerity1.

Europe catches the deals bug
Sweden and the UK lead the way in terms of deal value. Both countries average a 50% difference between the cost of eating out from a full menu, compared to the cost of eating out using a deal. Dining deals are not only prominent in the UK and Sweden – the phenomenon has spread throughout Europe with the relative differences between full menu and deal value markedly different: Click here to view the supporting statistics

Peter Avis, Babylon’s Restaurant Manager at The Roof Gardens said: “The opportunities and options for dining out have increased enormously over the years with individuals dining out more frequently and viewing it as an affordable, highly sociable treat. Restaurants have recognised that in order to attract more customers they need to address the many occasions people choose to dine out and tailor the offers accordingly. Innovative concepts, menus & pricing can all encourage diners to choose different times during the week. Tuesday can be the new Friday given all the mouth watering offers currently available. The key is to ensure you add value for customers, maintain the highest levels of quality and service and recognise and reward repeat custom. Just as important is choosing like minded companies who share similar values to promote all offers.”

Recessionary habits
The deals model was ushered in by the onset of global recession and there have been a number of new dining habits thrown up by times of austerity. London seems to be less affected with two thirds of people eating out weekly, compared to only 37% in the rest of the country2. This is supported by statistics around daily eating out: 17% of Londoners say they eat out daily compared to 4% in the rest of the UK2.

The Livebookings Dining Index also reports that, in the UK, the most popular type of restaurant cuisine when dining out is Italian, with 29% of all online bookings made for Italian restaurants. This was followed by British (24%). Europe has shown less loyalty to local cuisine, with diners in the UK, Spain, Denmark and Germany all preferring other types of cuisine. The French remain most loyal to own cuisine type – 60% of online bookings in this market were made for French restaurants. The only other country in Europe that showed loyalty to home cooking was Sweden, where a third of all bookings are for restaurants serving local cuisine.

Mobile and online bookings
Aside from discount dining, footfall in restaurants is being driven by an increase in online and mobile bookings. The Livebookings Dining Index demonstrates that the UK has seen a 44% growth in mobile bookings in the first half of 2011 compared to the second half of 2010, while one in five online reservations is expected to be made by mobile by 2012. The top five restaurants booked by mobile in the UK are:

1. OXO Tower
2. The Wolseley
3. inamo
4. The Rainforest Café
5. The River Café

In the last six months, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria have boasted the strongest growth in mobile bookings in Europe. In The Netherlands alone, online mobile reservations have increased by 665% since March 2011. Mobile bookings also continue to increase in Germany.

The Dining Index also reveals that there has been a 43% increase in online bookings in the UK in the first half of 2011 compared to the second half of 2010. This surge is echoed across Europe with online reservations increasing by 41%.

The top five restaurants booked online in the UK are:
1. Tea at The Ritz
2. OXO Tower
3. The Fat Duck
4. Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s
5. Covent Garden Fire and Stone

Colin Tenwick, CEO of Livebookings said: “The economic climate has seen huge innovations in the restaurant industry. By creating a deals market and through embracing technology, restaurants have shown a robustness at a time when many other businesses are starting to feel nervous. The deals market is vast, encompassing all types of restaurants, and consumers are tapping into it every day, but our message is that consumers don’t quite realise the extent of offers available and are actually well-placed to make even more savings when eating out.”

Recession proof restaurants
With restaurants boasting high level of diners despite the economic downturn, celebrity and Michelin Star restaurants also continue to receive heavy footfall. The top five most booked Michelin Star and Celebrity restaurants are:

Celebrity Restaurants 
1. Jamie’s Italian – Canary Wharf 
2. The Gilbert Scott 
3. Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s 
4. Pollen Street Social 
5. Gordon Ramsay’s Maze Grill 

Michelin Star Restaurants
1. The Fat Duck 
2. The River Café
3. Gordon Ramsay’s Maze
4. Gordon Ramsay’s Petrus 
5. Arbutus 

Peter Martin, founder of the Peach Factory consultancy, said: “People are not giving up on eating-out and, although our own research shows that food quality remains the top driver of choice, value is becoming increasingly important – and they are also willing to look around for a better experience. Interestingly, although offers and vouchers can get customers through the door, it is no guarantee they will come back. Restaurants and pubs still have to deliver a great experience – in fact in these tight times the onus is on offering an even better time for consumers.

