Gastronomic marketing guide: how to reinvent yourself after the pandemic – Marketing 4 Ecommerce – Your online marketing magazine for e-commerce

Talk about gastronomic marketing It’s not going into swampy territory, it’s happily getting into a jungle full of quicksand, poisonous spiders and all kinds of wild animals ready to tear you apart without mercy.

Too tempting for a puddle breaker like the one who writes these lines.

Why do I say this? Because if there is a sector where anyone can be stripped of their skin and then make a coat with their skin and a necklace with their bones, it is in the gastronomy sector in general. Not even the chefs who are in the Olympus of Michelin stars are exempt from being thrown off a donkey. Yours truly has read scathing reviews in his life, but some food reviews could take pride of place in the Museum of Evil.

And why is this happening? Because in gastronomic marketing we talk about food and there are as many tastes as there are people, but we all believe that our taste is the best and that others are wrong. Therefore, we will pay attention to the messages that reinforce our beliefs and we will ignore or refute the contrary ones. That has a scientific name. It is called and it is an old classic of psychology. And while we’re on the subject, I swear I’ll hang from the mainmast by the thumbs whoever dares to say “ah, that’s it.” Well no, psychology and marketing have been working together for many years. Neuromarketing is something else, which is still in its infancy and one day I will explain it to you. I’ll just say that the vast majority of what is sold as neuromarketing is pure psychology.

As if this were not enough, the The pandemic came to turn the screw on the hospitality sector, which had to undertake an accelerated digital reconversion. Overnight restaurants had to adapt to home delivery and takeout if they wanted to survive open, forcing them to resort to apps and set up tweezed websites to get out of trouble. Even so, many lowered the blind to never raise it again.

And now that 2022 promised us all happiness, inflation skyrockets and war in Ukraine plunges us back into uncertainty. But it is that, to make matters worse, the hotel industry is in the eye of the hurricane of controversy (and its consequent hyperbolic translation to the ) due to the shortage of personnel, which some blame on working conditions and others on the lack of training and motivation .

However, we are not going to get carried away by discouragement. On the contrary: a good gastronomic marketing strategy can be the key for a hotel business to rise like foam.

Basic keys of gastronomic marketing

Although we will focus on digital gastronomic marketing, many of these premises are also valid for offline marketing. They are not all that are nor probably are all that are, I am not so pretentious as to pretend to give you an infallible guide to success. But I think that some things can be very useful if you have a business dedicated to gastronomy.

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First of all, clarify what we mean by “gastronomic business”: We are not talking exclusively about restaurants, but with this term we cover all businesses, physical or online, where food is the core Business, that is, the mother of the lamb. Or the eggplant, if the business is vegan. This also includes food product stores, tour packages or even kitchenware and kitchen accessories businesses.

Now yes, let’s get down to business.

a) Design a gastronomic marketing plan and assign it a budget

If you expect people to come to your business alone or by word of mouth, you are taking a big risk and you are also going to lose money, from all those months that you are going to have to be open with a half-empty business because people are still you don’t know him. It is cheaper to invest in marketing to fill the premises as soon as possible.

The most important thing in a gastronomic marketing plan is to be clear about who your business is aimed at. That is, or, said in Christian, target audience. Knowing who are (ages, tastes, economic level, etc) the people to whom your proposal is addressed saves a lot of trial and error time.

Once you have this clear, you have to put together a marketing plan that will not differ much on paper from a standard one: what marketing actions are going to be carried out (including advertising), where and when, how much will they cost and what objectives do you hope to achieve . You have more details on how to develop a marketing plan in .

b) Do not hide food

The fundamental element of gastronomic marketing is food. It seems like a truism, but it turns out that on many restaurant websites you have to sweat squid ink to find an image of the dishes they serve.

Thus, we come across super-careful design websites where the decoration of the premises is shown in great detail, we are told about its philosophy and its commitment to fresh and local products… all very, very cool if not out for a small, ahem, detail: there is neither a menu or a la carte available, nor do the dishes have the main role. Even with the disappearance of paper menus during the pandemic, in many restaurants the QR code you scan takes you to a menu that, to top it all off, is hosted somewhere else and not on their website. It is true that a restaurant is much more than a place where food is served and there is a whole liturgy around the experience of going to eat there (more elaborate liturgy the more expensive the place), but sometimes it seems that we forget that people go there to eat.

