Facebook for restaurants helps you find new customers

In this article we look at some of the activities and strategies you can implement through a restaurant Facebook page.

If you own a hospitality business, we recommend that you also read this section of our website: Marketing Strategies for Restaurants

According to ISTAT data, Italy is a country composed of 95 percent small and medium-sized enterprises.

Considering only the SME sector, we are talking about a total of 3.4 million businesses of which, according to the Fipe 2017 Report, as many as 329,787 are active in the restaurant sector.

“Lombardy is the top region for business presence in the industry, accounting for 15.4 percent of the total, followed by Lazio (10.9 percent) and Campania (9.5 percent).”

The network of public establishments is therefore very wide and articulated throughout the country: in small towns as well as in large cities.

In particular, restaurants increase to 177,241, a consolidated overtaking of bars that is the result of a market-driven evolution dictated by the changing needs of consumers.

The use of technology in public establishments

Public establishments such as bars and restaurants are very strong on product (choice and preparation of raw materials), but very weak on the side of marketing management and innovation. Also according to data published by the Fipe Report the:

17% use order management applications
13% adopt electronic invoicing solutions
7% resorts to menu engineering techniques
6% uses online reservation management applications
41% of restaurants do not have any social accounts

Numbers that may be perplexing when we consider theextensive digitization our country has undergone in the past 10 years.

Google and Facebook have become the top search engines for local businesses, which is why it is unthinkable, to this day, not to take care of one’s image online.

Facebook restaurant page: what are the advantages

According to statistics, about 1.6 billion people worldwide are connected to at least one small or medium-sized business on Facebook.

The platform is no longer just a way to spend time lightheartedly; it has become a real marketing tool that will allow you to connect with your potential and existing customers.

Let’s see below how you can reach new users through Facebook:

The recent redesign of Facebook Pages has introduced new methods to facilitate interaction between people and local businesses. For example, it is now possible to book a restaurant just by a simple click;
Make Facebook community suggestions the focus. People use the “Tips” feature to ask others where to go to eat or have coffee, and these recommendations are increasingly important on Facebook Pages;
Create events on Facebook: 700 million users use the feature to find new events in their cities;
Use Facebook Local App, an application that allows your business to be included within a feed that is useful to users searching for businesses in their area;
Activate Facebook ADS, which is a paid tool that offers you the opportunity to implement Facebook advertising and intercept new potential customers potentially interested in your restaurant.

To date, there are more than 80 million SMEs using online business tools on the platform.

Facebook page restaurants and food delivery

Do you deliver food to your home? Use Facebook to do food delivery.

Facebook launches into food delivery: lunch and dinner are ordered on social

Our Agency over the years has been specializing more and more in the food and beverage sector, and today we are presenting you a preview of Facebook’s newest addition concerning this very sector!!!

Through a partnership with Delivery.com, a startup that delivers food to more than 40 cities in the United States, the blue social network is working on the new tool christened “Order Food” that will soon be available on desktop and mobile.

Users will have the option of clicking on the icon-a stylized blue hamburger on smartphones and a much more realistic bun on PCs-to view the list of participating restaurants, complete with menus, prices and reviews from those who have already placed an order.

I mean, with Facebook we will soon be able to order pizza too!!!

The entire procedure, from choosing the dish, confirming the delivery address to payment, will be done totally within the social and…an Order Food can be paid with the credit card registered on Facebook.

Facebook Locations for stores and franchises allows you to manage multiple Pages

This section of the article is dedicated to Companies that have several outlets such as large-scale retail stores and Franchise networks.

Using social channels is a strategy marketing and communication which is called Social Media Marketing.

Facebook Locations available for All Pages

Do you run a chain of stores or afranchise business?

Most likely you have envied the ability given by Facebook Locations to some large brands (e.g., Starbucks) to link the main page to individual store pages.

The good news is that from today you can do it too!

What is Facebook Locations?

We quote the definition on the official website:

With Facebook Places, you can connect and manage all your outlets on Facebook. Our free tools allow you to quickly add Pages for new outlets, edit information for existing outlets, and manage your locations in one place.

Facebook Locations is a feature reserved for pages that have multiple locations.
It is therefore very useful for all franchised businesses.
In this way, the “Brand” page becomes the parent page of all other local branches to which it will be directly linked.

For each location it is possible to define:

address
phone number
websites
email
opening hours

so that the Client or Lead can easily find all the information they need from the page of the location nearest to them.

Facebook Locations: How to activate it?

You can find all useful information at this of Facebook Location

Once theFacebook Locations option is turned on, on your page, under settings, you will find the Places item.

It turns out, therefore, that you can access the new section contained on your page and enter details about the various local offices.

How do they administer themselves?

All local office pages may be administered by the parent page of the headquarters, however, additional page administrators may be added or existing ones maintained.

facebook local is useful for managing chain stores

What will the page be called?

The page, once created, will have the default name of Main Page Name + Country, but you can change it later by accessing the Page information directly.

The Map

The Parent Brand page will create a map in which all local locations will be displayed, as in the example shown opposite.

This will enable the Client to stay in touch with the nearest location, and this will also help with the local positioning of the business.

Map managed outlets with Facebook location

Do you want to promote a restaurant and improve your visibility, positioning and Business? We also recommend you read these articles:

Facebook for Restaurants, so your Customers can find you.