“However, perhaps the most significant development is the growing sophistication of marketing, and offers in particular, coming from the sector – and especially the growing use of mobile phone technology. The smart phone is fast becoming the restaurant world’s most potent marketing tool.”

Footnotes:
1. Mintel Lifestyles report, September 2011
2. Peach BrandTrack report, 2011

Statistics
Unless otherwise stated, statistics used within this press release come from the Livebookings Dining Index. The Index is based on Livebookings and Bookatable online and mobile bookings data, which is provided by 9,000 restaurants from 23 countries.

The headline statistic has been calculated using the total UK population figure (source: ONS Population Change), the percentage of which eat out (source: the Peach BrandTrack report 2011), and the saving made by a discount deal (source: Livebookings Dining Index).

A recent YouGov survey (in wake of the phone hacking scandal) found that people’s trust levels vary considerably depending on the media type:

• radio – 52% think it’s very or fairly trustworthy
• TV – 47%
• newspapers – 28%
• websites – 21%
• email – 11%
• direct marketing – 8%
• YouTube and website videos – less than 1%
• 31% trust the comments/reviews of other users
• 31% trust the editorial written by professional journalists

As these figures show, customers are a cynical bunch. So you need to consider how you can build trust in your restaurant’s marketing. Here are a few tips:

Only 11% trust email messages

With so much spam clogging up inboxes, you only have seconds before recipients hit the delete key. So your subject line needs to offer an enticing benefit and your messages need to be short and snappy. 100 words is a good length.

People trust other customers as much as professional reviewers

Hunting for reviews is now a common step before booking a table. So it’s a good idea to keep an eye on review sites, like TripAdvisor and Yelp, so you can protect your reputation against unfair attacks. It’s also wise to subtly suggest (e.g. with a poster or a card with the receipt) to customers to write a quick review if they’ve had an enjoyable dinner.

If your diner was booked through Bookatable.com they will automatically be sent an email asking for their feedback the day after their meal. If they leave a positive review, it’s good manners to thank them and because it can turn them into a loyal customer.

Boost trust levels by incorporating customer feedback

As the survey shows, people have low levels of trust in emails and websites. But you can give your online restaurant marketing a boost by including customer feedback to boost its trust factor. Adding testimonials from your guestbook is one solution. You can also try asking customers questions in social media to encourage their involvement in your campaigns, such as running competitions or feedback on photos of your most popular dishes.

If the booking is made directly through your website using Livebookings, they will automatically be sent an email the day after dining to get their feedback. This feedback is for your eyes only, so make sure you respond to any positive or negative comments you receive. Criticism helps you identify where you need to improve, and thanking them goes down well with diners.

Don’t treat customers like idiots

Customers are already deeply cynical of claims made in your marketing. So you should try to be honest, ethical and straightforward in how you communicate. Don’t try to fool them with false claims about awards you’ve won or your chef’s Michelin starred background. A public backlash is only a Tweet away.

In the restaurant industry, we’re in the people business. We enjoy dealing with customers face to face. But in the online world, where you don’t have that luxury, you need to focus on building trust through every channel.

Last Christmas was a tough time for many restaurants. So this year it’s important to use all the tools at your disposal to entice people out of their homes and to get into a celebratory mood.

Here are a few tactics you can use to improve your chances of a profitable festive season:

- Put together a set menu for a special price (rather than simply discounting) and promote it through online partners, like Bookatable.com (who have launched a dedicated page) and lastminute.com.

- Send Christmas cards to local businesses with a little reminder that your restaurant is the perfect venue for their Christmas dinner party.

- Start sending emails and posting intriguing and enticing updates on Facebook and Twitter on what you have planned for the Christmas period. Just remember not to ‘spam’ customers with too many self promoting messages. As always, mix up messages about yourself with recipe ideas, food facts and other titbits of useful information.

- The last thing you need is to be turning away diners because you’re short staffed. So make sure you’ve worked out a staff rota for the busiest time of the year well in advance.

- Wholesalers and distributors often offer price savings at this time, so consider stocking up early and putting the cash savings towards your staff Christmas party.

- Many people will be fed up with turkey and brussels sprouts. So why not offer an alternative Christmas menu, such as pheasant breast with cranberry sauce.

- Offer incentives for booking early e.g. the 10^th person eats for free or a glass of wine upon arrival.

- If you’re located close to shops, position a blackboard outside to advertise hot coffee and warm soup to cold, weary shoppers.