If what you have is a store and you sell canned products, for example, It would be a great idea if you weren’t stingy and took the products out of the can (at least the ones you are interested in promoting) to present them properly plated. If not, what you sell are boxes and cans, but not what is inside.

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b bis) Take good photos of the food

Ideally, you can afford A professional from culinary photography to photographing the menu. Many times this is not feasible because a) your menu is kilometric b) you have a very variable menu or c) you cannot afford it. In any of those cases, you will have to learn to take your own photos, and photographing food is an art that you have to get the hang of to make it work. in general and

c) Create your own narrative, both verbal and visual

The idea is that tell a story with food as the fundamental axis, but not the only one. Come on, storytelling. The history of a restaurant is the history of an idea, of a kitchen concept but also of a building, its surroundings, a work philosophy, a garden, your suppliers… you have a lot to tell so that people want go to your place to eat and enjoy the experience. But I’m not going to want to live that experience if you don’t tell me what it consists of.

Special mention deserves the creation of a visual narrative based on an own style of images and videos that is consistent with the values ​​of your establishment and that, at the same time, serves as differentiation. In other words, if we want to sell handicrafts and proximity, our images (including food photos) will be radically different than if we want to sell avant-garde cuisine. Notice how two photos of the same product can tell completely different things:

d) Turn your website and social networks into useful gastronomic marketing tools and not into a showcase

It is quite common to see restaurant websites that, even after the pandemic, are little more than an expensive business card because they are basically good-for-nothing. In fact, I think many of them are perfectly expendable, because so that people know the address and telephone number of your business, and even see photos, you already have the business profile on Google that is free. If you are going to have a web gathering dust and moths, you better not have it.

Does that mean that a restaurant does not need a website? No way. On the contrary, a functional website is a basic element of the gastronomic marketing mix.

That means you have to do it right. But believe methe difference in cost between a website kk and something that is useful to you is not so much and you can amortize it very quickly. What should a restaurant website contain besides the usual interior photos and chef self-praise?

  • Reservation calendar online with confirmation via e-mail
  • ordering system at home (if you work with delivery platforms, link to them) and orders to pick up at the premises.
  • updated letter and the menus of the day for the next 7 days.
  • Photos of all the dishes.
  • Ingredients and mandatory allergen information for each dish.
  • Additional Information that can be consulted by the client from the restaurant itself as a plus: calories and nutritional information for each dish, method of preparation, recipe…
  • Presentation of the entire restaurant team, With face.
  • Sustainability information: What do you do with leftover food, how are you working to reduce the carbon footprint and pollution generated by your business.
  • Other differentiating information: from your garden, if there is one, to links to your suppliers, videos, interviews…
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With social networks, three quarters of the same. This is a topic that we have touched on many times and I am not going to insist on it. Just to say that the focus, in the case of a gastronomic business, must be on the creation of a local community (and I emphasize the local) of followers, who are the ones who can go and take people to your restaurant.

e) Share what you know without fear

Having a channel on YouTube or where you give the recipes of your dishes does not mean that you are ruining your business, but quite the opposite because a) people will trust you (or your chef if it is not you) more if they see how you cook and b ) is a fantastic means of diffusion to nothing that you work a little. Then, obviously, the secrets of the house are not told, but even then nothing would happen, because It is one thing to see how a recipe is made and another to start making it and make it work for you. Using the video correctly in a didactic plan can be very beneficial for your gastronomic marketing and, in addition, save a bundle on paid advertising.

f) Find your differentiating element

And there are thousands of options, but by God, we are in one of the sectors with the most competition in Spain, if not the most, so get your batteries and wake up. Obviously, food can be that element, but what if your restaurant is not exactly innovative or the food you serve is just normal food? Do you have to fire the cook? No way, as long as the food is not horrible, but then you will have to differentiate yourself for something else.

Many restaurants choose (in addition to the food) to differentiate themselves, curiously, by the most expensive: decoration, interior design, etc. Ok, ok, nothing to object to, but there is life in gastronomic marketing besides the food, the service and the decoration. For example:

  • Given that a not insignificant percentage of the population is on a diet (voluntary or for medical reasons), some restaurants offer light menus with a limited number of calories, fat-free dishes…
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