Restaurant Culture – How to Find Your Restaurant’s Identity

 

 

Identifying your restaurant culture is important when it comes to marketing.

It helps with finding your target audience and for setting the tone for the whole business.

And this helps with profitability.

Whether it’s a date, catch-up with friends, or a family get-together, restaurants are always the preferred choice.

But as a restaurant owner, you can’t take this popularity for granted.

Instead, you need to work out different ways and means to find the identity of your restaurant.

Restaurants can get monotonous – good food, fantastic ambiance, and maybe, good, soft music. But what are you doing to set your restaurant apart from thousands of others out there?

To make sure you have a unique place that customers would look forward to visiting often, you need to get creative.

Building an ideal restaurant culture, which reflects your vision, values, and mission is super important.

Along with this, you need to establish a fresh and unique identity for your restaurant.

So, let’s have a look at some simple ways how you can refresh the identity of your restaurant while retaining the restaurant culture.

You can jump to the section you want to read about below:

 

1. Give your brand a voice
2. Go sustainable
3. Choose local
4. Specialize your restaurant
5. Go seasonal with the menu
6. Bring the fun
7. Complimentary food, discounts and other offers
8. Revamp the décor
9. Introduce immersive experiences

 

1. Give your brand a voice

 

Why exactly did you set up this restaurant?

What was the whole idea behind serving the delicacies you do?

What was the vision in mind, and what is your mission?

What are the core values upon which you have built your business?

 

 

These are some things you need to keep in mind while giving your brand a voice.

Everything you do in your restaurant should revolve around this very identity and help amplify your brand’s voice.

Create a creative logo, a catchy tagline, or a story that talks about who you are.

Everything needs to be in sync with each other so that your brand becomes easily recognizable to the masses.

Choose brand colors that resonate with the restaurant’s vibe and stick the same color scheme for your website, social media posts, brochures, menu cards, and even flyers.

 

2. Go sustainable

 

Almost everyone out there talks about sustainability and the different means we can adopt to make a difference to the environment.

But how many actually implement these?

The sustainable culture has just begun in the restaurant industry and is yet to become a trend.

So, this right here is a golden opportunity for you to start implementing sustainable practices in your restaurant.

What’s even more heartening is that people are willing to spend more of their money in sustainable places -especially the millennials, who are taking their responsibility towards the environment seriously.

 

 

There are many ways to go sustainable, that too creatively.

For example, you could grow your own produce (if budget permits), ditch the single-use cutlery, introduce decomposable ones instead, serve more vegetarian and vegan options, and opt for sustainable décor.

The best part about going sustainable is that it is cost-effective and easy to implement too.

It may take your staff to get used to the new practices, but a little training and strategic implementation would undoubtedly help.

And in the end, you’ll get the tag of a ‘sustainable restaurant’ – so it is definitely worth the effort!

So, if you have been thinking about going sustainable, this is the right time – go ahead, revamp your restaurant and give it a brand-new identity.

 

3. Choose local

 

Many restaurants ship products from thousands of miles away.

Now superficially, this seems fine – how else would you get the most exotic ingredients for the items on the menu if you don’t ship them from across the globe?

But you also need to consider the impact your supply chain has on the environment – not forgetting to mention the excessive costs involved in purchasing these products and ingredients.

Here’s what you can do – look around in your neighborhood and check out the local produce.

Every region has a product it is known for, and we’re sure your area has it, too.

 

 

Instead of cooking meals with exotic ingredients, revolve your menu around the fresh local produce.

Localizing your supply chain will be the best thing you can do for your restaurant. Not only will you have delicious, fresh produce, but you can also promote farm-to-table meals at your restaurant.

Local restaurants may also offer you discounts for the product, and they will assure you of the quality.

A local food chain will help cut down transport costs, support businesses around you, and do your bit towards the environment.

The whole charm of your restaurant will change for good – and you can also introduce tales about the food that has reached tables from the farms.

Your patrons will be more than happy to consume wine brewed at the local distillery or cheese prepared at the dairy farm right around the corner.

 

4. Specialize your restaurant

 

‘That restaurant serves the best pizzas or pasta – now that’s something you want people to say about your restaurant, right?

Food is the best way to leave a mark in people’s minds, which is why you need to work out a menu that serves specific food.

So, whether its pizzas made with ingredients sourced from the local farms and dairies, pasta made from scratch, or creative pastries baked with love – you can pick any one or two things for which you want your restaurant to be known.

