• My Admin
• 1 days ago

Missing the crowd at your restaurant? We do understand the pain!

Gone are the days when customers hustled and grabbed the best seats, ordering hefty meals while chatting the evening away.

COVID-19 forced several restaurants to shut down while others are striving to sustain themselves. With restaurants reopening gradually to welcome customers, some changes need to be instilled.

Since giving up is not the solution, what you can do is level up your coping mechanisms. You can no longer rely on conventional marketing methods nor can you track customer footfalls to keep up with the sales.

So, take time to reflect on what you can do within your budget that will be perfect for gaining back your customer confidence in the post-pandemic phase. While you're the best judge of your position, what we can do is help you out with a few tips for restaurant marketing in the post-pandemic world.

In this post, you'll find 7 ways of restaurant marketing tips for the post pandemic period. Implement these actionable insights and get ready to win customers back!

7 Effective Post-Pandemic Marketing Tips for Restaurants

1. Offer Packaged Meals & Cocktail Kits in Your Menu

Though customers won't be able to sit at your restaurant they can still enjoy your meals & beverages with their loved ones at home, right? While people are missing the dining-in experience at restaurants, you can still try to make your customers feel better by offering them meals and cocktail kits.

Take, for example, Kolkata's Sienna Café located around the old corners of Park Street. This café is offering DIY kits to satiate your cravings for some Italian food. The café offers pasta DIY kits, burger DIY kits that contain all ingredients and instructions so that you can make yummy burgers at home. Cool, no?

Talking about cocktails, restaurants are also trying to deliver them to customers so that customers do not miss out on the delightful beverages.

The Daily Café located around the holy streets of Kalighat in Kolkata has come up with the idea of selling cocktail mixes. You can dig into their colourful mixes of Raspberry & Basil cocktail, or Elderflower Bubbly and the Pineapple, and even the Basil and Chia mixers.

So, get into offering your DIY meal kits and cocktail mixes jars to let people enjoy what they love in the comforts of your home. To make it a little unique you can also offer wine or beer bottles!

2. How About Some Online Cooking Episodes?!

Marketing is creativity. How you want to market your restaurant can be your unique idea.

If you scroll through social media these days, you'll see how popular quick, short videos and reels are. They get continuous hits and are all over Instagram and Facebook.

You can use the same strategy for your restaurant marketing in the post-pandemic phase. Cook up some recipes and share short and easy reels that customers can watch without spending long hours.

You can also let your chefs come live on social media platforms or upload videos on YouTube to spread some culinary knowledge amongst the crowd.

What are your popular dishes? Is it the Fresh Fruit Nutella Waffle or that Cheesy Hot Dog? Whatever it may be, don't back down on sharing these secret recipes with your customers. Since the pandemic couldn't stop food cravings, let your customers enjoy learning & making these delicious items.

3. Jump into the Social Media Marketing Bandwagon

The post-pandemic world has got social media to explode. Scroll through and you'll find sellers across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube who are busy promoting their products.

According to a study, 64% of consumers purchase after watching the marketing videos on Facebook. So, why not step up and surf along the social media waves?!

Initially, your shares may not get the expected hits. But consistency is the key here. Start spending time on social media and share engaging content.

Post mouthwatering pictures of your delicacies, share quick & easy recipes, share one secret ingredient for a dish per week, post behind-the-scenes videos, reels or boomerangs. Have fun with posts, experiment to see what type of posts are getting the highest views and keeping making improvements.

Instagram is one amazing platform for sharing your 'foodgasmic' photographs. So, capture some amazing dishes and let them collect as many hearts as possible!

You can also post short ads on your Facebook page, website or even third-party sites like UberEats or FOSA.

4. Show Some Love by Adding Donated Meals to your Menu

Believe in 'you get what you give' and choose to support a few sections of people who have been working tirelessly. This is not just a marketing strategy but an intention to lend a helping hand towards getting through this crisis.

Although several restaurants have suffered huge hits in their revenue due to the pandemic, the industry has chosen to stand by people in these difficult times. As health workers and essential service professionals are working in high-risk zones, restaurants are offering them free meals as a token of gratitude.

Take, for example, the World Central Kitchen. Masterchef Sanjeev Kapoor in collaboration with the brand dished out 10000 meals for frontline health workers across different cities in India. Similarly, there are several home chefs & small restaurants that have taken the initiative to serve meals at minimum costs to COVID-19 patients.

You can also contribute towards improving these tough times. Try adding meals or combos free of charge and promote through social media platforms and third-party sites like FOSA.

5. Turn to Live Streaming Kitchens

A fool-proof way to gain back your customer confidence.

While promotion on social media, offering packed meals are all very critical to restaurant marketing in the post-pandemic phase, reassuring customers about hygiene standards is also important.

The need of the hour is safety and hygiene. So, once you're able to reassure customers about your compliance with food safety and hygiene norms, you can get back your customers' trust.

What can be more wonderful than live streaming your kitchens?! Let your customers see your hygiene practices by themselves. This will help you generate confidence among the customers.

Live streaming will show the customers the food preparation process in real-time. Hence, your customers will be able to rely more on you.

6. Start Online Ordering Right Away!

Did you know that the online food delivery industry experienced a 30% surge in revenue amid the COVID-19 outbreak?

While online ordering rose to popularity in the past few years, the pandemic brought it to the limelight. Now, people spend more time scrolling through the menus on online food ordering sites than doing laundry.

Online ordering is quite an efficient way to drive sales and reach out to customers. Through these platforms;

• your restaurant will be available to a larger audience;
• you'll get access to customer data; and
• there will lesser chances of delivering a wrong order

Plus, there will be minimum interactions which is a welcome gesture in the post-pandemic world. Through online food delivery, you'll also be able to take customer feedback, understand their behaviour and serve them better. You can also experiment more to see which combinations are going off the shelf faster!

So, if you're yet to be listed on any online food ordering platform, we suggest you check out FOSA which is an omnichannel online food ordering platform. With FOSA, customers can order food hassle-free from your restaurant across different channels like website, mobile app, WhatsApp chatbot and Messenger chatbot.

So, if you are a restaurant in Kolkata or Delhi, then get listed with FOSA and start your online takeaway services right now!

7. Get back to Good-Old Emails

Email marketing is quite a common marketing strategy. But it is effective to keep in touch with your customers. Since most restaurants are using email marketing, to succeed, you must make most of it.

Use catchy subject lines, offer discounts and special coupons through emails, personalize and write short & sweet content.

You can also use emails to notify customers about your newly launched dishes or your new entry on social media.

Wrapping Up

Restaurant marketing in the post-pandemic world is all about making customers trust you again. It's about recovering from the previous mode of operation to cope up with the new tech mechanisms.

So, get going and try to adopt all of these marketing tips. For online food ordering, visit FOSA and register as soon as possible!

Keep your spirits high and win back your customers!