How to build a loyal customer base for your restaurant or café

article

In the fast-paced world of hospitality, creating memorable customer experiences goes beyond serving great food and drinks. The magic happens when restaurants and cafés maintain meaningful connections with their customers and community.

Keeping in touch with your customers is important on so many levels - from building loyalty to driving repeat business and building a positive reputation. Regular communication through social media, email, or loyalty programs helps keep your restaurant or café top of mind, encouraging customers to return. It also provides an opportunity to share promotions, special events, and menu updates while gathering valuable feedback to improve your offering.

Engaging with customers fosters a sense of community, making them feel valued and more likely to recommend your business to others. It can also help protect your business - for example, if you had to close due to a natural disaster or equipment failure, your established links to your community would enable you to keep people up-to-date and ensure there’s a queue at the door when you reopen.

If you aspire to build a loyal army of repeat customers and a thriving community of interest, we’ve got you covered. With these three key steps, you can foster loyalty, build community, and ensure your business remains top-of-mind. 

Step 1: Gather your customer contacts

Building direct lines of communication with your customers puts you in control. Through well-crafted, thoughtful messages you can share offers, updates, and special invitations. Whether through a well-timed text, a personalised email, or a face-to-face interaction, direct engagement builds trust and turns one-time visitors into long-term loyal customers. Here are a few foundational activities you can incorporate into your marketing strategy:

Build an email subscriber list

Start collecting customer emails at every opportunity, whether through online reservations, loyalty programs, or special events. Keep in mind that you must always obtain permission from customers, ensuring they opt in voluntarily, whether through a sign-up form, loyalty program, or reservation system. One way to make sure customers choose to hand over that all-important email address is to offer an incentive, such as exclusive discounts, a free appetizer, or early access to special events.

Being spammed is annoying and won’t make you any friends, so make sure you treat your subscriber's attention and time with respect. Be transparent about how their information will be used and comply with data protection laws, including offering an easy way to unsubscribe. In terms of content, focus on quality over quantity—sharing relevant, useful content will ensure customers genuinely want to hear from you.

Build an SMS subscriber list

SMS marketing delivers messages directly to customers in a fast, personal, and highly engaging way. With open rates often exceeding 90 per cent, text messages are far more likely to be seen than emails or social media posts. People tend to check their phones frequently, ensuring that promotions, special offers, or event reminders reach them almost instantly. SMS is also a more direct and intimate form of communication, creating a sense of urgency that encourages quick action, whether it's making a reservation, redeeming a discount, or attending an event.

So, what should you send to your SMS subscribers? Timely updates about what’s happening at your restaurant or café, or information about exclusive special deals or discounts. Consider offering something exclusive only for SMS subscribers. Above all, be concise and avoid spamming - texting is about quality, not quantity. 

Send a welcome email

Make a great first impression by sending new customers a warm welcome email before or after their first visit. Even better if you include a discount for them to use on their first visit, or a special offer to encourage them to return. This is another opportunity to invite them to sign up to your email and/or SMS list.

Ask for reviews

Often customers who’ve enjoyed a great experience don’t think to write a review. Conversely, if a customer leaves your venue unsatisfied, they’ll be quick to jump online and share their opinions! It’s important to remind happy customers to tell the world about their great experience. Send them the links for your business on Google, Facebook and Trip Advisor so it's easy to leave comments. The more your happy customers leave reviews, the less impact the occasional negative comment will have.

Send thank you notes

Show your gratitude by emailing a genuine thank you message to your customers after their visit. What does their patronage mean to you? Tell them! Making your customers feel valued and important is a great way to get their attention and bring them back again and again.

Mark milestones

Whether it’s a customer birthday, or the anniversary of their first visit to your venue, marking personal milestones by sending an email or even a handwritten card shows your customers you care. A small gift or discount can also go a long way.

Step 2: Expand your community

Once you’ve set up some strong customer communication channels, it’s time to build and strengthen your community. Whether it be sharing on social media, creating fun events, or activating positive word-of-mouth, let's take a look at what you can do to increase customer retention and expand your reach to bring new customers in.

Curate an engaging social media presence

You likely have Facebook and Instagram pages for your business, but do you regularly post content that will help you attract and retain followers? People like to see stories that are relevant to them, so here are a few ideas for what you can post to drive engagement…

Support and share local news

Whether it’s a fundraiser for a local charity, a major city-wide event, or a story from the local newspaper, sharing things that matter to your customers establishes you as a fixture in the local community.