- Consider running a bounce back campaign. For those customers that dine in December, give them a card to a hidden page on your website where they can book a special offer for January. Speak to Livebookings on how to do this.

If you haven’t attended one before, murder mystery dinners generally follow this pattern:

• Guests arrive for a pre-dinner cocktail and to meet the actors (in character, of course)
• They then sit down for dinner with a scene played out between each course
• A murder will occur (the clue is in the title)
• The surviving actors will then go to each table in turn for guests to probe them for answers to try and solve the crime. Innocent characters cannot lie, whilst the murderer can lie or tell the truth in an attempt to flummox the investigation
• Each table then fills in an answer form stating who they think committed the murder, how they did it and why
• The murder mystery dinner then concludes over coffee with answers checked before the murderer is revealed

Murder Mystery dinners can be a great restaurant marketing opportunity and a way of attracting large group bookings. To ensure your event runs smoothly (and you don’t lose more than one attendee over the course of the evening), here are a few tips:

1. ‘What did he say?’ – Guests won’t have much success solving the crime if they can’t hear what the actors are saying against the backdrop of clanging plates. So if you’re holding your event in a large room, consider miking up the actors
2. Allow guest to join in or just watch – Guests should be allowed to get involved as much or as little as they like. Some may want to dress up and probe the actors at every opportunity, whilst others will be happy to sit back and allow the mystery to unfold.
3. Investigation notes – Provide fact sheets for each table with reminders on the characters and a few clues
4. More heads… – Each table should act as a team to solve the murder. Offer a prize for the best ‘super sleuths’ and a booby prize for the most ‘inept investigators’
5. Atmospheric décor – Consider decorating your restaurant and customising the menu design to suit the theme or time period of your murder mystery
6. Finding thespians – You’ll need actors, so consider approaching the local theatre group or amateur dramatics society for willing thespians
7. Murder can be a messy business - Rather than risk drenching unfortunate bystanders in fake blood, consider poisoning for a nice, clean death
8. Multiple stories – To give guests a reason to return (and to avoid them spoiling the fun for other guests), run a mixture of stories and plot twists on different weeks

From the cocktail reception to the big reveal at the end, Murder Mystery’s can take up to three hours to complete. So you’ll need to plan your dinner’s courses around the number of scenes and it’s a good idea to make sure there are enough staff to keep the drinks flowing.

As well as Christmas parties, murder mystery dinners can be great for corporate events, hen parties and birthdays. So it’s a valuable restaurant marketing tactic you can use all year round.

In the restaurant industry, we’re a passionate bunch. So whenever our culinary skills are questioned, it’s spatulas at the ready and off we’ll march to take on all challengers.

Recently The Ship in Wandsworth decided to hold a Scotch Egg Challenge to decide which pub/restaurant cooked the tastiest egg filled bar snack. The challenge arose spontaneously following banter on Twitter between The Ship’s Emma Dickinson (@ShipWandsworth) and the Head Chef at The Alexandra (@CorkGourmetGuy) over who cooked the best meat encased egg.

As the debate raged, other scotch egg lovers scrambled (sorry!) to join the fray. Before they knew it, the gauntlet had been thrown down and The Ship chosen as the battleground for a scotch egg cook off.

Twitter at the core of the event’s promotion

Rather than spend time and money on printing posters, sending invites or hoping awareness would spread through verbal word of mouth alone, apart from a blog post formalising the event and to lay down some ground rules, all of the promotion took place on Twitter (#ScotchEggChallenge). As Emma explains:

Once key people in the industry were onboard, the Scotch Egg Challenge was set in stone, with the rest of the tweets and hype built up through the main players’ supporters. Followers of popular foodies like @ChrisPople, @Meemalee, @DavidJConstable, @DouglasBlyde and @MatKiwi (who like @ShipWandsworth have thousands of followers) helped awareness of the event to spiral as they trust their judgement and wanted to get onboard and be a part of the event.

Another factor in the event’s success is that online debate over who cooks the best bar snacks has been a hot topic this year. Previously the debate focused on the ‘best burger’, and so the humble scotch egg was a natural candidate to follow suit, with pubs and restaurants eager to get theirs on the map.

A campaign that reached 300,793 people

You can read more about the event itself on The Ship’s blog. But in terms of its restaurant marketing success on Twitter, thanks to 1113 Tweets (542 regular Tweets, 251 replies and 320 reTweets) awareness of the Scotch Egg Challenge reached a stonking 300,793 people! Here’s an online report of the results.

