In today’s digital world, sharing snaps of refreshments on Instagram is an integral part of the service you provide. No evening is complete without patrons taking a few quick pictures of the food and drinks that you offer them.
As a restaurant owner, you can take full advantage of the Instagrammable beverage trend by designing a menu that’s meant to be shared on the world wide web.
Elegant coffee art and perfectly poured brews will bring folks into your premises and ensure that they opt for more than table water or club soda.
Diversifying Your Menu
There’s something deeply satisfying about a perfectly pulled beer pulled with a balanced foamy
head. However, your digital content will get stale quickly if you fail to diversify your menu and don’t add new options to your drink menu.
Use social media trends to help decide on new menu items. By doing a quick search for hashtags like “drinks”, “beverages”, and “cocktails,” you’ll find thousands of results from restaurants and bars across the globe. Identify trends by following pages that relate to your restaurant and make a note of the beverages that routinely reappear on your timeline.
Diversity of beverages is important, but don’t have to re-write your entire drinks list every month. Instead, focus on a single speciality drink that is more likely to attract customers to your business. Odd additions like clear Coca-Cola will pique consumers’ interests enough to bring them in for a meal and a drink.
If you’re finding that menu oddities and speciality drinks aren’t bringing folks into your restaurant, you may need to reassess your target audience. If you run a high-end eatery, your ideal audience will want to see cold-brew coffee and vintage wines that pair well with meals. Alternatively, if you offer quick bites consider highlighting your special brew arak or house-made ayran.
Instagrammable Content
A strong social media presence can do wonders for your restaurant. However, you can’t post sub-par content and expect folks to flood through your doors.
Set aside time to take high-quality photographs that stun your audience. Use a clean, consistent background so your beverage can shine without any distractions, and use backing materials that highlight the details of your drink.
If you’re posting to Instagram, you can take a few shots that show the final product. Consider taking pics like:
- The final product with staged lighting and the right backing;
- The drink is made by a barista or bartender ;
- The beverage as part of a meal or generally enjoyed by patrons.
Adding context to your pictures will give you a chance to highlight other menu items. This is particularly important to hungry followers who are on the fence about coming into your restaurant. Showing that your drinks pair well with a meal will bring folks into your establishment and increase your profits per head.
TikTok Content
TikTok is a fast-growing platform. Younger generations are flocking to the site in their millions and sharing short-form content with over a billion other users.
As a restaurant manager, entering the TikTok world can be a little intimidating. It’s a sub-genre of social media content unlike anything else and it’s easy to look out of touch when posting to TikTok.
Use TikTok’s Trend Discovery page to guide all of your content. Finding a following on TikTok is all about staying up to date with the sounds, influencers, and hashtags that folks love. Set aside time every week to identify a few potential sounds and shoot content that lasts somewhere between 10 seconds to a minute.
Switch up the type of content you post to keep followers engaged. Post “behind the scenes” clips of your restaurant before opening and give bartenders a chance to share their favourite tips.
Increasing Reach and Engagement
Once you’ve got to grips with the format of Instagram and TikTok, consider bringing in a team of professional marketers to help bolster your online presence. SEO and marketing specialists know what makes the algorithm tick and will bring more folks through your front door.
If you don’t have the budget for a marketing team, consider running paid ads based on readily available data. In general, Instagram reels perform better than TikTok Ads and will give you more bang for your buck. So, put more of your budget into Instagram and the Meta suite.
To improve over time, gather free data from Instagram Insights and TikTok Analytics. Both Instagram and TikTok give businesses access to free data like follower growth, audience demographics, and engagement. Take note of which beverages perform the best and push more content that aligns with the viewer’s preferences.
Conclusion
Many restaurants underutilize their social media pages. It can be tricky to find time to post pictures of pints when thirsty consumers are coming through the door. However, setting aside a few minutes each day to research market trends and post Instagram-worthy content will reap rewards down the line. Trial a new speciality beverage every month and highlight interesting drinks like clear Coca-Cola or house-made Aryan.
