Why Do Successful Restaurant Owners Care About Their Brand Identity?
Featured Image: iStock/Rudzhan Nagiev
Restaurant businesses are one of the most cut-throat and competitive businesses in the world. With hundreds and thousands of restaurants opening up in the country every year, and most of them dying away in the first 12 months, what is the key to staying afloat, or even becoming successful?
It’s simple: visibility and recognizability.
To be seen and to be recognized that it’s you.
This is what branding achieves for a business and this is why restaurants are so protective of their unique brand identity designs. You may have heard tales of chefs who throw away entire dishes if they aren’t happy with even half an ingredient. Sure, some of it is insistence on perfection, but a lot of it comes from the need to be consistent. Making sure that every time that particular dish is served, it always tastes the same.
What is Branding for Restaurants?
Like every other business in the world, a restaurant creates its brand through everything it does. From a business name to restaurant logos, location to the menu, employees, serving standards, colors, seating, lights, exterior, and interior…every way a restaurant communicates with its guests, is a branding opportunity.
Branding is the attempt to bring out the inherent identity of a business and use it to cultivate an entire persona of the brand. Make it into a complete entity. It is the brand identity due to which McDonald’s has a casual environment while Alo appears more reserved and exclusive.
Image Source: Wikimedia
Image Source: alorestaurant.com
Because branding is all about who you are and what you want to be, successful restaurant owners spend considerable time and money to clearly understand the business vision, its message, and its future aspirations to cultivate a clear and coherent identity.
Why having this brand identity so important?
Because it lets you make sales and helps you stay in the business. How does it do that? Let’s try to understand.
1. Brand identity makes you distinguishable
With more and more restaurants competing for loyal patrons, it’s important to consider why people should come to you and not go to your rival. What is it that you have that others don’t? In today’s day and age of digitalization and tough competition, can you truly claim to have an exclusive product? Or perhaps it’s a story that your restaurant is telling – the story of grit and grime that has made you successful? Or perhaps you’re selling a dining experience and not the meal itself.
Whatever it is. You must know it. And branding is how you start this process of self-discovery. As you get to know more and more about what kind of restaurant you are, what your customers think of you, what they find unique in you, and where you want to take this business, you start understanding what makes you different. To build a strong brand for your restaurant, you can consider the following strategies:
• Influencer Collaborations
Today, this is an important way to build brand recognition and create a name in the restaurant industry. There are a lot of people who follow micro-influencers and food bloggers that an eatery can collaborate to boost awareness. It is important to find relevant personalities that can convey your message in the best way and share the same values with your business.
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• Highlight Your Brand Elements in Imagery
Be it your website or social media page, you should always maintain consistency in branding. Think of your favorite restaurant or a globally recognized fast food restaurant. Can you immediately recognize their visual elements like brand colors and font styles in promotional images? Probably, yes. Arby’s for instance, is recognized by its red color palette that is dominant in branding. If you take a look at their website and Instagram profile, you will find that the restaurant chain incorporates color in visuals to grab the attention of its loyal customers instantly.
Image Source: instagram.com/arbys
• Connect With Your Logo Design
One of the most important factors to consider in a restaurant’s brand identity is the logo design. It is a good idea to get a professionally designed logo that can last for years with minimal upgrades. Take the example of any popular brand like Taco Bell, Subway, or Burger King. If you take the example of the first one, you will find that Taco Bell’s famous purple and pink logo lasted from 1994 to 2016. The restaurant revamped its logo to make it more adaptable and digital-friendly. It is known for the iconic bell in the design that has been consistently seen since 1985.
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• Showcase Your USP
The Unique Selling Point or USP is the distinction between you and your competitors. With effective branding strategies, you consistently emphasize this point at every interaction with your customers – whether you’re serving them at the table or replying to their Facebook comments. For instance, if you want to showcase how eco-friendly your business is, you can highlight this USP in your logo and brand voice, and with symbols or icons too. It’s a good idea to start with go-green logos that tell people that your restaurant promotes sustainability and eco-friendly practices.
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2. Brand identity makes you recognizable and memorable.
When branding is done right, brands are instantly recognizable. McDonald’s double arches, the colonel of KFC, and Wendy’s girl’s pigtails are all great examples of popular brand recognition and recall. Successful restaurateurs make it certain to create consistent dining experiences for their patrons no matter if the restaurant franchise is in Italy or Spain.
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This is why different franchises of the same restaurant will have the same colors, vibe, uniforms, china, atmosphere, and every other thing. To emphasize the brand identity and make it easy to recall. You can even find innovative ways to use the logo for your eatery to promote your restaurant effectively. High brand recognition and recall directly translate into higher sales and more loyal customers.
3. Brand identity is the foundation for future growth.
As your restaurant gains more visibility and more patronage, you naturally start thinking about expanding. Brand identity is the solid ground upon which all your future business plans must base. If you have a strong sense of who you are as a brand, and as a restaurant, you will easily know which areas to expand to, how much expansion is needed, if any menu variations are needed, and what kind of people you should have as employees.
All these questions help you keep your brand identity intact no matter how far your restaurant evolves or how varied your menu becomes.
Image Source: Zilliondesigns
4. Brand identity helps a restaurant stay on the message
Every restaurant has a unique message that it conveys to its customers at every point of interaction. This message can be about the theme of the restaurant, the kind of food you prepare, the kinds of people you do business with, the unique tone of your business communication, and so on.
Your brand identity helps you stay on this message. It helps guide your marketing, your expansion plans, and your media communications. Restaurants that are confused about this message transfer their confusion to the people who eat with them. That’s why you sometimes find inherently differing items on the menu, or why the interiors of an Indian restaurant might clash with a Moroccan theme.
Lack of consistency can be harmful to the identity of the business. And remaining true to this identity can help you approach your customers with confidence every time.
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5. Creates loyal customers
A restaurant confident in its identity earns more patronage and more loyalty. Since such restaurants provide their guests with consistent service and experience, they ensure the return of those guests. Because remember, people will always come back for the experience. They will always want to revisit the taste of that one dish, or the aroma of that steak, or just the atmosphere where they felt so fulfilled and alive.
Successful restaurants also get a lot of word-of-mouth traction. People like to share their experiences with others. If you have given them a good one, they’ll tell your story wherever they go. And successful restaurant owners strive to provide them with the same incredible experience over and over again.
Image Source: opentable.co.uk
Wrapping Up
A good and strong restaurant brand identity is not created overnight, nor is it set in stone. You can recreate your brand, and it is okay to take time to let your restaurant identity come into being. As with anything worth having in the world, patience is the key here as well.