 

 

People love to head to restaurants that offer specific food, and it is an excellent proposition for you too – as it helps save costs, reduce wastage of food, and get creative with the food you have chosen.

You are free to think out of the box and come up with innovative ideas to serve food differently.

 

5. Go seasonal with the menu

 

You can have menus revolving around seasons.

You can do this by curating special menus depending on the number of seasons the locality of your restaurant experiences.

Because let’s be honest – no one wants to indulge in iced tea when it’s snowing outside -all they want is a bowl of hot soup or piping hot tea.

 

 

Another advantage of seasonal menus is that you get the opportunity to incorporate seasonal produce into your menu.

This not only helps save costs but will also keep your patrons immersed.

People will look forward to the different items in your seasonal menus. And of course, you’ll be saving on costs, so your profits will soar too.

 

6. Bring the fun

 

Restaurants are no longer places where people head for a quiet meal – they also want to have a fun experience.

So, if you can, try to incorporate a children’s play area and add some fun games for the adults.

This will make visiting your restaurant a wholesome experience for your customers.

They will look forward to every visit, as they know that your restaurant would give them a wonderful experience.

 

 

You could bring in some fun elements such as a dartboard or Jenga tiles.

If space permits, you could have a table-tennis table or a separate section for board games.

Here, people visiting your restaurant can have fun.

You can also keep a pack of UNO cards handy on every table so that guests who come with families can entertain themselves while the food arrives.

 

7. Complimentary food, discounts and other offers

 

Who doesn’t like free food? And discounts?

People love restaurants that offer quality food as well as these extra perks.

So why wait, especially when you can go all out and offer complimentary meals to people.

‘Order a soup and get garlic bread free,’ or simply, ‘order a glass of wine, and the cheese/side dish is completely on us.’

These are some little things that your guests would love, so do it.

 

 

Also, make sure your menu highlights the prices of these foods if they are purchased individually. It must also display the discounted prices when ordered in a combo.

Likewise, don’t shy away from generous discounts, coupons, and offers.

Every time people step into your restaurant, give them a reason to keep coming back over again.

The food you serve them no doubt is a great way to advertise your restaurant – but discounts work like magic too.

If you see a couple enjoying their meal at your restaurant, offer them free drinks or a discount coupon for their next visit.

You can also list out discounts for a group of a specific number of people.

Also, special discounts during afternoon hours or hours when your sales dip are a great way to ensure you have people visiting your restaurant throughout the day.

 

8. Revamp the décor

 

Food is and should be the hero of your restaurant culture – but that does not mean that ambiance is unimportant.

Ambiance plays a vital role in attracting customers to your restaurant.

If you have decided to go sustainable, tell a story to make your décor sustainable too. Also, if you have decided to color them for your restaurant, make sure it reflects in the restaurant’s interiors.

 

 

Millennials are the group that mostly hits restaurants regularly, so you also need to make sure you have aesthetic corners in your restaurant where people can click Instagram-worthy shots.

Also, people love cafes with themed décor, so that’s an idea you can incorporate too.

Don’t forget Gen Z’ers and the snowflake generation, who will one day be your future customers.

The décor need not be expensive – it just has to be appealing to the eye.

Simple, creative décor ideas with impressive lighting work like magic too.

 

9. Introduce immersive experiences

 

No longer are restaurants places where people visit just to have a chit-chat session with friends over food.

Instead, they want real experiences – which is why immersive experiences have become so popular in the past few years.

Some restaurants have successfully incorporated immersive experiences into their restaurant culture and it’s worked.

The whole objective of immersive experiences is to allow your customers to experience something more than food.

You can take the customers through the fields from where you source your food without them having to leave their seats.

 

 

Simply display the whole background story on a screen, and your patrons will love it.

Theater restaurants are a great way of taking your story-telling a notch higher.

If time and space permit, you can also have a special section in the kitchen where your guests can step in and cook up a meal.

Or you may have some sessions in this section on how to cook healthy food or plate food in a better way.

The more interactive you can get, the more exciting the environment in your restaurant will be.

While these are just some ideas, you can think out of the box and introduce immersive experiences in your restaurant well within the budget you can churn out.

 

Summing up

 

Incorporating modern elements in your restaurant culture while retaining the traditional values is what you need to do.

Evolving with time, bringing in new, innovative food, revamping the space are some of the things you can do to set your restaurant apart from thousands out there.