Summer 2023: Technology Digital Supplement

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There isn’t any business I can think of these days that isn’t reliant on technology. No matter the size, concept or location of your restaurant, you have to have a reliable POS system in place, deal with customers’ increasing reliance on third-party apps, and have a presence on social media to compete in the increasingly tech-oriented world in which we live.

With that in mind, el Restaurante brings you “Tech on the Menu,” our third digital-only issue of 2023. We hope the information it provides will bring you closer to mastering technology that helps you run your restaurant in time- and labor-saving ways, attract more customers, and achieve the bottom-line benefits you’re striving for.

Ed Avis PUBLISHER

Kathleen Furore EDITOR Ala Ennes ART DIRECTOR MAIN OFFICE phone: 708.267.0023

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PUBLISHED BY Maiden Name Press, LLC Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

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TECALITLAN OWNER KARLA GARCIA TALKS TECH

POS systems, third-party apps and social media platforms offer myriad ways to help restaurant businesses thrive. Chicago’s Tecalitlan Mexican Kitchen and Margarita Bar has experienced the ins and outs and the rapid advance of technology more than most, considering the restaurant celebrates its 50th birthday this year.

Editor Kathleen Furore spoke with Karla Garcia, who co-owns Tecalitlan with her brother, Juan Carlos, to hear how she and her team are using the technology to drive sales and profits.

Technology Arrives

Technology has changed at lightning speed since Tecalitlan invested in its first POS system more than two decades ago.

“It was when we went from the regular cash registers, those old school ones, to a POS. That was my first encounter with that. I think I was 16,” Garcia says. “My dad was not very technology savvy either and it was all brand new, so he sent me to training because he figured I was younger, quicker at learning. I came back and I helped with training staff.”

While it improved efficiency, the system was very low-tech compared to today’s systems.

“It was just pretty much to take orders and cut down from having to write orders down and give the tickets to the kitchen,” she recalls, noting that it eliminated a problem that was common in

restaurant kitchens. “[Kitchen employees] would ask, ‘What does this say? Is it steak? Is it chicken? I don’t know what you wrote,’” Garcia says.

As Tecalitlan grew, so did the restaurant’s need for a more advanced POS system that tackled more tasks. The next one they purchased could keep track of payroll plus liquor and food inventories. “It did a lot more than the first hunk of metal!” Garcia recalls. And it impacted Tecalitlan “big time!” Garcia says.

“Instead of me going through manual time cards every week (those big punch-in cards, remember those?) and trying to add everybody’s hours, the machine did it for me. It used to take us about three days to do payroll — we went from three days to one day, or a day and a half,” Garcia says.

Another plus of the upgraded system was a more streamlined inventory tracking system for the bar and the kitchen.

“For example, when liquor and beer would come in, we would punch in, ‘This case has 36 bottles’, and note that there were now 36 more Coronas on top of whatever we had,” Garcia explains.“ At the end of the night or at the end of the week, we could be like, ‘Okay, how many Coronas did we sell?’ We could go back to see what we bought, what was still in inventory.”

That meant everyone could see if the count was accurate or if something was missing. “We could say, ‘Okay, it’s right on the dot’ or ‘You know what? We’re missing half a case of Corona. Where’d it go?’” she says.

Accuracy and cost saving were the benefits. As Garcia says, it gave her an opportunity to see if any overpouring or comping had been going on.

“It keeps [people] a little more honest,” she explains. I can say, ‘Hey, I just gave you this bottle two days ago and it says you’ve only sold four shots. Why are you out of it?’ It’s kind of the same thing with food inventory, too.”

New Location, New POS

In 2021, Tecalitlan was forced out of the location they’d called home for 48 years. That meant moving everything — including the POS system. That part of the move was simple, Garcia says.

“I just had to unplug it and plug it in again. But then when we got here, we changed the POS system to an even more advanced system,” she says. “I think we’ve been through maybe six POS systems in my life.” She says the one she uses now “is probably my favorite.”

The way the system handles payroll is one of the biggest benefits.

