Top Industry Trends to boost your restaurant business!

Ronak Patel
6 min readDec 9, 2019

Trends always come and go, but restaurants operate in a particularly cyclical environment. For restaurants to stay competitive, it’s imperative to keep up-to-date on the trends affecting customer expectations, purchasing practices, and different changes that are molding the essentials of the business in general.

Top Restaurant Industry Trends

Here we will discuss top industry trends that can boost your restaurant business.

1. The Rise of Online Ordering

Generally, direct delivery from restaurants is reigned supreme, whereas the crowded third-party app space is getting creative with their approach to attract new diners to their platforms.

As per the restaurant business, the subscription will emerge to present a clearer value proposition for consumers, and this could provide a true competitive edge for third party delivery apps that needs to make an impression on those who are interested in order online delivery.

2. Renovation

In today’s industry, the renovation has become a common theme for attracting, and customers & businesses are working on updating their spaces for digital-focused consumers.

You can weave elements for fast casual-dining into your design, and you can also use minimalist concepts while building spaces with eye-catching traits is also key. In the food industry, dining out is one of the most shareable experiences, and restaurants also have a chance to work on trends through design choices aimed at social media users.

A financing program can enable you to manage for renovation demands from small tweaks to complete overhauls which means you will easily get a short term loan flexibility. Yet another issue is trying to respond to operator demands for renovation. The need for upgrades is clear.

3. Social media marketing

Social media platforms are a boon for every industry, but especially so for restaurants. Social media platforms have become the go-to place for customers of all age groups to seek recommendations, reviews, and suggestions.

Reaching out to people on social media, and engaging with them, gives you a chance to keep your restaurant top of mind. However, you need to focus on creating user-generated content as much as creating your original content.

4. Menu Upgrades

Today farm to table offerings & internationally diverse menus is a very healthy thing. The retail sales of plant-based foods that directly replace animal products grew more from the last few years.

The real issue to address is demand for alternative menu items upgraded menus in general that makes major changes expensive in case of trial and error process.

It will be better to have a working capital loan that can offer flexible financing so that one can tweak the menu & make restaurants advance without any risk.

5. Partner with food apps and delivery

The most important technical features that help guests make a decision are online reservations, free wifi, and online ordering. Partnering with a popular food app gives customers a chance to check out your restaurant, and join available loyalty program benefits that offer them deals and discounts.

6. Service Expansion

In today’s tech trending world, most of the dining trips involve the use of a mobile device that means opportunities are changing how people interact with restaurants.

It also provides an excellent opportunity to restaurants for a change in how they attract & engage with their customers, such as there are customers who prefer to pre-order food before entering a restaurant.

It’s a better option to invest in technology, staff, and new operational tactics for new services that can grow your restaurant business & short term loans make these kinds of changes much more comfortable to address.

7. Local search

Almost everybody today goes online to look for food and restaurant recommendations or reviews. Yelp is probably the most trusted online review resource, especially for restaurants. Good reviews on Yelp attracts that much-needed attention from the local customers around you, searching for a bite to eat.

Whether or not you create an account on Yelp for your restaurant, people will review you. The best thing to do is create your account so you can portray the restaurant as you like, by adding the right images, keeping track of reviews, and responding to reviewers.

Another step to making the most of local search is getting your restaurant development up on Google. Google’s Knowledge Bar shows up all the relevant information about a business on a sidebar whenever someone looks it up online. The information displayed is not limited to the contact information and extends to reviews too.

8. Equipment Upgrades

Lacking resources for technology equipment upgrades is difficult for restaurants who are facing issues with digital demands. Apart from tech issues, restaurants also have to manage constant wear & tear on kitchen equipment. With the help of alternative loans for equipment, financing will resolve many challenges in the process.

9. Experimenting with Dining Experiences

For decades, the quality of food and service has been at the center of the restaurant industry. With so many establishments making great food and providing exceptional service.

10. Happy Employees

Great customer service starts with happy, engaged employees. Are you a good restaurant owner or manager? Do your employees enjoy coming to work? Read on for some tips for creating a happy workplace that is both fun and profitable.

11. Healthy Meal Options

Along with local foods, healthy food options, including right-sized portions, is another area of growing importance among customers. Does that mean you should cut French fries and onion rings off your pub menu? No. But you should consider adding low-fat, low-calorie options like lean cuts of meat and poultry, fish, and smaller portion sizes at low prices.

12. Email marketing

Email marketing is highly effective for the restaurant industry to promote itself and engage its customers. Create an email marketing plan that sends valuable content and information to your readers to increase customer loyalty and drive brand awareness.

You could include updates for new additions to the menu, information about upcoming events, give out discount codes, scratch cards with exciting incentives, or just simple stories from your restaurant staff.

A lot of people refer to their emails when making restaurant decisions. Email marketing for restaurants is also an effective way to ask for feedback, reviews, and referrals.

Create an email marketing plan that answers the following questions:

  • What will each email say?
  • How many emails will you send?
  • How will you target non-openers?
  • What’s the next email for readers who click on the call-to-action and take the desired action?

Once you know the answers to these questions, you can create an automatic email series to make sure all the women get the right message, at the right time.

13. Food bloggers and influencers

The current generation of online users is consuming content from credible food bloggers and industry influencers. Partnering with those influencers gives a boost to your restaurant marketing.

You can invite bloggers and influencers to your restaurant, offer them your best, and ask them to share a genuine review or feedback on their preferred network.

Making live social videos with them, and requesting they do the same, can drive more potential customers to both your social pages and your restaurant. People today turn to influencers for suggestions and recommendations.

You must work out a way for the bloggers and influencers to not just share a review of your food, but also offer a comprehensive review that speaks to the overall experience.

Wrapping up

Although social media gives you access to individuals from everywhere throughout the world, now and again, the best information is accessible right around the bend. Remain associated with the members of your community both in and out of the restaurant industry to stay inspired all year long.

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Ronak Patel

Full Stack Developer | Angular | React | RoR | CEO @ Aglowid IT Solution | For Projects: sales@aglowiditsolutions.com | Skype: aglowid |