6 Steps to Leveraging Social Media Marketing for Restaurants and Bars

In 2020, if you’re not leveraging social media marketing for your restaurant, you’re missing out on an important tool to promote your business and an excellent way to open up communication with your customers.

While traditional advertising will always have its place, restaurants that use social media marketing have access to a much less expensive and much more direct way to reach audiences. In other words, there’s no reason not to do it.

With that being said, a lot of restaurants aren’t using social media, or they’re not using it to its fullest potential. If you’re in that boat, read on for the what, why and how of leveraging social media marketing for your restaurant or bar.

Why is social media relevant to restaurants?

According to QSR Magazine, 89 percent of U.S. diners have at least one social media account, 36 percent of them follow restaurants on social media and 39 percent of them use it to help them decide where to eat when dining out.

That means that, here in 2020, having an online presence is much more than maintaining a website. Sure, your site is a great way to enhance your discoverability, but it doesn’t provide much of an opportunity for interaction.

And therein lies the key benefit of social media: the right platform(s) will allow people to not only discover your brand, but to engage with it — and assuming you make the experience a positive one, that can be an incredibly effective way to draw in new (loyal) customers.

Another great thing about social media is that it costs nothing to get started. Should you choose to put a spend behind your content (which isn’t a bad idea, especially as you’re trying to grow your following), it doesn’t take a big budget to launch an effective paid social campaign. Plus, targeting your key geographies and demographics is easy on platforms like Facebook or Instagram. And unlike print, television, radio and billboards, you can easily measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.

6 steps to creating a social media marketing plan for your restaurant

Before you start creating social media accounts and randomly posting content, you need a restaurant social media marketing plan. Here are 6 steps to creating and executing the right social media marketing strategy for your restaurant or bar.

1. Choose the right platforms

Trying to decide which social media platforms to use for your restaurant social media marketing can be overwhelming. There are more than 75 different social media platforms, from Tumblr and WhatsApp to LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest. You don’t need to maintain an account on every single one.

When trying to choose the right platform, consider your ideal customer and where they’re likely spending their time.

Here’s a quick rundown of the top three platforms restaurants tend to use.

Facebook: While Facebook has started skewing toward a slightly older demographic, most restaurants would be wise to maintain a company page for their restaurant, at the very least. Facebook is a great option for restaurants and bars that may not have the time or resources to get a website up and running. On your company page, you can post hours, address, contact information, links to menus, and of course regular content and updates for your followers.

If you’ve got a budget to work with (even if it’s small), Facebook ads are a great way for restaurants to geo-target their audience. Facebook ads allow you to advertise to people in specific ZIP codes, so you won’t waste your marketing budget advertising to people who likely won’t be visiting your restaurant. You can use other criteria to target your audience, too — like age or income level. If you use Facebook, make sure you take advantage of Facebook Business, which has a whole range of advertising capabilities.

Instagram: With more than a billion users, Instagram was created to tell stories through beautiful images. And what better way to promote your food, friendly staff, or hip dining space?

While this is subject to change, Instagram currently seems to offer some common ground in terms of demographics: Gen Z, millennials, Gen X and even Baby Boomers are all active on the platform. Here again, if you’ve got a budget, you can run paid Instagram campaigns in tandem with your Facebook ads.

Twitter: Twitter is less image-focused than Facebook and Instagram, but it’s a go-to choice when it comes to real-time interaction between users. Restaurants that leverage Twitter often use it to address questions and complaints, or to keep their audience updated on their latest specials and deals.

2. Select a social media manager

You may be thinking, “I don’t have the time nor the staff to manage this!” And you may be right.

That’s why a lot of restaurants designate a point person to manage their social media marketing. Not only does that ensure that it actually gets done; it also will help to maintain brand consistency and alignment.

