Customer service is the best kind of restaurant PR

I am nearing the end  of my internship and I can’t believe it’s gone by so quick! As mentioned in my first blog post, What restaurant PR brings to the table, I am interning at a restaurant in Jakarta. I’ve learnt a great deal over the span of four weeks in Jakarta’s restaurant industry. There are many challenges revolving the restaurant business, first and foremost the financial aspects of the business.

One of the key things I learnt is the importance of excellent customer service. Today, a great restaurant is more than just food. Customer service plays a significant role in the overall dining experience and is necessary to build a positive restaurant reputation. When you are able to give your customers an amazing and distinctive dining experience, the customers will do the PR for you. Satisfied customers will spread positive word of mouth about the restaurant and bring in new prospects. Customer service is therefore the best kind of restaurant PR.

For example, there’s been an increase in the number of expatriate customers at my workplace. Most of the waiters understand basic English restaurant terms. However, I’ve noticed that with expatriate customers, especially those who come alone during their lunch breaks, enjoy having conversations that require waiters to have more than a basic level of English. Often they ask about the restaurant’s background. And since the start of my internship, my supervisor has asked me to have casual conversations in English with the waiters in order to improve their English. Although it is a simple task, it goes a long way to improving customer service and the overall dining experience for our expat customers. Moreover, the restaurant will gain positive reputation for being expat friendly. 

Photo credit: urbanouteaters.com

Over the past four weeks, I’ve been very fortunate to have had a very hands on work experience at the restaurant. Having spent most of my break at the restaurant, I’ve been able to make new associations and new friends. I been able to observe and absorb many teachings and lessons through experience in Jakarta’s restaurant industry as a PR intern. The only downside to interning at a restaurant is the weight you put on from eating so much good food! Other than that, it’s been a great experience.

#foodstagramming

Foodstagramming is a continuously growing trend in which people posts photos of their food on Instagram and Twitter. With that said, my Instagram feed has turned into a constant stream of photos of other people’s food and I know I’m not the only one. 

Indonesians in particular, are up to date in almost all social media trends thanks to the popularity of the Blackberry and affordable internet mobile plans. I Googled and found that 95.7% of Indonesian netizens are active on social media. And as an Indonesian myself, I know firsthand the love affair my country has with social media, predominantly twitter.  

As mentioned in my first blog post, What restaurant PR brings to the table, I’m currently interning at a restaurant in Jakarta. As I spend much of my internship at the restaurant, I’ve been able to observe patterns in customers who follow a variety of social media trends. As expected, it is generally the young female adults aged 17-25 who spend the few good minutes uploading photos of their meals online. It therefore becomes essential for the restaurant to present their food, drinks and desserts in an artistic way that entices customers to take photos and upload online. A clear advantage of the foodstagram trend is the awareness and interest it creates online that will help in attracting future customers to the restaurant.

#parc19bistroterrace

Social media is a powerful PR tool that has become increasingly important in the restaurant scene across the world. Restaurateurs have altered their business models to integrate social media. Evidently, proactive use of social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can significantly improve the business in terms of public awareness and interest, customer loyalty, profit and so forth. However, we should never forget the risks involved. Restaurants run the risks of having negative comments posted on their Facebook wall, which calls for constant monitoring. Burger King recently suffered a hacking incident which brought negative impacts on its brand reputation. A restaurant and other establishments must take the necessary actions in order to mitigate social media risks.

They will come to you

In PR techniques and PR media, we learnt how to create and assemble a media kit that would be sent off to various media outlets. We learnt that in order to get media coverage, we, as PR practitioners must go and seek for it. Surprisingly, this is not the case at my work placement. 

As mentioned in my previous blog post, What Restaurant PR brings to the table, I am currently interning at a restaurant in Jakarta, Indonesia. Instead of delivering media kits to relevant media outlets, often writers, PR and/or marketing officers from different media outlets would contact the restaurant. It is therefore important for restaurants and other establishments in Jakarta to draw attention from the media in order to gain coverage. The greater the hype a restaurant receives, the more interested the media is and thus, the greater the media coverage.  

Recently, a writer from a website visited the restaurant with two others equipped with their cameras and photography accessories. My supervisor and I greeted them to a table where we briefly discussed the restaurant’s background and ordered them the specialties. They then freely took photos of the food, drinks and restaurant. 