“I can integrate my payroll to the payroll company that processes it. I can just double check it, make sure everything is done right, then just enter the hours and press ‘Go.’ It takes me about an hour at most if I’m not paying full attention, 20 to 25 minutes [when dedicated solely to that]. Before, I would be like, ‘All right,

from the front lines

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Tecalitlan co-owners Juan Carlos and Karla Garcia with el Restaurante Publisher Ed Avis

doing payroll, see you in two days!’”

The way the system integrates with third party apps is another plus, Garcia says.

“For example, if I have to change something — like if I have to 86 something — instead of going on GrubHub or on Uber Eats to do it, I can do it on the POS system. I just go in there and it blocks [whatever we’re out of]. That shows up in every app and also for all my staff so they can’t even sell it. They can’t even punch it in. Before, if the kitchen was out of something, it would be like, ‘Hey, 86, the chorizo.’ I’d have to go tell everybody. Now I 86 the chorizo, and nobody can sell it. I love that.”

The overall issue of third-party apps, however, is another story.

“I use them because I have to use them, not because I want to,” she says.

Handheld terminals for waitstaff is another plus Tecalitlan takes advantage of.

“You can get as many as you want. You pay for them, obviously. But I find them so much easier, especially once you know the system really well. And they let you dedicate more time to your customer instead of writing down an order, running to a POS terminal, waiting in line until the other guy finishes sending his order,” she explains. “I feel like they have opened up a little bit more free time. And my older waiters who came with me from the other location that had the stagnant terminals, they’re like, ‘This is so much easier. This saves me so much more time!’”

The system also offers a rewards program that Tecalitlan has opted to use. Customers get one point for every $2 they spend, and can redeem the points on future visits. Two big benefits: It allows the restaurant to collect customers’ emails (which Garcia can use to reach out with information and special offers), and the platform notifies Tecalitlan about customers’ dining habits.

“So, every month, I can focus my [marketing] campaign on people who were here last week, people who haven’t been here in two weeks, or people who haven’t been here in a month,” Garcia says.

The Plus of the Platforms

Tecalitlan entered the world of social media via Facebook, then added Instagram, and finally TikTok.

“I don’t have TikTok for myself because I don’t like it, but I had to get with the times, and I had to do reels and videos,” Garcia laughs. “I tried to do the best that I could, but I realized I have limitations because I’m in my forties. So, I’m like, this is way beyond my ability — these people walking around with the sticks and doing all this stuff, that’s not me!”

The solution: Garcia handles the in-house posts, but pays someone a monthly fee to come in and shoot reels and videos, do the editing, and post [the content] every week on different platforms. “I realized that my time is better spent trying to take care of my customers than trying to edit a 15-second video for three hours. I realized I was not doing that great of a job,” she says.

The approach has led to an uptick in business.

“I’ve gotten customers who say, ‘We saw you on TikTok. We saw this video. You got tagged on this Instagrammer’s page,’ or whatever. Before it was, ‘Get your customers through word of mouth.’ Now it’s, ‘Get your customers through social media.’ If you’re not on social media, you might as well not exist, unfortunately.”

Advice for Tech Shoppers

So, based on her experience with restaurant technology, what advice does Garcia have for her industry peers?

“For sure, I would say to do your homework. Really, really investigate, and see all the pros and cons of each system,” Garcia says, noting that while she considers her current system the best choice for her 40-table restaurant (including patio seating), “there could be a system that could be better-suited for a smaller venue that doesn’t need as much of the stuff that I do.

“If there’s a smaller venue that just has five or six tables, they might not need something so complete because they might not have as many employees. They might not have to worry about the inventory — so, maybe a smaller POS system that’s not as sophisticated [might be the best option].”

Another suggestion: test other systems out there before buying. “I have friends who have other POS systems, so I’d say, ‘Can I come over and try it?’ And they would say, ‘Here, play with it. Do it. Let me know what you have questions on,’” Garcia says.

And once you decide on a system, “make sure you just use it to the fullest potential… if you are paying and investing for a POS system, make sure you’re getting everything that you can out of it, because if not, it’s just going to be a big paperweight,” Garcia concludes.

The POS system helps Tecalitlan staff manage business during a busy 50th Birthday celebration in July.