Depending on your budget and the scale of your campaign, you may choose to have an existing employee or manager run your social media marketing. Or it may make sense to hire an in-house marketer who can handle social media along with other marketing needs. Some restaurants leverage agencies that do this work day-in and day-out — which makes sense if you’re planning to make a sizable spend or if you want to constantly be testing and optimizing your campaigns. Another lower-cost option is to look for a freelancer or even an intern; college-aged people, for example, tend to be pretty tech-savvy and are more likely to be familiar with multiple social platforms.

When it comes to choosing the online face of your restaurant, you want the person or agency to check a few boxes:

Communication skills: Your social media point person doesn’t have to be a novelist, but they need to have solid writing skills, and they should be able to present content (text and images) in a way that’s engaging and on-brand. Which brings us to our next point…

Familiarity with your business and brand: This is more than knowing your menu, hours, and policies (although that’s important, too). They should also be able to capture the personality of your restaurant. A fine dining establishment isn’t going to be posting the same content as a dive bar.

Experience with key platforms: The person running your social media marketing should have, at the very least, personal experience with the platforms you’re using. Ideally, they’ll also have experience running a business page or account.

Emphasis on data: A key advantage of social media marketing for restaurants is the ability to measure effectiveness. You should expect regular reporting on metrics that show growth in followers and engagement over time.

Accountability: Whoever has the keys to your social media platforms needs to be 100% trustworthy. Make sure everyone is clear on what’s acceptable and what’s not when it comes to posting — because as we all know, what happens on the internet stays on the internet. You don’t want to go viral for the wrong reasons!

3. Create guidelines

Social media is an extension of your restaurant, which means that anything you post online will need to meet and maintain your brand guidelines and image. To ensure your point person is able to do this properly, create specific guidelines that codify the tone, voice and visual elements of your brand. It helps to provide consistency in messaging and extends the personality you want your restaurant to portray. For guidance, here are three great resources:

How to Create Social Media Brand Guidelines

Building Your Restaurant’s Social Media Presence

5 Steps to Create a Social Media Style Guide for Your Brand

4. Implement a social media calendar

Set up a social media calendar to keep you consistent in your posting and plan ahead so you can align your social media posts with upcoming specials and events. Hubspot provides 10 different calendar templates and tools to help you create a well-organized social media calendar.

5. Leverage automation tools

Save time by taking advantage of automation tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social to schedule your posts ahead of time. But social media automation doesn’t stop there. Use chatbots to automatically reply to customers online when you’re not able to. And utilize social listening tools like Hubspot (Hootsuite and Sprout Social also offer this function) to monitor any online interactions with your social media accounts.

6. Utilize user-generated content

User-generated content, or USG, includes photos, tweets, and other social media posts created by your followers that highlight things like the quality of service, your food and beverages, or other aspects of your restaurant.

USG is essentially free advertising for you because your patrons are posting about their positive experiences at your establishment. You can then repost that content from your own account, as long as you credit the original author of the post. It’s a great way to connect with your audience and allow them to hear from their peers about why your place is so special. Here’s a great guide on how you can encourage your followers to create USG that you can use for your benefit.

Bottom line: Creating a social media plan for your restaurant doesn’t have to be time-consuming or expensive. Once you’ve got a plan in place and your accounts are set up, it’s all about being consistent and authentic with your content — and, of course, letting data be your guide. If you’re not seeing the impact you hoped for, reassess and refine your plan as you go.

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Industry Trends

How the 2024 Presidential Election Could Affect Taxes for Tipped Employees

It’s an election year, in case you haven’t heard! 😉 This one has major implications for tipped employees — specifically, when it comes to taxes.

It’s no secret that our Democratic and Republican candidates are running on very different platforms. But when it comes to tip regulations, Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump actually both support reducing taxes on tips.

A little context on taxes and tips

We’re just going to state the obvious: For the average American, tax reporting can be pretty, pretty confusing. For the millions of employees working in tipped occupations — well, that creates another layer of uncertainties.

