6 reason why you should build a community around your restaurant

One of the most common question that I hear is ” How do I increase more revenue from my restaurant?”

Of course there are plenty of answers to this question. However I wanted to talk about the resources you have in your hands : Your repeat guest

Repeat guest brings lots of value to your business and can be the life blood of the business. However to get repeat business, you need to have a database and you should build a community around your restaurant.

In this blog I would like to tell you the reason why you should build a community around your restaurant.

It increases your visibility:

As more people engage with you and like what you are doing, they will talk to their friends and bring them over with them. Then those people will further get a few more people. A community is like a bring a friend scheme and will help you with your restaurant visibility and improve your marketing

Helps fill up your low period:

If you have an engaged community, you can very easily send them a text with specials every time you wish to improve your business or fill out a low period. Having special like early bird, happy hour etc will create an subsection out of the existing guest that can be extremely profitable for your business.

Makes it attractive for sponsors:

If your restaurant has an active community, then it becomes an extremely valuable commodity to advertisers and sponsors. So every time you put up an event, you can cover some additional cost from the sponsorship. Or you can run giveaways or contest in partnership with the sponsors. As you have a community, your advertisers will also be happy to work with you.

Can help with User Generated Content for your social media:

Every time your loyal fans talk about your restaurant in the social media, it creates a buzz. User generated content is the corner stone of social media strategy for your restaurant and you must actively promote your guest to tag and mention your restaurant. This will in turn help other potential guest discover your restaurant.

You will get more satisfaction:

Believe it or not, you got into the business because you were passionate about food. It is not a glamorous industry and the long nights will keep you awake. You got into the business because you love the though of making people happy. As you build a community around your restaurant and they start to talk about the restaurant, you will get immense satisfaction in seeing your fruits of labour become popular

You will be able to sell it for a better price:

Finally if you ever consider selling it off, after providing years of service, your loyal community can provide you with a great premium for your sale. While business are sold based on the turnover, a great community will also provide you with the goodwill to demand a higher premium price while selling.