Promote contests and giveaways

Run social media contests encouraging customers to tag friends or share their dining experiences. This not only boosts engagement but also attracts new patrons. 

Hero your team

Share stories about your team and include photos or videos. Whether it was your chef who handled service single-handedly while other staff were away, or the kitchenhand who’s been with you for eight years, and don’t forget the funniest waiter or chatty barista. 

Share your Spotify playlist

If the music in your café or restaurant is part of the vibe, and you have carefully curated Spotify playlists, why not share them! When customers love the tunes you play and download your playlists, it’s a powerful way to remind them to pop back in soon. As well as sharing on your socials, you could put a QR code on tables or the counter to make your playlists quick and easy for people to find.

Post behind-the-scenes glimpses

Share recipes, cooking tips, taste tests – have your barista demonstrate how to make a perfect latte, or your mixologist share their tricks to a perfect martini. This kind of content showcases the best of your offering.

Host exclusive previews

Consider designing some events that are shared exclusively with your email or SMS subscribers. Exclusive preview events can help your regulars feel valued while generating excitement and loyalty. Here are some ideas to consider:

A menu tasting night where you invite regulars to sample new dishes before they officially launch.

A chef’s table experience, where guests enjoy a special tasting menu prepared by the head chef and paired with wines.

A farm-to-table experience where you partner with local suppliers or farmers to host a dinner with local ingredients, where they can hear stories about the origin of the delicious flavours on their plates.

An exclusive cooking class or demonstration with your head chef or bartender, where guests get to learn the secrets of making your most popular menu items.

Host community events

Reach out to the wider community to bring in new customers who might not otherwise have checked out your venue. Organise live music nights, trivia contests, photography exhibitions or paint and sip events. Events bring people together and make your café or restaurant a go-to community hub. 

Sell gift cards

When your customers purchase a gift card, you receive upfront cash flow, even before the meal is redeemed. Gift cards also serve as a powerful word-of-mouth marketing tool, introducing your restaurant or café to new patrons who may not have visited otherwise. Customers using gift cards also tend to spend more than the card’s value, increasing overall sales.

Join forces with local businesses

Partner with nearby florists, boutiques, or artists for co-promotions or joint events. These collaborations expand your customer base by tapping into loyal customers of other local businesses, and the benefits go both ways.

Step 3: Hold their attention

Once you’ve established a community, what can you do to keep things new and interesting? Invest some time in inventing new offerings and keeping up with trends, so people stay interested in your business. You don’t have to do it all yourself, ask your team for ideas and suggestions – they’re sure to have some good ones. Here’s a list of activities to consider.

Keep posting fresh content

Post engaging content on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. Digital platforms make it easy to track engagement and trends, so pay attention to which posts get the most attention, so you know where to focus your efforts.

Go live on social media

Host live Q&A sessions, cooking demonstrations, or events on Instagram or Facebook Live. This real-time interaction boosts connection.

Embrace seasonal themes

Celebrate holidays or local events with themed menus or discounts. Seasonal engagement makes your restaurant or café relevant year-round. 

Sell branded merchandise

Branded merchandise is great for customers who love your business, and it helps to promote your brand. If you sell caps and t-shirts, remind your customers with special pricing and ‘family deals’ especially if stock is running low.

Optimise your website

Ensure your website is user-friendly, up to date, and includes features like online reservations, takeaway orders, and an events calendar. 

Create a customer feedback loop

Ask for feedback through surveys or review platforms. Acknowledge suggestions and make visible improvements based on customer input. There’s no point asking for feedback if you don’t act on it!

Add to your Google listing and TripAdvisor page

Tourists and interstate visitors will use these to research where to go when they visit your city, while locals will check reviews before they try your restaurant or café. The more you post photos and updates to your Google and TripAdvisor pages the higher you will rank and the more you’ll entice people in.

Go forth and build your community

Hopefully these three steps provide you with a framework for building your marketing and engagement program from the ground up. You’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain from building your loyal customer base and a local community invested in your success. Get started today!

Found this useful?

If you’d like more of this kind of content, subscribe to our mailing list using the form at the top right of this page. Our emails are packed with useful information for hospitality business owners, and we promise never to spam you!

Get in touch

Get in touch with us today – call SilverChef on 1800 337 153 to find out more, or message us here