(Do I have to report my tips? Do have to report my cash tips? Will anyone know if I don’t report my tips? What happens if I don’t accurately or fully report what I earned?)

Historically, there’s been a trend of hospitality employees underreporting cash tips to prevent higher tax burdens. And while this may reduce what employees owe Uncle Sam in the moment, there can be downsides: e.g., if they find themselves eligible for unemployment, if they’re trying to qualify for an auto loan or mortgage, etc.

However, that urge to underreport could be relieved in the near future, given the tax code changes both of our presidential candidates have proposed. The TL;DR: Both Trump and Harris have voiced their intention to relieve some of the burden on tipped workers in restaurants, bars, hotels, and other service positions.

Here’s a quick summary of each candidate’s plan, as well as some potential impacts for restaurant employees.

Trump’s plan for tipped employees

Trump shared his plan to reduce tipped income tax burden at a rally in Las Vegas — fitting for a city that’s built on the gig economy. Nevada is home to the highest concentration of tipped employees who work in the many hotels, casinos, and restaurants that millions of tourists flock to annually.

During the rally, the former president announced that he would make tipped income exempt from federal income tax, stating it would happen “right away” when he takes office.

Since speaking at the rally, Trump has not yet clarified what this would mean for tipped employees. Many servers want to know if this is an exemption just on federal income tax or if the proposal includes payroll taxes (social security and Medicare).

Harris’s tip tax proposal

Harris also took the opportunity to speak on her tipped income policy while visiting Nevada. Much like Trump, she knew she’d have a captive audience when it comes to tipped earnings.

Her proposal promises to exempt tipped income from the federal income tax, but she has made clear that tips will still be subject to payroll taxes. While not yet confirmed, campaign insiders say Harris is considering placing some guardrails on her plan — like a caveat that the tax exemption only applies to employees earning less than $75,000 per year.

Is one plan better than the other?

In short: probably not. (Most service and hospitality workers do not earn above the $75,000 threshold that’s been suggested by the Harris campaign.) So either way, servers, bartenders, and hospitality staff can expect to see a lower tax burden during the next administration.

But what does that look like in practice?

Most tipped employees aren’t receiving their tips on payroll — they’re walking out of every shift with their earnings for the night, deduction-free. Instead, the taxes are paid on payroll out of their hourly earnings, which is why many servers get $0 paychecks every two weeks. With a reduced tax burden, most servers will see the difference in higher paychecks.

On the other hand, economists are wary of the impact of eliminating taxes on tips, citing the reduced funding for social security and Medicare. And with so much negative sentiment around “tipflation” these days, experts also speculate that a reduced tax burden may result in even more hesitance at the tip screen.

Increasing minimum wage

We’re closely following campaign promises about an increase to the minimum wage — especially in regards to the tipped minimum wage and the tip credit.

Minimum wage earners have been eyeing an increase, noting that the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour hasn’t increased since 2009, and servers, bartenders, and other tipped employees have been earning $2.13 per hour for over 30 years. An increased minimum wage paired with the reduced tax burden could make a major difference for service workers trying to keep up with the rising cost of living.

In the Harris camp, removing tax on tips is just part of the plan to take some pressure off service workers. While Harris hasn’t shared a detailed plan for bumping up the minimum wage, she has indicated that she would support an increase.

In previous election cycles, Trump stated that he would consider a minimum wage increase, but he has not shared his opinion on the matter during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Of course, we’re a ways out from any real policy changes actually shape — but if you’re looking to make your tip management process less taxing in the interim (see what we did there?), Kickfin is here for you! Check out how you can use Kickfin to auto-calculate tip pools and send payouts directly to employees’ bank accounts in seconds.

Restaurant Management

Top 4 Ways to Protect Your Restaurant from Cash Shrinkage

No matter what industry you work in, there’s always a risk for shrinkage and theft. Ninety-five percent of all businesses experience theft in the workplace, and up to 75% of employees have admitted to stealing from their employer.

