What's the 411? Food Social.

Although there are several different ways at driving traffic to the site, most successful blogs increase their viewership through high quality content. Engadget.com and arstechnica.com are excellent examples of how bloggers have utilized rich, factual and useful content to bring people to their site. Miku restaurant, a high-end sushi restaurant on West Hastings and Thurlow uses the same strategy.

The one thing that differentiates Miku’s blog from, say the Glowbal Group’s set of visually striking websites is that Miku uses the blog to engage the general community around them, and not just the online community. They do this by posting entries about variety of subjects from Tokyo pastry shop tours to celebrating ocean-wise month. From the posts that I’ve ready, few of them are “hard-sell” posts. They mostly focus on educating the reader on food, culture and the food community.

The Miku blog also highlights people on most of their blog posts, whether they be in photos or in videos. This tactic makes the website more personable and easy to read and enjoy. The picture set from the “Growing Chefs! From Farms to Forks 2” highlighted how Miku supported the Growing chefs non-profit society.

It appears that Miku has two dedicated individuals to provide this great content. Having a dedicated team or individual taking charge of this ensures that the content is uniform and consistent.

Posts are frequent, up-to-date and interesting. I don’t feel like I’m being sold to and look forward to visiting this restaurant soon.

So What’s the 411?

• Miku Restaurant: A high-end Japanese restaurant with amazing food and a community oriented website.
• Twitter ID: @mikurestaurant
• Website: http://www.glowbalgroup.com
• Locations: 1055 West Hastings St. Vancouver
• Definite must eat: If you’re downtown during the day, and aren’t dressed for the occasion, visit the Italian Kitchen’s take out kiosk – the one that my co-worker so desparately tried to hide from me.  If you’re on Alberni, the entrance would be just to the left of the main restaurant. You can get almost everything that those sharped dressed people are eating in the sit-down portion of the restaurant for much more reasonable prices. The Spicy Kobe Meatball is huge sphere of Italian meaty goodness, despite the Japanese name.

Swiss Chalet – An excellent online ordering system

Ah, Swiss Chalet! Well known for its mystery red dipping sauce – tangy, barbequey and ketchupy all in one shot. Swiss Chalet’s claim to fame is their rotisserie barbeque chicken and ribs – with only five locations in the Metro Vancouver area, it could be a bit of a grind to access all of that slightly but deliciously charred, juicy chicken. But people feel that it’s well worth the trek.

A few years ago, Swiss Chalet expanded their phone pick-up service to include an internet ordering engine. To date, I can comfortably say that this engine should be the standard to which all online ordering engines should follow. It’s easy to set up, easy to use and deliveries are fast and efficient.

To place an order for the first time, you would log onto www.swisschalet.ca and click on the big, easy-to-find Order Online button on the top right hand side of the page.

Next, click create account and enter in your information. After that you would click Place order.

You have a choice here. You can either click on delivery (which is free) or order ahead to pick up the food (also free)

On the next screen the website checks to see if orders could be accepted. Alternatively you can set up a pickup for a future date.

Swiss Chalet uses a simple picture based shopping cart. You select the dish you want by clicking on it and it’s added to your cart.

The nice thing about the site is that it allows for a heavy amount of customization. For example, the website makes it easy to choose white meat or dark meat, what kind of sides (fries, or heaven forbid, veggies etc.), kind of bread (white or brown) etc.

Before checking out, the website also makes suggestions on other things to order. In this case, the website suggests to order a side of perogies, salad and a dish of lemon pie or chocolate cake, and a some soda. It’s interesting to note that I have ordered all of these items on previous orders.

The website finishes off with a review of the order, along with an Estimated Time of Arrival for your food.

After ordering from this website at least 15 times in the past few years, I have noticed that the delivery person usually drops the food off 15 minutes before the stated time (usually 45-50 minutes).

When you’re satisfied with the offer (and add the coupon code if you have one), it sends you a confirmation screen and an updated estimated time of arrival.

In my opinion, Swiss Chalet’s ordering website is clear, efficient and effective in getting you to order online. Its suggestions engine alone has expanded the waistlines of many a customer! If all restaurants could follow their example, they will most likely increase their sales and provide a safe, reliable mode of customer service for their clients.

So What’s the 411?

• Swiss Chalet: A well known rotisserie chicken restaurant chain with an excellent ordering engine on their website.
• Website: http://www.swisschalet.ca
• Locations – 5 in the Metro Vancouver area
• Definite must eat: Their red dipping sauce. Try dipping everything in the sauce – Chicken, barbeque ribs, french fries… everything! It comes with every entree.

The Glowbal Group isn’t a restaurant. It is a collection of restaurants in the Vancouver area including the Glowbal Grill, Sanafir, Coast, Italian Kitchen, Trattoria, Society and Black and Blue. With its rich, delicious and visually appealing food, the Glowbal group targets the young, affluent professional market. With the opening of the Black and Blue restaurant recently, Glowbal’s broad scope across many different culinary choices certainly has a strong influence on the Vancouver culinary scene today.

The Italian Kitchen on Alberni is one of their more well known restaurants. Oddly, I didn’t happen upon the Italian Kitchen through any sort of e-marketing effort. My co-worker’s Thursday routine consisted of walking to IK, ordering some amazingly good Italian food, bringing it to our lunch room and proceeding to provoke jealousy as he ate it in front of us. He would never, ever tell us where he got it from. So one day we followed him and found out where the restaurant was. After a quick search, I found www.theitaliankitchen.com – replete with videos, recipies and dish pictures that would make anyone gain a few stone just by looking. I noticed that all of the Glowbal Group restaurant websites have the same unified interface – a video at the top, with a showcase of several pages of food, complete with the Glowbal Group banner at the bottom with a hyperlink to their other restaurants.

