Social Media

By: Andrew Coppolino

Don't restaurateurs have enough on their plates?

From faltering economies to fickle diners seeking new food trends and tastes, restaurant owners and operators have enough to juggle without adding something called social media to the list.

But hold on: it might be "because of social media" rather than "despite social media" that restaurateurs could see improvements to their bottom line. Given the right set of circumstances and proper applications, social networking phenomena like Twitter, Facebook, and FOHBOH could have an increasingly important role in the way restaurants do business.

First, though, some definitions.

Microblogging is a multimedia tool used to deliver textual, photographic, or audio information to a specific audience via computer. As the name implies, microblogging is defined by its brevity compared to traditionally longer web logs (blogs). Whereas blogs might go on ad nauseum (and often do), microblogging can be limited to 140 characters (as it is with the increasingly popular "Twitter") making it a mere amuse bouche of information.

With roughly 25,000,000 users, Twitter (twitter.com) is a popular social networking and microblogging service. Using it and its "tweets," for instance, you could follow microgreens producer Fresh Origins and its microblogs.

Older by a few years, Facebook, another broad-ranging social networking service (SNS) that has built a huge online community, claims to have 250,000,000 users. It defines itself as a "social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them."

There are many other "niche" SNS sites such as MySpace, Flixster, and LinkedIn catering to everything from knitting fanatics (Ravelry) to friends of all things Norwegian (Nettby).

There are also SNS sites dedicated to food. BiteClub.com is not for vampire aficionados but is rather, it claims, "the world's first social networking site designed for, and created by, members of the food and bar industry."

It is intent on providing inter-communication within the industry and a venue on which to post jobs, publicize events, and promote restaurant and bar products and unite America's more than 12 million restaurant workers in one online community.

Launched in 2008, FOHBOH is a large restaurant industry network for food and beverage folks wanting to communicate peer-to-peer and business-to-business information online. It reputedly has about 10,000 users.

So why should a restaurant get involved in such social media? Gerry Rego, Flanagan Foodservice territory manager and a food-industry veteran for 13 years, says there are several good reasons aside from the fact that an SNS like Facebook is free and instant.

Rego's customers have tapped into an important youth demographic - a mobile, text message-reliant and SNS-saavy niche. "The majority of my customers are using Facebook," said Rego. "Their target market is teenagers and young adults aged 14 to 30. At schools, kids visit Facebook and will say, "Hey, did you see what so-and-so restaurant is having for a special this week?"

Smart restaurateurs approach the phenomenon in an active and engaged way, promoting daily specials and other services they offer, and then wait for the "viral" effect to take over. "One restaurant started this several years ago and once a few kids got in there they started feeding off of each other and it grew," added Rego.

A medium like Facebook doesn't mean targeting only teens with a few bucks and hunting for a quick bite to eat. Another particularly effective strategy is identifying older clientele and "piggy-backing" on other websites.

A bar and grill, for instance, might present live music regularly and feature bands that have their own websites: the restaurant owner can link to the band's Facebook page, or "tweet" that the band is setting up for a weekend gig and in doing so increase awareness of and traffic to the restaurant. The same thing can happen with restaurants that do catering - they can link into the many aspects of the wedding industry virtually, Rego points out.

Aside from the fact that instant updates prevent any information posted from getting old, one of the biggest attractions to something like Twitter and Facebook - especially when the economy struggles - is the cost: these social media, and the key marketing and promotion they represent, are free.

And as for updating the sites and doing the tweeting - often restaurateurs will have a young family member or employee to keep things rolling along, says Rego. The sites themselves have basic platforms and frameworks that are easy to use.

Are microblogs, tweets, and Facebook friends for all restaurants? Rego doesn't see why not. "First of all, it's free. And second, the best form of advertising is word-of-mouth. If you encourage people to talk about your business, you are getting your name out there."

When it comes right down to it, that pretty much encapsulates an SNS site such as Twitter: the name itself represents what's going on. It's the buzz and talk about your business.