Most of the time, it’s not intentional or malicious. For restaurants, it could be something as innocent as giving your friends a free drink or asking the kitchen for food and neglecting to ring it in.

But when you have a lot of employees handling cash day in and day out, it can be very tempting for someone to take advantage of systems and pocket extra money at your expense. To make matters worse: because cash is hard to track, it can be tricky for operators to put their finger on exactly what’s happening — at least, before it starts to impact your bottom line.

While cash shrinkage can jeopardize your business, operators do have the power to protect their restaurants. Ultimately, it comes down to having the right processes, systems and partners in place.

Here are 4 things you can start doing today to protect your restaurant from cash shrinkage.

1. Create a culture of trust with employees

Most people want to come to work, do their best, and make an honest living. Creating an environment where your employees trust you with their earnings should encourage them to also be responsible with company assets, including cash.

Of course, it starts with doing your due diligence when building out your team. That means interviewing new hires in person, asking the right questions, and always checking references.

But the fact of the matter is that even good people can make poor decisions, especially when they’re struggling. As an employer, there are things you can do to keep your staff from ever getting to a place where they feel the urge or need to steal. That includes:

Paying a fair and competitive wage
Paying wages on time, in full
Giving people instant access to their earnings
Offering employee benefits and perks if possible
Adhering to federal, state and local labor/wage regulations, especially as they relate to tips

Bottom line: If you show that employees you take their financial well being seriously, it can foster an environment of mutual respect, making employees less likely to consider theft as a reasonable (or justifiable) option.

2. Minimize cash touchpoints

It’s simple. Less cash on hand = less opportunity for cash shrinkage.

In the unfortunate case that a high-ranking employee is stealing from your restaurant, cash tip outs make it much more difficult to catch and trace. Anyone with access to cash registers and safes has the opportunity to take a few extra bills — and you may not notice until well after the cash is pocketed and spent.

Instead of locking up cash and making only a few employees responsible for the massive task of paying out tips, take advantage of new technology that eliminates cash from the tip out process. Fewer people will need to manage cash, which adds one extra layer of security against theft.

Bonus: cashless tipping vendors like Kickfin give your employees more flexibility with their earnings. They can opt for tips to be sent directly to their bank or to have them put on their payroll check, empowering employees to make their own financial decisions.

3. Create a digital paper trail

The trouble with cash is the inability to track it. Half the battle is realizing that the cash is missing; and once you know it’s gone — well, now what?

Digital gratuity management software makes it easy for restaurant operators to create a digital paper trail for all tip payouts. You’ll be able to identify any improper payments, who they went to, and who authorized the payout — removing a major security soft spot.

Not only will you feel more secure, but your loyal employees will thank you for making tip outs much easier.

4. Select a secure tip management partner

Removing cash-on-hand is a great first step, and it should make any potential theft traceable back to the person responsible. But wouldn’t you rather prevent theft before it happens?

If you’re ready to bring your gratuity management into the future, make sure to thoroughly vet your options — because not every digital tip out software has strong protections against theft.

That’s why Kickfin has optional guardrails that can mitigate your risk of employee theft.

Maximum tip amounts: Limit the amount that can be issued in any individual payout.

Role policies: Create policies to limit who can receive payments by role type, and limit who can send payments to themselves.

Multi-factor authentication: Set your own rules to require MFA at any point, whether at every login or once a month.

Payment interval approval: Trigger a requirement for second approval for an employee’s first payment or their first payment in a determined number of days.

Payment velocity approval: Trigger a requirement for second approval when an employee receives a determined number of payments within a certain interval.

For our POS integration partners, Kickfin can also put guardrails around your tip calculation policies to prevent fraud. While we offer the ability to send payments through manual entry, spreadsheet upload, or using our tip calculation software, integration users can disallow manual and upload payments to prevent any ad hoc payouts.