Consultant Izzy Kharasch

Dishes on Choosing the Right POS for Your Restaurant

Choosing a POS system can be a major challenge for a restaurant owner, and it’s something Izzy Kharasch regularly helps his clients do. Kharasch is the owner of Hospitality Works, a restaurant consulting firm that counts among its clients several Mexican restaurants. Publisher Ed Avis asked Kharasch to help us understand the process of selecting a POS.

Ed Avis: There are scores of POS systems a restaurant owner can choose from. What is the first piece of advice you have for someone trying to sort them out?

Izzy Kharasch: My main piece of advice is, after you have looked at three or four POS systems that seem like they would work for you, find some other restaurants that have the systems that you’re thinking about buying and set up an appointment and go talk to the manager, talk to the owner, and talk to the servers and the bartenders, because they’re going to tell you how it really works. They’re going to tell you, is it easy to use, is it accurate? Can you correct things? How easy is it to get set up? What

kind of reports are you going to get? And then another big discussion is [about] support. When the system went down, how quick did they respond? Because even if it’s the perfect system, if we don’t have good support, we’re not going to take it to the next step.

EA: Speaking of support, is it safe to assume that once you choose a system, it will work in your restaurant?

IK: I like a company that tells me that before they install the system, they’re going to bring out one of their systems and test it to make sure that we have everything that we need to run their system. Because I’ve been with restaurants before where they buy the POS and the provider hooks it up, and they go, “Oh you don’t have enough bandwidth, you don’t have enough internet.” And all of a sudden, now we’re playing catch up to get all these things fixed.

EA: What training should the POS company offer?

IK: One of the things that a lot of POS companies are doing now is selling you the system and saying, “Well, all of our training is done online.” Right off the bat, I will not look at those systems at all because what all of my clients need is [in-person training]. I’m sitting in a restaurant right now and we open in two weeks. Next week the POS company comes in and they install their product. We’re going to bring the staff in, and we’re going to train the staff for a few days and let them play with the system. The POS company is sending in a trainer for two days to be on property with us during the opening so that they can answer all the questions, they can make the fixes, they can train the staff.

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EA: What about training new employees who arrive after the POS is installed?

IK: When you get a new employee, you want to make sure that you can put the POS into a training mode so that that employee can play with the computer, ring things up, do all that, but you don’t want it to interrupt your daily sales. So, that’s something that you should ask the POS company: Do you have a training mode that I can use while the system’s up and running so that when I have a new server, we can give them mock orders and all that, they can go in, they can punch in the order and it doesn’t disrupt?

EA: Does the hardware come with the system, or do restaurants buy that separately?

IK: For the most part, the POS companies provide you with the hardware, and that includes the printers, cash drawers and of course, the mounted and handheld POS. But there are companies that say, “We’re going to sell you all the software and everything else, and you could go to Best Buy and buy all of the monitors that you need and go from there.” While that’s a very small part of the POS world today, I think that’s really the next thing that will be coming down the line for everybody. Because once somebody is saying, “Hey, you could really lower your costs and we’re just going to sell the expertise, the software, we’re going to monitor it and you’ll pay certain licensing for our product and we’ll give you 24-hour support,” that’s going to be a big savings for restaurants. I think right now that’s kind of a sleeper, but it’ll become more popular in the next few years.

EA: Is it smart to let the POS company handle your credit card processing?

IK: This is where all the new POS companies are making their real money. You’re getting the system at a very big discount for the hardware and for the software overall, and they’re making the processing fees and all those kinds of things. Good or bad, it’s currently the deal. However, with some systems, you can go out and shop credit card processors. The time to negotiate your credit card fee is when you’re buying the equipment. You could save a huge amount of money.

EA: What else should a restaurant owner be aware of regarding the cost of the POS system?

IK: One thing to remember is that you have to pay a licensing fee every month [based on the number of POS stations you have]. So, you need to ask very distinctly, “What is my licensing fee every month?” [With] some companies it comes out to $300 a month and [with] some companies it’s $1,000 a month for the same six POS stations.

EA: It seems handheld POS stations are becoming more common in restaurants.