The event even made it into the pages of The Evening Standard and The Guardian. Not too shabby for a marketing campaign costing almost zilch.

Interest in the already popular The Ship is now at an all time high, and it’s all thanks to spontaneous event planning and its promotion on Twitter.

Emma’s Twitter tips

• Engage with likeminded people
• Talk to followers and users, don’t spam them self promoting messages all the time
• Initiate conversations others will want to join in

In our fast paced industry, there are often times you have a brainwave for a special event, but you think there isn’t enough time to promote it. But as The Scotch Egg Challenge shows, social media gives you the tools to build exposure fast if you can get passionate customers on board and engaged.

The success of their Velantimes Day video demonstrates how powerful videos can be in generating traffic to your website and attracting more diners through your door.

So we thought we’d expand on the subject, with a few tips on how you can use video in your restaurant marketing strategy:

1) It doesn’t need to be expensive – Shamil spent about £50 on props for their video, and there’s no reason why you should need to spend much either. People won’t be expecting a Hollywood production; a handheld camera will be perfectly adequate, and the lower production values add to the authenticity.

2) Keep it short and sweet – Videos need only be a couple of minutes long and you should focus on one topic per video. It’s a good idea to include your web address and contact details at the end of each video, in case they view it somewhere other than your website i.e. YouTube. You can buy video editing software for £50-£100 which will do the job.

3) Express yourself – Restaurants are places where people go to laugh, have fun and enjoy the simple pleasure of human conversation. Try to reflect this in your video by keeping things light and friendly. Try to avoid reading off scripts and consider including some interaction between the person being filmed and the cameraman or an  interviewer/presenter.

4) There’s more to video than simply recipe ideas – Instructional videos on how to cook special dishes are a great advert for your restaurant. Customers wont appreciate having a camera shoved in their face during dinner, but there are many other types of videos you can create, such as off the cuff interviews with regulars, videos of special events, interviews with kitchen staff and videos of cookery classes in action. You could even try something subversive, like a unique take on aspects of the restaurant industry or, if you’re feeling ambitious/brave, a mockumentary style video.

5) Sound and lighting – It’s a good idea to invest in a handheld microphone so people’s voices don’t have to compete with background noise. And whilst your camera’s light should be adequate, it helps to have people standing with light sources (like windows) behind them so you don’t get the silhouette effect around their faces.

6) Promote it – Along with your own website, uploading videos to YouTube is a no brainer, and TripAdvisor also enables you to add videos to your listing. You should then use your restaurant marketing machine to start promoting the video on Facebook and Twitter. Asking your followers and fans for comments and ratings, and with a bit of luck your videos could earn you those five minutes of internet fame that can help send more diners through your door.

You can also find more ideas on using YouTube in your restaurant marketing strategy in this post.

One initiative to fight our nations rapidly expanding waistlines is the introduction of calorie information on restaurants menus. Compulsory for restaurants in the USA since 2008, the UK’s voluntary scheme launched this month.

So should UK restaurants go to the expense of adding calorie information to their menus? Does this information really influence consumers menu choices when eating out, ditching the high calorie foods in preference for the healthier options?

Liz Williams, Managing Director of The Real Greek, certainly thinks so. The restaurant chain was the first UK restaurant group to introduce a calorie count on all menu items this summer. Ms Williams comments:

“People want the choice these days – if you want to take a more balanced approach when you eat out, your choice is going to be better informed when the calories are clearly listed.”

She also states that it is evident that adding the calorie information does impact consumer’s choices and say’s that the feedback she receives actually helps in shaping what dishes are added to their menus:

“Where dishes were on the high fat side, for example deep fried whitebait, these have been replaced with healthy menu additions such as grilled asparagus at 140 calories a portion.”

There is also evidence from the states that supports Ms Williams findings. One study showed that consumers that use the calorie information to influence their eating choice, intake on average 106 fewer calories compared to those that don’t. However not all the research into the effectiveness of adding calorie count information is positive. As a study conducted in 2009 by NYU found. Their research showed that customers actually ordered slightly more calories than they had typically before the calorie count law was implemented.

Two years later in 2011, an NYU School of Medicine study demonstrated that calorie labelling did not change the number of calories teenagers and parents purchased at fast food chains in the city, with teenagers buying a whopping 725 calories on average, even after the new labelling was introduced.

