Elevate Your Digital Presence to Fill Your Restaurant & Bar Seats in 2023

Elevating your brand

Why you need a strong brand

A strong purpose and identity is now a must for successful hospitality operations. There is an underlying want to be social – people want it – but the pandemic has made it more convenient and “normal” to stay home.

With the whole city’s restaurant roster being available on UberEats, the local spot that used to be the convenient dinner option is now competing with every restaurant and snack bar being delivered directly to your door.

When it comes to in-person experiences, restaurants and bars – especially the latter – are now a destination. With 47% of Canadians still uncomfortable going to bar, there is going to be some serious consideration to where they are going if they do end up somewhere.

It’s now the ideal time to leverage your digital brand to draw them in, and then give them an incredible and rewarding in-person experience to eventually bring them back. To some degree, it is different than it used to be; but it’s still about delivering on your brand promise. You just have to be a bit more creative now and speak to your guests from a few different angles.

Your brand is your customer’s entire experience and relationship with you, in real time. You have control over everything your brand does, but your brand is ultimately the perception created by your audience. It’s not limited to when they’re physically in your establishment, and that is rarely how it starts. Their first impression could be from anywhere; maybe a magazine featured you online, maybe they found a review, maybe they walked by, maybe they stumbled across an Instagram post, maybe their friend suggested you in conversation.

In a perfect world, you have full control every part of the customer’s experience, but there are infinite touch points; a lot of them created by people outside of your company. So the best way to ensure consistency is to have a solid brand as a foundation in place, and let everything build from there.

Building your brand around your story

Every great brand starts with a story, and every great story has a “why”.

When crafting your brand story, you’re ultimately looking for the thing that makes you unique and that people will resonate with. We find you’ll usually be able to find those nuggets when you think about:

• Your mission and reason for creating the brand

• Your founding story and journey to getting to where you are

• Your values that come through in everything you do

When you write down your story, use it as the foundation of everything you do with your brand. Your story should come through in every digital channel and even within your physical space to create a cohesive and memorable experience, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to take your story word for word and put it on the walls (although you might). Your story should be communicated however literal or abstract as you feel is appropriate for you.

Humans are emotional beings, and your story is the strongest way to create an emotional connection with your customers (second to them crying over how good your food is). Once they have an emotional connection, they’ll feel more invested in the brand, and even more likely to share it with their friends. This differentiates you from every other restaurant or bar out there where the customer’s experience is limited to the tangible touch points.

Just as you choose the best way to tell your story, do the same with your values. If you’ve established a strong set of values, they should come through in everything you do, and don’t need to be written out for your customers to know what they are. Attracting customers with the same values is the best way to create brand loyalty.

It’s important while doing this exercise to remain authentic to yourself; don’t force anything that’s not there just because it’s something you think that people will resonate with. You’re not only risking your credibility, but customers can tell when your story or values are merely a mirage and don’t actually come through in their experience.

Our friends at Avling have a clear and strong brand mission, which they proudly state in the hero of their website.

Is your brand ready to scale?

When we talk about your brand being ready to scale, it really means you have a solid foundation in place that is well documented.

For restaurants & bars in particular, we know these brands are typically designed for the physical first; designing the venue, menus, cans, signs, etc. and then thought about how it translates to digital after. We don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s important to think about these things holistically, and not skip any details. Just like you want to create a cohesive experience in your physical space, you want to do the same online. It should also be cohesive across all digital channels to build digital equity.

How many restaurants have you been to where you can’t read the menu? Maybe the font is too small, the colours make it hard to read, or it’s a paper-thin white menu in a dark bar? Or maybe it’s not well organized, so it’s super difficult to navigate and understand? It’s likely not because someone said this is how this should be and why, but likely because no one said that.

Or have you ever looked for the washroom only to be led down a dark stairwell where there is no sign?

Your brand isn’t just the things that you do or document in a brand book, but also the things that you don’t do or don’t document. Remember, your brand is the perception your customer has of you, and they don’t know what you have documented; they just know what their experience is.

Your brand is the foundation for everything. It will directly or indirectly make or break your customer’s experience; whether that be when they’re in your physical space or still making the decision to go when they’re on your website, socials, etc. Pay attention to the details and your customers will notice, especially when the brand details go hand in hand with your brand story or purpose.

Take action

To create a top-notch brand and to ensure everything you build on top of it is cohesive, document as much as you can.

• Define your brand story and values

• Establish brand voice and tone to reflect your personality and values to resonate with your customers

• Refine your visual identity; document how your logo should be used, how your colour palette works, what your photo style is, all of your typography rules, etc.

• Communicate with your team and vendors; make sure they are all familiar with every aspect of the brand and reflect it in everything they do or make

Whatever you do, do it with conviction and don’t be scared. It might be wrong and you might change it, but just own it until you need to change or abandon it.

When you have a solid brand in place, everybody wins. In the early days of MOD, we offered a variety creative services but have since narrowed it down to building brands and digital experiences. We did this because we had often found ourselves working with companies that didn’t have a great brand foundation so the projects weren’t setting themselves up for success. Defining and documenting your brand will pay dividends for the years ahead.