IK: The handheld makes ordering quicker for every table. Typically, when I do training for restaurants, the servers get three or four tables to a station. But once they’re really good and they can use the handheld, they can handle six tables and maybe even seven, which makes them 20 to 30 percent more productive. The handheld really is an incredible tool. With our restaurants, we’re tending to get less mounted POS stations all over the restaurant. The easiest way to explain it is that every two handhelds equal one table mounted POS.

EA: What are the essential reports a POS system should provide?

IK: I like to see what were the gross sales, what were the taxes, what’s my net sales, maybe what’s my labor cost for yesterday? I also like to see my cash balance, because it shows me what the deposit for cash is supposed to be. Sometimes in that daily report we’ll do a comparison of sales compared to the last week or sales compared to last year, same time. Another report is called a descending sales report, which shows your best-selling items down to your slowest-selling items. That helps the owner make a decision about what items to get rid of. You also want to make sure the POS connects to QuickBooks [or whatever accounting/management program you use]. This saves us and our accountant a ton of time by having everything dumped into the right software program and helps keep us accurate in lots of ways.

EA: If you buy a new POS system, can you upload your existing data into it?

IK: Some of it, but probably the most important piece of that is gift card data. I want to make sure that that we

can transition that data into the new system so we don’t lose track [of balances on existing gift cards]. It’s going to make people very unhappy if they show up with a gift card and you say, “Oh, we switched systems, and how much was the value of that card?” In general, when we’re getting rid of one system and putting in another system, we’re making sure to download every piece of information that we have on the old system so that we have a copy of everything. Because if you don’t do that and you switch systems, it’s possible that they’re going to turn you off and you’ll lose all that information.

EA: Our readers are mostly owners of Mexican restaurants. Is there anything they should consider in a POS differently from owners of other types of restaurants?

IK: With Mexican restaurants, the cocktails are much more detailed. We have 800 tequilas, we have 60 ways to make a

Margarita. And that really is unique to Mexican restaurants. So, your POS needs to be more detailed [in that regard] because somebody might say, “I want a Cadillac Margarita, I don’t want salt on the rim, I want it to be golden, so I want a shot of this in the middle.” Also in Mexican restaurants, there often are opportunities [to mix and match small menu items]. The customer might say, “You know what, I want four tacos, I want one fish, one chicken, one meat, one vegetarian.” And the POS needs to be right on top of that so that the servers can very easily make all of those adjustments quickly.

EA: Have we covered it all, Izzy?

IK: I think so, but it’s a big topic. I guess my major piece of advice that I’d like to reiterate is find three systems to review and make your decision based on how other operators, especially their servers, like the system.

Q&A With Chef Izzy Kharasch

THIRD-PARTY APPS 6 Tips to Drive Sales

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Delivery was a true life saver for most restaurants during Covid, and third-party apps such as Grubhub and Uber Eats became essential tools for nearly everyone. But now things have changed. Is delivery still essential, and if it is for your restaurant, are the third-party apps the best way to go?

Publisher Ed Avis asked Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn that question. Theses authors of Delivering The Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food and its sequel, Delivering the Digital Restaurant: The Path to Digital Maturity, offered six tips on maximizing revenue through delivery and the use of third-party apps.

Treat a Delivery Order Like Any Other Order

Many Mexican restaurants have a love/hate relationship with third-party platforms. The margins are lower, the drivers are often not employees, and the customers usually are not regulars. But here’s the deal: Those customers might become regulars if they have a great experience, and if they have a bad experience, they might leave a bad review.

“Sometimes third-party orders get de-prioritized, they take longer, the drivers are waiting, things like that, which causes drivers to be less likely to want to come pick up, which causes the consumer to have a terrible experience. And that then affects their ratings, which means that they’ll get fewer orders,” Sandland explains.

Remember that correcting a mistake on a delivery order is harder than on an in-house order. And if that delivery order came from a third-party app, you might not even get the chance to correct the order — you’ll just get a hefty charge-back from the app.

A key way to avoid the prejudice against orders from third-party apps is to make them indistinguishable to your kitchen staff, Sandland says.

“In an ideal situation, the restaurant itself, the kitchen and employees, should not even know that it came in from a third party,” she explains. “It should flow seamlessly into the kitchen and it should be executed just like any other order. I think it’s natural that employees in the restaurant do not really want to do third party orders. For example, if the driver’s getting the tip

instead of server, you could see how there would be naturally some feeling of, ‘I don’t like these orders as well as the others.’ It’s a completely natural human response, human feeling. And so in the best cases, that’s invisible to the kitchen and where possible, invisible to the front house staff as well.”