I can’t help but wonder if the conflicting information on the effectiveness of this initiative isn’t the reason that it is only a voluntary scheme in the UK. I can understand the uncertainty that many restaurateurs feel in taking the decision to introduce calorie information to their menus. So, I have a suggestion… With Christmas nearly upon us (the season of socially acceptable excess), January is only just around the corner and in contrast is the month of diets and New Year’s resolutions. In my mind this represents a perfect opportunity for restaurants to trial the addition of calorie count information.

It doesn’t have to be costly or operationally inconvenient, all that’s needed is a meeting with the head chef to discuss which of the dishes from the standard A La Carte menu could be amended with little inconvenience. Serving steak with new potatoes as opposed to chips, soup without the bread portion and swapping potatoes for other (unbuttered) vegetables are just a couple of easy to implement suggestions.

Use these dish adaptations and any specially created low fat specials to create a small separate menu, ideally offering a minimum choice of 3 starters, mains and desserts.

In creating this menu restaurants will have the opportunity to witness first-hand how their customers respond to the addition of the calorie information and whether it does have any significant impact on their sales mix.

John Sullivan is IT Director for the Gondola group which serves 40 million meals a year via restaurants, Pizza Express, Zizzi, Ask, Byron and Kettner’s. He says it’s a fantastic time to work in information technology.

“When I started with Pizza Express five years-ago I was conscious of the brand’s three strengths: service, food and ambience. But now I’ve discovered a fourth: our use of technology.”

Sullivan came to the role through an unadulterated route, studying Computer Sciences at Watford Polytechnic before cutting his teeth as a computer operator working with “main frames” and “back-up tapes.” He also worked as Software Programmer, dealing in “old-fashioned languages like Cobol”. He explains: “computers were low level requiring lots of instructions – now it’s so much easier; tasks which took 10-days take two today.” He subsequently became a business analyst then IT manager, ultimately joining Gondola Group on account of their “high quality pizzas.”

Sullivan’s proudest achievement is Pizza Express’s iPhone App. He explains: “The marketing team and I met Apple who said the majority of Apps are ‘greet and delete’, ie. gone in 30 days. So we needed something distinctive and creatively rich. The result is a Carousel system offering comprehensive menu information, individual restaurant details including a picture, the ability to book, and even an easy way to pay the bill.”

Sullivan claims the latter effectively makes Pizza Express globally unique. “There’s a 12 digit code on receipts which customers key into their iPhone then checkout via PayPal.” This maybe replaced by a coded image which may be scanned. “Providing the transaction is successful a green light shines on the till just two seconds afterwards. This way customers don’t have to worry about waiting for a PDQ machine or exchanging cash. It’s all about ensuring ease of use.”

Sullivan created the system in response to the impatience of his young family. “I’ve three daughters aged three, five and eight. The reality is they get frustrated when we’re waiting to pay the bill in a restaurant which can take up a few minutes, especially when paying by card.”

Do waiting staff see fewer gratuities under the new method of payment? “Although we developed it for customers, the staff love it too” says Sullivan. “Not only is their time freed-up but the gratuities seem to be the same as on credit card payments.”

So what data does Pizza Express retain? “We keep a customer’s e-mail address in our multi-million entry strong database for vouchering. Although we’re good at vouchering, we’re really trying to work out how customers can become even more loyal advocates of Pizza Express.”

As well as the iPhone App, Pizza Express’s website harnesses Livebookings API. “Originally each restaurant used a ledger in their own way. But now with the support of Livebookings, customers can book electronically or by phoning the branch. Regarding the latter, staff simply key the booking straight in. They can also book through all mobile phones through our website and on the app.

Sullivan realises the reach of mobile technology and plans to launch applications for Android phones early December followed by a marketing drive. And, in time he plans to make it possible for customers to “click and collect” takeaways via mobile devices and the web. “Our customers are using digital channels more and more” says Sullivan. “In a few months a third of our hits will be mobile.”

Musing on the technology age we inhabit, Sullivan recalls the once quaint image of IT with a grin. “It used to be a department which no one really knew about. But there’s been a revolution. At my school we had a couple of ZX80s. Compare that to my daughter who’s fascinated by eBay and follows loads of items, always looking round house for things to sell through her mum’s account. She’s effectively in business aged eight. It’s a reflection on our technology age…”

Twitter: @pizzaexpress
Web: www.pizzaexpress.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pizzaexpress
iPhone App: www.pizzaexpress.com/app