Their website template is a very effective way to showcase not just one restaurant, but all of the restaurants together. Each of these restaurants, while different in the type of food they offer, cater to the same target market. So if you like one restaurant, and want a change in the type of dish, you merely go to the other restaurant and experience the same level of service with the same types of people surrounding you. This experience extends to the website – and it works well. If you like what you see on one website, you will find the other websites of the other restaurants in the group equally as appealing and enticing – albeit with a different type of food.

The Glowbal group has extended this philosophy to their twitter feed. Oddly, they don’t have individual twitter accounts for each of their restaurants. While they make an effort to consistently tweet and respond to all of  their users like La Taquiera does, they rely on a single twitter feed, @Glowbal_Group, to showcase all of their restaurants. I find this quite ineffective for the following reasons:

1. I haven’t even heard of the Glowbal Group prior to visiting the Italian Kitchen. If I wanted to follow the Italian Kitchen, I would look for @ItalianKitchen or something similar. I would not search for the Glowbal group
2. Having one Twitter feed for seven restaurants results in a disjointed experience for most users and reduces the ability to conduct two-way communication between the user and Glowbal. For example, on the feed, you’d could have several different conversations regarding different restaurants happening within the span of a few seconds. This makes it difficult for a reader to follow the conversation.
3. By combining all of the restaurants under one feed, you reduce the choice for the client to decide what restaurant they really want to follow. What if a user has no interest in Italian food? They will be forced to read about the Italian kitchen and will likely unfollow the twitter account.

While having the one website template works well for the web, having one twitter account for the seven restaurants does not. I would recommend having a separate feed for each of the restaurants. Having the more targeted, more specific tweets would make it easier for the clients to communicate with them.

So What’s the 411?

• The Glowbal Group: Great websites to make you drool, a twitter feed that could use some slicing and dicing.
• Twitter ID: @Glowbal_Group
• Website: http://www.glowbalgroup.com
• Locations: Several. See site for details
• Definite must eat: If you’re downtown during the day, and aren’t dressed for the occasion, visit the Italian Kitchen’s take out kiosk – the one that my co-worker so desparately tried to hide from me.  If you’re on Alberni, the entrance would be just to the left of the main restaurant. You can get almost everything that those sharped dressed people are eating in the sit-down portion of the restaurant for much more reasonable prices. The Spicy Kobe Meatball is huge sphere of Italian meaty goodness, despite the Japanese name.

While Vancouver’s reputation as a culinary capital for West Coast cuisine is deserved, One would find it a very difficult challenge  to find true, authentic Mexican food anywhere within the 604/778 area code.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find he following on my Tweetdeck feed:

La Taqueria is a small, unassuming traditional Mexican taco restaurant. They do not serve the “Tex-mex” hard tacos that you would find in places like Taco Bell or Taco Time. They focus on soft tacos, with ingredients sourced from local farms and suppliers. Not only is their food absolutely amazing, but their application of Social Media serves as a great example of what to do to manage your online presence, even with a small workforce of just a few employees.

After monitoring their feed for the the past few months, I’ve noticed the following:

1) Their posts are frequent – La Taqueria makes an effort to post content several times per day. In particular, they focus on daily specials and current in-store promotions. One example is their Horchata Tuesday tweet – one free Horchata with the purchase of four tacos. By being consistent in these tweets each week, loyal fans of La Taqueria are reminded (and do remember), for example, to drop by on a Tuesday for the free drink.

2) There is a person behind the Twitter feed that encourages two way conversation:

Despite the restaurant’s small size, La Tacquiera ensures someone is monitoring the Twitter feed for any news or comments from their readers. In this example above, the restaurant poster is retweeting both a positive review and is thanking a customer for their business. By doing this, the restaurant is establishing a stronger relationship with their customers.

3) Customers spread the word on their own accord – People who love the food make a strong effort to let others know via Twitter and other social media – The food is actually very, very good – and people are so enthusiastic to share this with others via Social Media. A quick scan of their Tweetdeck feed for the past week shows that at least 40% of the posted tweets are generated by the customers themselves. By providing customers with this outlet for recommendations (and from time to time, suggestions), La Tacquiera has had very little need to purchase traditional advertising.

One interesting thing to note: According to the employee I spoke with, they don’t do any other type of advertising – and rely on word of mouth spread out through social media to increase sales.

So what’s the 411?

La Taquiera’s simple, social media strategy of consistent tweets, encouragement of two-way conversation and strong word of mouth have brought much success. In fact, business has been so good that  La Taquiera has  expanded to a second location in just one year.

• Twitter ID: @lataqueriaYVR
• Website: http://lataqueria.ca
• Locations: 322 W. Hastings and 2549 Cambie
• Definite must eat: The Al Pastor taco: pork marinated in achiote chilli and pineapple

Food.

If you have met me in person, you probably know that I enjoy food. Perhaps a little to much. I have  been fortunate to live in Metro Vancouver, where high quality, great tasting, locally sourced food is plentiful. Living in a place where there is so much variety and choice, it can be difficult for a restaurant to get noticed, especially when starting out. I have noticed that in the past two years, restaurants have turned to social media to get that recognition to bring people to their booths and tables.

Over the next few weeks, I will analyze the social media strategy of a few of my most favorite restaurants. It is my hope that we can find some common best practices, and practices to avoid. In addition I hope that you can arouse your palate as well as your intellect by visiting the places that I mention. Each entry will end off with “So What’s the 411?” which will contain a brief summary of the post as well as a must order item when you visit.

Happy tweeting – and happy eating!

Herbert Cruz