Customers don’t care whether they ordered through Grubhub or walked into your physical location: They make a determination based on quality.

“One of the things we talk about is the importance of looking at your customer as an omnichannel customer,” Orsbourn says. “So they might first discover you through a third-party marketplace for a convenient lunchtime occasion, but then they might bring their entire family into your restaurant for the weekend. Those first impressions count.”

2 Make Every Item on Your Delivery Menu a 10-Minute Item

The menu you make available through third-party apps doesn’t need to be same as the menu you use in-house. With that in mind, don’t put any item on the delivery menu that will take you more than 10 minutes to make.

“Typically, what happens is that marketplaces will add 20 minutes worth of logistics fulfillment time on top of the menu production time,” Orsbourn says. “Therefore if it takes more than 10 minutes [to prepare the order], it falls outside of a half-hour window. So then you’re not going to be seen as appealing, not just for that one item, but as a restaurant brand for that customer ongoing.”

Knowing exactly when to start an order is a related situation. If you start too soon, the food will be cold when the driver arrives. If you start too late, the driver might have to wait.

“If you are in an area where there are a lot of drivers and you have a relatively high ticket average, and drivers want to come to you because they’re likely to get a high tip, then I would suggest making the food [as soon as you get the order because] drivers will ap -

pear very quickly,” Sandland says. “But if you are in a place where it’s hard to get drivers and you have a very quick make time, then I would suggest you wait until the driver gets there, and then make the food. The worst situation you could be in is if you have a low ticket average, you’re in an area where there’s not a lot of drivers, and your make time is long. And there I think you should ask yourself, ‘Should I be doing delivery at all? Should I lower my make times? How do I address that to get to a more productive place?’”

3 Try to Capture Personal Information About Your Delivery Customers

When someone orders through Grubhub, your restaurant doesn’t get much information beyond their name and address. Grubhub likes it that way, because they want the customer to order through them every time. But it’s better for you if you have some way to market directly to the customer and have them come into your restaurant, or order through your own website, and skip the app.

To get personal data, Orsbourn suggests attaching some kind of marketing to the delivery packaging. Don’t just drop it into the bag, because it probably will get thrown in the trash with the bag.

“Another way is to put something on the receipt itself, maybe a QR code,” he says. “Being able to form a relationship with the customer helps from a guest satisfaction standpoint, and that can be done through the receipt.”

Another way to make the personal connection, and hopefully gather data, is by having someone hand write a note to the customer. If you write a note that says something like, “Enjoy your meal… send us your email for 10% off your next order” and staple to the delivery packaging, you’ll probably get a decent response.

Once you collect the emails, you can do your own marketing that directs customers to your own site rather than a third-party site.

Customers don’t care whether they ordered through Grubhub or walked into your physical location: They make a determination based on quality .

4 Make it Easy

Having your own ordering platform, such as through Toast or Lunchbox, helps you keep the profit in your own cash register. But in order to get enough customers using your own platform, you need to make sure it works well. One way to do that is to count how many clicks it takes to place an order, Orsbourn explains.

“If you were a registered user on Amazon buying something off the front screen, it takes three clicks to purchase something, done. Three clicks, best in class,” he says. “If you are on DoorDash, it takes around five clicks to buy a standard item, no modifiers. So every additional click beyond those five is a reason for the customer to continue using third party.”

Where do extra clicks accumulate? It could happen if you require customers to register; it could happen in the ordering process, especially if you have a lot of options on menu items; it could happen on payment; and it could happen if you ask people to join your loyalty program.

“All of those things add a bit of friction, and that is one thing we really emphasize independents to look at,” Orsbourn says.

5 Think Twice Before “Throttling” the Third Party Apps

On busy days, do you sometimes turn off orders flowing from GrubHub or Uber Eats? That’s a natural thing to do if your kitchen is overwhelmed. But it isn’t the best decision, according to Orsbourn.