However, they don’t always come to you. My supervisor said that for special events, he would personally invite people from the media, approximately 10 people, whom he has established a strong relationship with. He does not expect them to write about the event, however just to have a good time. The purpose of this is to create a stronger relationship between the restaurant and the media.  And as studied in this degree, developing strong and positive relations with the media is a key component to the success of a business.

What Restaurant PR brings to the table

As you would have already suspected from the title, I am in fact interning at a restaurant. I am currently in my 7^th day of internship at Parc 19, a restaurant situated in the heart of the entertainment district within Jakarta, Indonesia. Parc 19 is owned by PT Globaltama Maharasa, a company with vast experience in Indonesia’s restaurant and entertainment industry.

Obviously a restaurant isn’t your typical PR work placement and the term restaurant PR is something that most of us have never come across up until now. So why is restaurant PR important?

With greater competition within the restaurant industry worldwide, particularly in large cities like Jakarta where new hotspots seem to pop up each week, standing out is a challenge. That’s where PR can help. Cost effective PR strategies can be implemented to turn an empty restaurant to a full house and differentiate its establishment from competitors without having to spend on elaborate advertisements. 

One key component that PR brings to the table is a publicist’s, practitioner’s or PR consultancy’s strong, existing relationships with the media, industry and community. With these strong relationships, there is greater ease for a restaurant to execute its promotional strategies as well as greater chances for media coverage. 

Today, the importance of restaurant PR is growing with increasing number of PR consultancies in the US and UK specialising in restaurants.

Ayu Gunawan.

it's just not the same without Gravy... Part 5

This week was all things Kitsch! You don’t have to stop reading; this doesn’t mean I will be talking about tasteless, unrefined matters (although, it may contain tacky images), but I mean Kitsch Bar and Restaurant – Gravy’s fifth client presented to you thus far. Kitsch is owned by Iain Lawless – who also owns Lawless Cooking, a client of Gravy’s that I spoke of in my last post. It’s an Asian style bar/restaurant situated in Leederville that has a very eccentric, untailored style to it.

Similar to Lawless Cooking, Gravy handles their promotional communications (e-Newsletters, social media accounts, email enquiries, etc.) and is in charge of the marketing and management of their cooking classes which are held throughout the year on Monday nights (a night that Kitsch is closed). My job with Kitsch is to respond to email enquiries – some of which I redirect to the General Manager of Kitsch if it is regarding a restaurant booking or function; otherwise it is generally concerning a cooking class in which I then inform people of, book them in, and confirm their payments. Gravy promotes the cooking classes via Facebook and e-Newsletters to Kitsch’s database. I have created posters for all of them to make it a bit more eye-catching and to get people’s attention. You can see a few of them below:

  (a small bio of Paul Cherry is yet to be added to this one)

And there are many more! These are just my favourites J

As you can see, it's not just Kitsch chefs that participate in these cooking classes; we are simply the host for the classes and chefs from all over Perth are asked to demonstrate their own special cooking styles in a class tailored for them. It is a great way to engage and cater for all sorts of food lovers over Perth.

As for the posters, I had no guidance or direction given to me when creating them, let alone any templates or formats that I had to work by; so I was free to go about it however I wanted (which I LOVE)! I obviously stuck to the Kitsch style and theme which is retro, a bit crazy, crude and (obviously) kitschy. Google was my best friend through the process of creating these – trying to find images that portray a certain cooking style in a kitschy way isn’t as easy as you might think! And as I have said time and time again – I am by no means a graphic designer! This means I have to make do with what Google and Microsoft Office gives me… but they don’t turn out so bad if I may say so myself J

As I said, we send these and other promotions and communications to our database. This database is quite well developed as we have a birthday promotion set up so that every person on our database receives a voucher for Kitsch to use in the couple of week around their birthday. You will be surprised how many sign-ups we get from having this promotion in place. I am also in charge of distributing these vouchers out and have a reminder system set up on outlook for all of our customer’s birthdays.  It is also very well received by our customers as it is a nice gesture tailored specifically for them. You can see where you are able to sign up for this promotion on the Kitsch website: Kitsch Bar and Restaurant.

Kitsch is probably the least demanding and the most constant of all of our clients. Tasks never usually change and all of the processes needed for our correspondence are in place. All in all, an extremely smooth running operation – something VERY uncommon in the consultancy industry!

Until next time...

--Sarah