Integration users can also lock in their tip calculation rules, so that only certain users can make changes to the calculation policy.

How Kickfin helps in the event of fraud

Even without the temptation of cash in the safe, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

If you find yourself in a regrettable situation with an employee, your tip management partner should be there to back you up. Thankfully, our platform tracks each payout which will help you identify irregularities and the source of the problem.

The Kickfin team will always be there to support our partners who experience security breaches.

Check your Kickfin security settings

Do you want to make sure you have the most up-to-date protections on your Kickfin account? We’ve got you covered. Reach out to your Kickfin customer support team to ask about a free security audit, where we’ll go over your current settings and offer guidance on how to minimize your risk.

Not yet a Kickfin user? Find out more about our platform and security settings with a demo today.

Restaurant Management

4 Ways to Save on Restaurant Labor Costs with Kickfin

In the restaurant industry, profit margins have always been tight — and these days, they’re only getting tighter.

Running a restaurant is a labor intensive business. You need a strong back of house team to push out food, front of house workers to greet and care for guests, and managers to keep everyone in check. Naturally, labor is one of the most significant expenses for restaurant operators. In order to keep costs reasonable for customers, even a slight overage on labor can break your budget — but thankfully there are levers you can pull to reduce labor costs.

If you want to secure your business’s financial future, you’re going to need to streamline scheduling practices and keep a close eye on labor costs… without frustrating employees who want more shifts.

Don’t worry: you can turn to traditional wisdom, sales forecasting, and emerging restaurant technology to make sure that you stay on budget.

Here are a few ways you can save on labor costs at your restaurant:

1. Rethink the schedule

Obviously, the most straight-forward way to cut labor costs is to reduce the number of people you schedule on a given night.

We get it — you don’t want to see hour-long ticket times and poor guest experiences. But you might not need as many folks on the line or servers on the floor as you think — at least, not all the time.

Staffing and scheduling isn’t a perfect science, but there are some tactics operators should test if they’d like to “right size” every shift — including:

Analyze your daily schedule. Don’t make assumptions about your peak times and slow periods. Analyze sales trends and let the data be your guide.
Anticipate seasonal trends. If you’re in a college town, don’t wait until your servers are twiddling their thumbs in July to implement a new summer schedule.
Let your seasoned staff shine. Your veteran employees likely thrive on those super busy nights when they’re running on pure adrenaline (and earning way more in tips). Consider giving more experienced workers more responsibility — assuming they’re willing and able — and you might be able to get away with fewer people on a shift here and there.

>> Learn about scheduling software that helps you manage labor and engage with employees

2. Assess and address productivity

Are you making the most of the team that you already have? There are a few ways you can identify your highest-producing employees and make the most of their success:

Evaluate employee performance. Most employees want to be successful; observe your team and analyzes things like sales per labor hour, table turnover rate, and tip volume to get a sense of your strongest players and those who could use more training (and bonus: this can reduce turnover and boost team morale)

Provide incentives. Create a fun bonus system that rewards strong performance and high levels of productivity. You can use data from the previous data point to set goals.
Cross-train employees. Training your staff to handle multiple roles – or hiring folks with vast service experience – offers flexibility for scheduling and can reduce your need for additional hires.

3. Don’t pay employees to wait for their tips

No, we’re not saying to cut all of your servers early (no matter how much they ask).

But, you can send your servers on their way much quicker when they don’t have to wait around for managers to count out cash tips. Once they’ve finished their sidework, servers can clock out and see their digital tips sent directly to their bank account, instead of hanging around on the clock waiting for the shift manager to do their check outs.

4. Prevent labor overages before they happen

Most restaurants simply can’t afford to pay overtime for staff. But sometimes your full-time staff creep toward 40 hours of work without anyone noticing…and suddenly you’re paying 1.5x what you expected for a single worker.