“If you had a line of people at your physical location, would you shut the doors and chase them away? Of course not. You would probably hand them a menu and offer them a seat at your bar until there was room,” he says.

Instead of shutting off the apps when you’re busy, take some time beforehand to strategize how you might handle the flow of orders better. Some ideas:

• Streamline your delivery menu and remove any time-consuming items.

• Consider your workspace and optimize it for to-go orders, especially during busy times.

• Look at your data and consider staffing up when you know more online orders typically come in.

• Consider increasing your online prices when you know traffic is highest. This may reduce your orders, but you’ll make more money on each order so ultimately it should balance out. Similarly, consider dropping prices during slow periods to keep your kitchen working efficiently.

“These orders are incremental volume and it’s all too easy to switch them off,” Orsbourn says. “And perhaps even more important, it’s easy to forget to turn it back on when things get quieter again.”

6 Plan Online Prices Carefully to Drive the Traffic You Want

Sometimes changing your online pricing can help you manage the flow in your kitchen. You can use the same strategy to drive traffic to your own ordering platform, where your profit is higher. Just raise the prices on your third-party platforms and let customers know that they’ll pay less if they order from your own site.

“Just make sure you don’t make your prices so much higher than your competition on that same [third-party] platform,” Sandland says.

The biggest take-away is that independent restaurants can be tech leaders, according to Orsbourn and Sandland, who are optimistic about the ability of independent restaurants to maximize the opportunity of third-party delivery apps and other technology.

“We’re excited for independent restaurants because of the advent of all these new technologies,” Orsbourn concludes. “If they have the right mindset and the will to break the model that they used to build their business, the ability for them to transition to this new future is actually right at their fingertips.”

Knowing exactly when to start an order is a related situation. If you start too soon, the food will be cold when the driver arrives. If you start too late, the driver might have to wait.

Q&A

BUILDING A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY: An interview with Social High Rise’s Mark Sorenson

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Nearly every restaurant has a social media presence these days, but some do it much better than others. el Restaurante Publisher Ed Avis quizzed Mark Sorenson, president of Social High Rise, a restaurant social media management company, about what makes the best restaurant social media stand out.

Ed Avis: Many restaurants use social media to talk about promotions and specials. Is that the best content to deliver? Mark Sorenson: They should talk about much more than just specials — it should be a storytelling endeavor. Consumers want to hear about who they are, what they are, and what they stand for more than they want to be sold to. The story is everything from the history of the restaurant — where it’s come from, throwback stories from the past, everything about the concept. It’s about the owners and their inspiration. And the concept itself is about the things that they care about, the ways they get involved in the community, the ways that they give back or donate or sponsor. Of course, they also want to talk about their food. It’s not that you can’t talk about specials and events, but if that’s all you say, it cheapens the relationship.

EA: Can you give us some examples?

MS: It could be showcasing one of their food suppliers, or where they source their ingredients. Or the Little League team they sponsor. It could be the picture of the guy delivering kegs of

beer in the back, or a new employee. Restaurant owners are almost too close to the restaurant to recognize interesting opportunities to tell a good story. They think their story is mundane. But to their guests, that story is new and interesting. It helps them feel more emotionally bonded…like they have insight that makes them feel closer to that restaurant. Those feelings are exactly what gets guests to come more often, spend more money, spread more word of mouth. All of the things that you want them to do, they’ll do if they feel closer to you.

EA: But at some point, you need to post about your Taco Tuesday promotion or your Happy Hour, right?

MS: I’ll put it this way, the more we do this kind of work, the more I realize that the value of posting on social media is the long-term goal of keeping your audience engaged and active and caring about what you have to say. The more you can delay the ask, the more you can put off asking your audience to buy from you, to spend money with you, the better. They know you sell food and they already like it, otherwise they wouldn’t follow your page. But in the back of people’s minds, they’re always expecting the sell. The longer you can delay that, it takes the pressure off, and they want to share you with everyone they know. That’s how you get them to spread better word of mouth. That’s how you get them to pay attention to your deals when you do end up posting them. So, try to delay the ask for as long as you can.

EA: Many restaurant owners find it hard to make the time to create posts, or to write something interesting. How long should these posts be?

