“Responding to those who post such comments is a crucial component in monitoring customer feedback…you have to tell the customers you have heard them and are working to address their concerns.”

I’ve written a case study analyzing user-generated content about the 88-location Buca di Beppo restaurant chain – you can read more about the case study and download a .pdf version of the restaurant reputation tracking case study on the BooRah.com blog.

Nearly one out of every four restaurant visits during June, July and August was prompted by the offer of a deal, a 9-percent jump in bargain hunting from the same period of 2007, according to research released by The NPD Group here. The researcher’s CREST data show that overall restaurant traffic for the quarter was up 1 percent, with all of the gain coming from deal-making. (via NRN)

That’s a huge number – what types of ‘deals’ are most effective?  Good question.  I’ll try to feature some anecdotal offer returns here in a future post.

In the meantime, if you want to learn about BooRah’s restaurant loyalty program – that combines a “deal”  with an incentive for customers to come back again, and to share their email, see this post on blog.boorah.com.

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or, how some are using the social media tool Twitter.com to engage diners online!

What is Twitter, you ask?

The easiest way to think about it is as a “mini blog” – it’s a series of posts you make that’s limited to only 140 characters — perfect for the busy restaurateur or chef!  Here’s the wikipedia definition:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.  Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email…”

Here are some of the restaurants or owners/GM’s/chefs I know of using twitter — check out what they have to say.  And, feel free to add others I don’t know about in the comments section below.

There are a dozen or so Web sites that review local businesses across the country. Take a look, and read what people say behind your back.

There are many more sites out there — be sure to see my previous post on how to make sure your restaurant is listed correctly on all of them.

“Chicago-based consultancy Technomic indicated that while 8% of diners currently participate in frequent-diner programs, two-thirds of customers surveyed said they would likely increase their visits to a favorite restaurant if it offered a reward program.”

Why is it the case that so few restaurants offer loyalty programs?  According to Direct Magazine, it’s often due to the cost and complexity of implementing a program and system.  Sometimes too, it’s the feeling by a restaurant owner that a loyalty program is just a glorified coupon program –

“The purpose of a loyalty program is not points or rewards or plastic cards or discounts. These are just means to an end. It’s rather to discover who the restaurant’s customers are, and to track their behavior, find out their preferences, cater to those preferences and keep two-way communication going. The result should be an ever-stronger relationship with customers that increases frequency, per-check revenue, marketing efficiency and competitive advantage.”

In this age of “drive-by Internet reviews“, a properly designed loyalty program that couples an in-store component with an online component can even help reduce the feeling of increasingly anonymous user-generated drive-by reviews, by building engagement and conversation between the restaurant and the diner.

With that in mind, my company BooRah has a loyalty program for restaurants that seeks to provide these loyalty program benefits without all the complexity — by making use of the Internet.  If you’re a restaurant owner interested in trying this out, sign up for the free 30-day trial.

I can see how Google may have mis-interpreted “Emile’s” into “e-Miles”, but how the heck did “predictablyirrational” get linked to Evvia? I’d guess this is a result of Google’s new policy of allowing users to edit local business listings – in this case with no real check mechanism to stop abuse. There’s other evidence (here, here, here) that this kind of activity is more widespread than these few restaurant examples I provide.

If you’re the owner of a restaurant, the best defense against this kind of activity is to “claim” your listing through Google’s Local Business Center – it’s free (and for that matter, claim your listing on the other search engines as well).

UPDATE: Here’s another example, this time linked to a Citysearch profile page:

And if you look on Google local for Homma’s, you’ll see it’s also linking to Yelp:

So I was wondering — had a person hijacked the “business owner” claim links of these restaurants?

Well, the listings in Google still had the “Edit – New!” link active. Clicking on the “Edit” link took me to the Google Maps page, which still had the link for the business owner – “Are you the owner? Claim your business” link active. So no — in fact Google itself had assigned Yelp’s (or Citysearch’s) reviews page to each of these businesses!!

Next, I talked to the owner of Printers Inc Cafe. She wasn’t real thrilled about the latest reviews on Yelp – which now were top-of-list when someone clicked on her restaurant’s name on Google. Interestingly, Printers Inc Cafe does actually have a website — www.printerscafe.com — which Google had NOT picked up.

So, I helped her setup and “claim” her listing on Google, validated the listing using their telephone validation step, and entered her actual website address through Google’s Local Business Center. Almost immediately, her Google maps listing was updated to the following:

Note that the Google Maps search results now include her website address in place of the old Yelp profile.

Unfortunately, Google’s main search results are not so quick to respond. As of several days later, the main Google search results have not been updated to reflect her website, and still show the Yelp url.

If this action is widespread on Google, this has pretty scary implications — that is, as a small business owner you better (1) have a website that you control, and (2) make sure Google knows what your website is, by claiming your listing through them. Otherwise, who knows WHAT Google will decide to link to from YOUR restaurant’s listing!?

In case you want a complete list of websites that offer free listings for your restaurant and/or links to your website (including Google), see my previous blog post here.

A few days ago on a busy school night, my wife called and asked me to pick up some dinner on the way home. She mentioned a restaurant we like, even though we don’t get to it often, and asked me to look up their menu online so we could figure out what to get.

Yet try as I might, I couldn’t find their website. It finally dawned on me that they did not have one. But since we had not been there in quite a while and could not remember everything on their menu, we decided to get dinner from another place.

This is only one anecdotal case in point (a rather high profile one).  The key points to remember from his comment are:

1.  Make sure your information is up on the web -  if not on your own website, put it up on one of the many restaurant listing sites out there (see my previous post for a list).

2.  Make sure your information shows up in the search engines’ search results – whether it’s your own website or on a third-party website.

You can see his conversations with reviewers on Citysearch here. (Note that I believe you must be a paid sponsor on Citysearch to respond to reviews.)

If you want to see what kind of reviews are out there on your own restaurant, my company, BooRah, has a free service to track your online restaurant reviews.

When those surveyed were asked what influenced them most to dine at a particular restaurant, word of mouth still reigned supreme. It was followed by user reviews, then professional reviews, and finally newspapers. This tells us that diners begin researching based on other diners’ experiences. Whether they are friends, acquaintances or simply others who have dined at the restaurant in question, people are looking for real-life experience to base their dining decisions on – either in person or on the web.

For the restaurant’s website, having an online menu was the single most important item:

Two-thirds of those surveyed felt that menus played a very important role.

They also recommended being aware of which third-party sites have your restaurant listed, and to carefully monitor them.

You can do these things for free on BooRah…. read more on our blog here.