Why Brand Your Restaurant?
Why should you care about branding your restaurant?
Branding is how your restaurant can separate itself from the competition. While your menu and service standards are important, your brand is what makes you stand out amongst the industry.
And we're not just talking about making things pretty here. Branding your restaurant defines your mission in the eyes of your employees and customers. A good brand is built upon a strong foundation and that starts with your positioning statement, brand attributes, and visual direction.
As we've mentioned prior, a brand isn 't necessarily something that's 100% within your control. It is the perception that people have of your restaurant after coming into contact with anything related to your business. With that in mind, it's essential that you seek to control all aspects of branding your restaurant that you can in order to ensure that public perception is in alignment with your brand positioning.
The elements that fall within your control include logo design, the user experience of your website, your website interface design, business cards, social media presence, the service your employees provide, and more. The full scope of your brand is made up of images, content, marketing, design, and customer service. It's everything.
Since we're passionate about how branding your restaurant can impact business, our branding experts are taking the time to break down some of the reasons why you should brand your business.
Branding Your Restaurant Strengthens Marketing and Advertising Efforts
Sales-driven marketing is comparable to Tinder, or whatever dating app is most popular today. Sales-driven marketing presents itself out of the blue with a desperate plea for connection. Frequently, when you encounter sales-driven marketing, you're tasked with engaging and investing before you're even familiar with one another.
Contrarily, brand-driven marketing is a much slower process of familiarization. It provides consumers an introduction to a company and its offerings before being asked to invest. Brand-driven marketing lodges your positioning and brand attributes in the minds of the consumer. Which is great because when a need arises, your restaurant will be top-of-mind. For tacos, or anything else you may be selling.
In addition, clear branding makes marketing and advertising strategies easier to develop. Marketing and advertising teams that are well acquainted with their brand have a strong foundation to build their campaigns upon. This also makes the reception of these efforts more seamless for consumers: a unified message is easy to connect in the mind of potentials customers.
To engaged in brand-driven marketing, your brand must be in place. And this shouldn't be something that you're shooting from the hip on. Alternatively, we recommend for our clients to start with Foundational Branding, which allows for us to cultivate the brand with a strong base. It just makes sense.
Branding Underscores the Value of Your Products and Services
Great branding makes your restaurant more attractive to your potential audience. And once again, this is not just about aesthetics. Branding helps spell out your value. If your branding presents a strong case for why you do what you do, then customers are more likely to pay you for it.
Investing in your positioning, attributes, and visual direction, and then aligning all brand support to that foundation, creates a clear and convincing message for your consumers. The brand positioning can speak to the quality of your food services. And then all future collateral will be laced with a message of quality.
Furthermore, branding your restaurant means consistency in visuals and voice. A consistent presence expresses a message of professionalism, which plays into the quality of your services.
Branding Your Restaurant Builds Loyal Customers
Loyal customers will do business with you more frequently, spend more money when they do engage with you, and are less expensive to market to. Also, a loyal customer base will often be your best source for new customers, as raving fans tend to play the role of a brand ambassador to the places they love.
A big player in customer loyalty is consistency. The world’s most recognizable brands are also the most consistent in visuals, voice, product, and service. Think: Apple, McDonald’s, etc.
Loyalty emerges when trust is established. And trust is established through a relentless approach to consistency.
For example, imagine that Chick-fil-a opened a restaurant with no drive-thru and placed a sign out front with a white and blue logo, and decided they would only offer burrito bowls. The inconsistency would confuse people. And if you confuse, you lose.
However, the reality is that you know wherever you go in the world, you can expect to find the big red C, waffle fries, and fried chicken sandwiches with 2 pickles on a buttered bun. You'll be greeting by smiling employees in polos and visors, and the restaurant will be relatively clean and friendly.
This consistency is what contributes to customer loyalty. It takes the friction out of the decision-making process for the customer. People know what to expect and probably already know what they will order once they arrive at the restaurant. The consistency appeals to customers' logical and lazy brains, and that’s what keeps CFA in demand.
The consistency is the direct result of a solid brand and steadfast implementation of that brand. And this results in a loyal customer base.
Branding Creates Loyal Employees
Just like your branding can forge loyal customers, it also can create loyal, content employees. Happy employees often lead to happy customers. And less employee turnover overall, which saves you money!
Restaurant branding that conveys a cohesive purpose to your employees strengthens their sense of purpose at your company. With a clear brand in place, your employees are more likely to become brand advocates.
Plus, employees who have taken your brand to heart are able to act as ambassadors for your brand when they're interacting with clients and customers.
In order to communicate your brand to your employees, you’ve got to brand your restaurant from the beginning. Each and every employee should be able to spout off your positioning statement to anyone who asks, and those at the top should consider this position prior to making pivotal decisions for the company.
In addition, your brand attributes serve as internal beacons, providing guidance to your team that informs their speech, actions, appearance, demeanor, and more. It tells them who they are in the context of the work environment. While every employee is an individual, the brand attributes will unite your employees under a single umbrella that is your brand.
With a firm brand in place, committed employees will know what’s expected of them and will be able to flourish.
Adversely, without branding your restaurant, leadership will be waffling and decisions will oftentimes come down to personal opinion. Scenarios like this brandless environment we’ve described lead to dissatisfied and discouraged employees who end up parting ways with the business.
Contact Our Branding Firm in Nashville to Brand Your Restaurant
If you’re not sure how your branding is performing or where to start to improve it, reach out to a branding agency that can get to the heart of who you are and help you publicize that through your brand. Your company is unique, and your brand should be, too. Call us today to get started.