MS: For the most part less is more. Simple is better. If you’re telling a story, people will be more likely to read it if it’s a simple snippet. If it’s the keg guy, it’s just a simple shot. I mean, it’s not so much his life story, but you might snap a picture of that guy with a crate full of kegs wheeling in the back, smiling and giving his salute, and you shout out, say, “Hey, we love Jeremy, we see him every Thursday, and he’s the best.” Or if Jeremy did have

something special that you knew about him, you could definitely share that: “And by the way, Jeremy’s also the coach for the Little League team, and they’re going to the playoffs this year.” The primary element to have in your social media is authenticity — even if you are not super good at technology, being authentic with that, but still doing it. When you see some of the best content out there, it’s not polished. It looks amateur. It feels amateur. But you can tell it’s real and it’s authentic. You can feel the sincerity, you can feel the emotions, and that’s what we’re after. That’s what we connect to as humans.

EA: Should the restaurant get staff involved, or designate one person to handle social media?

MS: If you have staff with a little bit of creative chops to write and compose, to be creative, I think you should include multiple people. The challenge is, and what we often see, is that there’s nobody really leading or directing the effort. You have four or five or six people helping out with social media, but it’s just hit-and-miss. Everyone’s assuming somebody else is doing it because that’s not their primary job. On the other hand, having different people’s perspective is a good idea. At the end of the day the story that you tell [should] include many voices.

EA: How do you encourage customers to post about your restaurant?

MS: By paying attention to them. On social media, what people want is attention. You can feature their photo, like the content they created, maybe comment on it — that’s going to signal to them that you’re paying attention, that you see them. You’re helping them feel validated, cared about, valued, all the feelings we want our guests to feel. You can give them those feelings when they’re not inside the restaurant by paying attention to them on the internet, on social media. That naturally will get them to want to do more of that activity, because they get the dopamine hit, they get the adrenaline rush of seeing that somebody liked them or tagged them or paid attention to them, featured them even. So, the next time they come in, which they will, they’ll take another photo and tag the restaurant again and try to be seen.

EA: We hear a lot about TikTok these days. Is that as important as FaceBook and Instagram?

MS: Instagram and Facebook are the most important platforms. They have the most users, the most diverse users. Those two plat-

forms are absolutely a must. But TikTok is also important. There’s a whole young generation of people who [use TikTok as] their primary social media source. With TikTok we say, “Look, give it to somebody. Give it to one of your employees who knows the platform and who is interested in managing it. Let them goof off, let them do the trends, the dance trends, let them be creative and let that be an outlet for them and get them involved.” I think that you can have a great, engaging TikTok presence by just letting one of your employees take the reins.

EA: How does a restaurant know if its social media is working?

MS: You have to ask yourself: “What do you want out of social media?” I think the best goals are better connection with your customers, better interactions with your guests…making sure they are there and that what you’re saying is something that they care about. Probably the best way to measure that is engagement — are people liking what you’re saying, commenting, sharing it? Those numbers will be a reflection of whether or not your guests cared about that message. That’s not to say they should only post things that you’re going to get likes, commenting, shares about. There’s lots of content out there that isn’t really designed to get engagement, but it’s still important. Like, “Hey, we’re updating our hours of operation.” But as far as the storytelling content, if you’re not getting likes or comments or shares and you’ve got enough of a following to get that, then your guests don’t really care about what you have to say. That’s a good chance to figure out, “Well, what am I posting about? Am I posting about the same thing over and over?” Another way to think about creating content is, make it selfless first. Don’t make it about your restaurant. Make it about your partner. Make it about the cause. Make it about your inspiration that benefits the guest. That’s good content, that’s engaging.

EA: Are there any ideas we haven’t touched on?

MS: I can geek out all day long thinking about and talking about the best ways to do social media. What’s fun about it is that there is no cookie cutter approach to good social media other than staying true to your brand, staying true to your values, and letting your social media be a full reflection of everything that you are as a brand, as a restaurant, as individuals, as part of the team. If your social media can reflect that wholeheartedly, the good and the bad and the ugly, then you’re setting yourself up for success.

“The primary element that you want to have in your social media is authenticity…That garners a lot of respect from folks.”

– MARK SORENSON