What’s the difference between a cafe, an eatery and a large restaurant Marketing?

Not many know, but each type of F&B business needs its own marketing approach. A small cafe will not require the same strategy as a large restaurant. Let’s find out why.

To make it easier to understand, let’s create 3 imaginary businesses of different sizes.

Here are our 3 examples:

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What makes them different?

These places differ not only by the number of seats and open hours but also by the type of clients who visit each one, and their behaviour and social status.

Another important point is the size of the menu. Especially in digital marketing, like social media marketing, we need to showcase the entire menu on social media and highlight the best sellers. However, sometimes we can’t do this because it’s either too large or too small to fit into daily posts. Additionally, showing only the food isn’t enough (unless the selling point is the Chef). This way for each kind of business we will have a different ratio of food/service/design/team content proportional to the number of posts per month.

Let’s see each kind of FNB business in detail:

Betty’s Coffee

The menu for Betty’s Coffee is not very diverse and is mainly centred on one beverage – coffee, and some snacks that can be consumed with it. The place has no kitchen, which makes their offering limited.

Coffee is one of the most Instagramable beverages, and if served in a pretty way, it can provide a lot of user-generated content.

Coffee can be easily ordered as takeout, which will help to compensate for the small sizes of the place. But at the same time offering just one type of beverage, which is widely available everywhere – is a risk, as consumers will have a large choice of places to choose from.

In a place like Koh Samui, a small cafe will cover a small area. It’s also a business where guests make quick decisions and don’t stay long. Typically, you won’t plan to visit a cafe a week in advance unless there’s an event or it has a very specific menu.

Coffee doesn’t travel well, so the delivery area will be limited.

Marketing verdict:

For a place like this, minimal branding, digital marketing, and social media presence would be beneficial.

Professional social media marketing would only be affordable for a small place like that if it has multiple locations, or a high check per guest (for example cocktails, fine dining etc)

Trick: It’s possible to make the coverage area larger if your offer is special. If not, don’t hope for guests to spend more than 10 minutes driving to reach your business.

However, as a local business, it’s important to give guests a reason to return repeatedly, it’s important to create a community around your business.

The challenge for this place will be cash flow. With a small space and menu, and check per guest, it isn’t easy to earn big money, unless you have a very special offer. However, it’s still possible to grow revenue with a well-adjusted online and offline marketing strategy.

Our Social Media Solution for this kind of place: Koh Samui success Formula Light

Our previous similar clients of this kind: NUN BAO

Green Cheek Jack Eatery

For Green Cheek Jack, since the menu is larger we need to attract more diverse customers. We will need to post more frequently on social media to reach a wider audience than for Betty’s Coffee.

A Medium-sized restaurant is easier to manage than a small or large place. It’s not too small and limiting your possibilities, but it also doesn’t have a too large menu with high risks of food waste.

Usually, medium restaurants have a small kitchen, which gives the possibility to offer diverse dishes and a wider coverage area compared to a small coffee shop. Having a kitchen gives the possibility to experiment with the menu, and always have something new to offer to the customers.

Typically for medium-sized restaurants guests will plan to visit the place in advance, but not excessively. Customers will still have a relatively fast decision-making prosses, but in some cases, especially if the offer is special – guests will plan to visit the place over 1 week in advance.

Marketing verdict:

It would be great to have branding that highlights the strong points of the place and professionally done Digital Marketing and Social Media. It’s also important to keep guests coming back and create a community.

Trick: For a Medium sized restaurant with a large offering you can create an interesting loyalty program, to keep the customer coming back.

The challenge for this place will be production limits. Medium-sized restaurants usually don’t have a big kitchen or large team, so we can’t advertise too much, or they won’t be able to handle the demand. Nobody wants to stop services because they lack enough workforce or ingredients. In addition, the menu will usually be much smaller, than in a large Restaurant, which reduces the coefficient of possible guests.

