How Restaurants can Rule the Web
Its interesting to see how some sectors of business fully take in the potential of the web and focus their effort and money at providing a decent online service. How many potential customers / contacts have you made in the last month because you got yourself out there? Many? None? I’m interested to hear.
One industry that sucks pitifully at getting the potential of the web, around these parts anyway, are the hospitality industries. Particularly restaurants. And I’ve never really understood why a service industry would fail to see the marketing potential of developing a high quality web presence. I’m not saying you have to be a major casino and throw a full time in-house web team at this - you just need an honest go and the right attitude. That attitude comes down to wanting to build relationships with your customers and supply-chain partners.
In these parts nearly every restaurant, for example, is represented on the web by a budget company that I won’t name. In my professional opinion they produce crap for very cheap prices and operate on an aggressive volume approach. They supply the lists that appear on the Department of Economic Development website which tell the tourists what’s available. They don’t let outsiders onto the list, and the government representatives don’t care enough to police the lists for fairness.
Restaurants need to stop seeing their business as providing a meal for cash. Its bigger than that. Their customers are paying for an experience.
If I were a restaurant I’d consider engaging customers and building relationships. The web is an ideal area for this strategy. My first step would be to develop a high quality website that provides high quality dynamic content - I’d blog. And I’d blog about everything from gourmet food to recipes to wine and coffee. Each of these topical areas have large interest groups that I’d do my utmost to foster, and each person in those groups needs to be given the opportunity to network with other like-minded individuals. Create a coffee club, a gourmet cheese service or simply have your website take user generated content like opinion pieces, reviews and family secret recipes. Most of all let them talk and meet up. Meanwhile I’d position myself as the authority in that sector. Yes I know this all takes time and money - I didn’t say it would be free. Just that it would pay off for you.
A restaurant doesn’t do very well from a one-off sale, in many cases they make their money on the wine and just slip by with a cost-price meal. But restaurants thrive from repeat business. Restaurants should be out there proactively using their web presence to build relationships and value add.
Oddly, when I did some work for a restaurant a few years ago they insisted they couldn’t work with that strategy. They were just too busy. Even today that business still, 18 months later, has only got a holding page with their menus as inaccessible PDF downloads. How is that going to work? I really don’t see the point.
The biggest thing the service industries here could take on board about the web is that its more than a static empty shop front. Think of it as the relationship hub, take the opportunity to deal with feedback (good and bad), and make yourself the expert authority about food, wine and good living. It just takes a bit of investment in money and time and some kind of web strategy that you’re determined to implement. Consider outside-the-box ideas like making your site accessible to mobile devices, taking bookings online (even better from mobiles), cell broadcasting (a one way opt in service where you can send special people special offers - we’re on the harbour with visiting cruise ships), or look at investing even a little more towards podcasting, doing interviews and providing user generated content. The world really is your oyster if you aren’t too cheap to exploit it.
Unfortunately, the current state of restaurant websites here is absolutely pitiful. And, as I already mentioned, one budget company serves them all quite well with equally horrific mediocrity. That’s a damn shame. Its a damn shame because one of them could come forward and clean the floor by taking it all back to providing service. By rethinking the value contact opportunity provided by the web and a growing broadband and mobile audience.
To be fair some of the larger wineries / entertainment venues have invested heavily at this. But I’m not talking about multimillion dollar industries. Just restaurants and ordinary small business.