This, too, goes back to proper scheduling policies. Give yourself a bit of wiggle room for the employee who clocks in 10 minutes early or often takes a long time on sidework by never scheduling anyone for more than 38 hours each week.

5. Pay close attention to clock-outs

People make mistakes, and tired servers often leave their long double shift without clocking out for the night. Usually, they’ll realize their mistake and call the store to have someone clock them out (still adding extra time to their shift).

But sometimes, the clock keeps running all night, and no one notices until it’s time to process payroll. Two weeks later, your admin team is spending way too much time correcting clock-outs so that you don’t end up paying for 8 extra hours of work.

Try using technology that puts guardrails in place to prevent any clock-out mistakes before they happen. Kickfin doesn’t allow you to process and pay out tips until an employee is clocked out, so managers can make sure everyone is clocked out at the proper time.

(We also have some other exciting new features that can make your life easier!)

Not only can Kickfin help you reduce labor costs, but we’re ready to simplify your entire tip management process. Reach out to us to learn more about our instant tip calculations, integrations, and smarter tipping solutions.

Restaurant Management

How to Get Your Restaurant Ready for Football Season

Football is back! Whether you’re rooting for your alma mater or just hoping to see massive sales at your restaurant, it’s an exciting — but often stressful — time of year.

If your restaurant has at least one TV, you’re going to have some customers asking you to switch it to ESPN. And if you’re running a sports bar … it’s officially crunch time. Expect your tables to be full (and harder to turn) and your staff to be running on pure adrenaline as the restaurant fills up with fans hoping for a bite to eat.

You probably know the drill: hire more staff, add more servers to game day schedules, and manage your inventory with hungry fans in mind. But if you want to get the most out of football season, get game-ready for some of the busiest weekends of the year with our tips for a successful season.

Consider a game day menu

When your restaurant is at full capacity with hungry football fans, you might want to consider a limited menu for the weekends in order to keep wait times down. Shorten the food menu down to shareable apps, best sellers, and items with the simplest prep so that your kitchen isn’t lined with tickets at halftime.

At the bar, don’t limit your customers to certain cocktails — but consider the power of suggestion and list out some easy-to-batch cocktails that will keep your service bar out of the weeds.

**Make sure they can watch their game**

Is there anything worse than a group of die-hard fans walking in to see their team play — only to realize you don’t have the right subscription service to stream it? Next thing you know, some guy has commandeered the remote to sign into his YouTubeTV account.

Before that embarrassing situation arises, check your cable listings and subscription services to see if you’re missing any important channels. You’re probably going to need to upgrade in order to show games that aren’t carried in your market. Here are just a few channels you might need:

ESPN+
Hulu + Live TV
Peacock
NFL Sunday Ticket
YouTubeTV or cable
Netflix (yep — Netflix will be streaming a few NFL games this year)

If viewing options are limited, or you don’t have enough screens to air multiple games at once, make sure you’ve got a strong wifi connection (free, of course) so that your guests can watch on their phones — or more importantly, talk smack to their fantasy league.

Offer game day deals

Now that you’re logistically ready for the season, it’s time to draw in the customers. Make your restaurant the place for fans to gather by offering drink specials and deals on appetizers.

Leverage social media to get the word out about your game day deals. Consider paying to boost a post or running a giveaway for people who share a post about your game day specials.

Plan for Post-Game

You don’t want the restaurant to empty out as the clock runs down. Entice fans to stay and celebrate (or lick their wounds) once the game ends by extending deals. That could mean a discount for fans of the winning team or an extra-long happy hour.

Pay out your employees — quickly.

After a long game-day shift, your servers and managers are going to be more tired than usual. Let them head home early by using Kickfin to pay out tips instantly. We take care of all of the tip calculations and send tips directly to servers’ bank accounts in seconds, so your exhausted team members don’t have to wait to put their feet up and rest.

Want to see our instant digital tip outs in action? Get a demo of Kickfin today.