This post is for people who own or manage restaurants. What I’m about to say applies whether you have a five-star fine-dining restaurant, or a burger stand.
1) If you have daily specials, and you are not posting them to Facebook and/or Twitter, you are losing customers. What made me think to type this rant is that I just checked Facebook. I’m hungry and was trying to decide whether to eat at the Brass Door or Thai Bistro. Brass Door posted their Slider of the Day, a chorizo slider with spicy cucumber pickle and roasted red pepper mayo. That sounds yummy, so I’m off to the Brass Door as soon as I hit Publish.
One more thing: Google+ does not have business pages, but as soon as they become available, you should sign up for one and post your specials there too.
2) If you do not have your menu posted somewhere online, you are losing customers. I like to look at menus and think about what I want before I go to a restaurant. If I can’t see your menu, I’m denied the opportunity to get excited about your food and make the decision to come in. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Honestly, I don’t care if it’s a plain text file; I just want to know what you have to eat. (Posting the hours you’re open would probably be good too.) You can find a place that offers free hosting if you don’t want to pay for a website. Or, you can use a service like Mark’s Menus that lets you upload your menu for free.
There’s no reason to pass up these free/cheap ways to connect with your customers. It amazes me how many restaurants don’t take advantage of the web and social media, when doing so is so easy.
One last reload of Facebook before I go out… one of my Facebook friends just posted, “Can’t wait to hear some karaoke tonight!” I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. Plans for tonight are TBD, but it definitely won’t be karaoke, this Saturday or any Saturday.
Okay, I’ll budge a little… if Memphis receives at least 2″ of snowfall by 10 PM tonight, I’ll go to karaoke.
Off to eat lunch. My mouth is watering at the thought of those chorizo burger sliders.