Our Social Media Solution for this kind of place: Koh Samui Success formula Basic

Our previous similar clients of this kind: BAO BAO

Charly the Chi

For Charly the Chi, the marketing strategy will be more complicated, perhaps for a Marketer it’s the most interesting type of work to do. Complex strategies and a diverse offering are an interesting challenge for anyone obsessed with Marketing.

With a large place and large team, the possibilities are unlimited. Usually, this kind of restaurant has a huge professional kitchen a highly skilled Chef, and a whole team of professionals to keep the business in perfect fit.

The coverage area will be much larger, as the offer will also be more diverse than anywhere else. For a small place like Koh Samui, everyone will potentially be a customer, and for stunning service and delicious food, in a place with poor quality FNB offerings like Samui, guests will be ready to spend any time driving to get to try the menu.

The goal is to attract guests for different services like breakfast, lunch, late lunch, the bar, and dinner. The kitchen in such a place will typically be larger than in other restaurants, allowing us to advertise deliveries and maximize marketing efforts.

As the types of customers will be diverse for this kind of business, so will the decision-making time, typically it will be proportional to the FAME of the place.

Marketing verdict:

It’s essential to have full branding and strong offline and online marketing efforts. Even for a large place, it’s important to create reasons for guests to return. A guest loyalty program database and newsletters can be a great addition.

Trick: For a large restaurant, as soon as your delivery fees for 3rd part services reach the same amount as an entry-level staff salary, you are ready to offer your delivery services. Therefore if you invest in an online menu or a delivery app, you can track the behaviour of your guests to adjust your offering accordingly. The more you have customers using your digital menu for in-house dining and deliveries – the more data you will get to adjust your business to perfection.

The challenge for this place will be its size. On a small island like Koh Samui, filling up a large venue requires extreme FAME and the ability to meet the needs of various clients without compromising quality. Also, offering different services for each mealtime will attract entirely different kinds of clients, who must connect with the place’s marketing.

Our Social Media Solution for this kind of place: Koh Samui Success Formula Ultra

Our previous clients of this type: Tabula Rasa, Prego, Stacked burgers

Does the size matter?

Overall, the main difference between small, medium, and large Restaurant Marketing is that small businesses, due to limited cash flow, need immediate results from their Marketing investments (which is somewhat unrealistic, but still possible). Larger brands understand the importance of branding and take their business more seriously and keep it more organized. The size of the restaurant should always be seen in accordance with the average check per customer. Customer retention is important no matter the size of the restaurant. With effective branding, you can retain customers who will return repeatedly and maybe even bring their friends, and influence their social media following.

In contrast, businesses without strong branding or marketing efforts primarily rely on walk-ins. These guests choose the business not for the brand but because it is convenient. Most likely, the next day, they will try another place in the area, as they are not interested in your special offer or product.

Why the decision-making time is so important for Marketing?

Marketing is first of all about understanding people and their behaviours. Imagine a situation, where you want to offer a very special dinner, but if advertised too late and the campaign timing is wrong, your customers will just have not enough time to discover about it or to adjust their plans for it. As a result, you’ll spend a budget on advertisement, but won’t have any return on your investment.

Without understanding the customer’s behaviours it’s much more difficult to get enough information and adjust the business operation accordingly.

Related posts:

• TOP 5 reasons why your Restaurant Social Media is not working
• Quick guide: Food Photos to Increase Your Restaurant’s Sales
• Restaurant Marketing: 9 Effective Tactics to boost revenues with Takeaways and delivery
• Art Direction: for Hotel and Restaurant Social Media
• Social Media: Burger restaurant photo-shooting

As you can see, each kind of business needs its own approach. At FAMEsolutely, we have worked with FNB businesses in Koh Samui for many years. Find out more about our FNB clients, and don’t forget to check our Digital Marketing and Social Media services.

At FAMEsolutely, we offer all kinds of marketing outsourcing services. If you don’t have a marketer on your team, we also offer consulting services.