Growing your business without a big budget: one restaurant’s story
Eye-catching headlines. Gorgeous images. Irresistible offers instantly served up to guests. You don't need a big advertising agency to achieve this. In fact, you don't even need an advertising budget. We'll show you how one restaurant managed to grow their business and continually outpace competitors through easy strategies and a healthy serving of automation.
Meet Winking Lizard Tavern, a multi-location restaurant in Ohio known for ridiculously good ribs and wings, a wide selection of craft beer and savvy marketing. We sat down with Tracy Bryan, Marketing Manager at Winking Lizard Tavern, to give you a sneak peek into how they attract guests and keep them coming back…
A website that looks good and works hard
Fact: 90 percent of consumers research a restaurant online before dining. When guest cravings start at the Google search bar, how do you make sure your restaurant website comes out on top? The answer: Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Put simply, SEO helps drive more organic (free) traffic to a website from search engines like Google. To be considered “search optimized,” websites must:
- be easy to navigate on mobile devices,
- highlight key information like hours and location,
- host different types of content (i.e., images, text, links),
- and stay up-to-date with fresh content (e.g., new reviews, menu updates, etc.)
Websites that check all these boxes usually get placed higher in search results and therefore attract more guests to the site—all without costing a dime.
PopTip
Want to learn more about how SEO works? Check out our Front of House article: What is SEO for restaurants?
A website that looks good and works hard
The zero-cost nature of SEO is why it’s a key part of Winking Lizard’s overall growth strategy. With Popmenu, Winking Lizard’s website is not only optimized to the factors above, but also through the menu.
With the dynamic menu each dish acts as its own web page connected to the Winking Lizard (vs an image or a PDF which only counts for one page in the ‘eyes’ of Google). So, Google not only ranks the Winking Lizard Tavern homepage in results but also specific menu items. Now, when guests search things like ‘wings near me,’ the Winking Lizard pops up on the results page every time.
“The website helps showcase the menu items we are most known for and we continually create new content on the site with the dynamic menu. We currently do not invest in any paid advertising, so the SEO driven website helps us to gain more visibility in our market.”
SEO in action
Google searches where Winking Lizard comes out on top:
- Monday wings
- Mesa chicken
- Pizza Monday
- Burger basket
- and 150+ more!
In just three months with Popmenu…Winking Lizard Tavern nearly doubled the amount of organic traffic to the homepage of its website.
Value of Winking Lizard’s free traffic
If Winking Lizard had been paying for the traffic that it generated through Popmenu (for free!), it would have cost them: $239,628.* In other words, this is how much Winking Lizard has saved by having an optimized website.
Winking Lizard whiskey bar makes page one
When searching for the “best whiskey bar in Ohio,” Winking Lizard Tavern’s beer store and whiskey bar, Lizardville, appears as one of the top 3 results.
SEO helps this community staple, which launched in 2011, to stay top-of-mind.
Food that speaks for itself
Did you know: 73% of diners order food on their mobile device and 30% will automatically move on to another restaurant if they see a PDF menu online. An online menu should look as good as it tastes—why not make the menu irresistible?
Winking Lizard knows the guest experience begins at the online menu; with rich dish descriptions, delicious photos, and likes and reviews living under every dish, Winking Lizard creates cravings that bring guests through the front door.
“With so many restaurant options to choose from, we need to maximize our chances of getting selected over another restaurant. Making our food and beverage offerings more appealing than our competitors is part of it.”
What’s more? The menu is quick to update so it’s easy to highlight menu items, add and remove seasonal specials, and update pricing when necessary.
“Our online menus also allow for the most current information to be displayed…[and] we are able to remove items quickly without having to wait for menus to be reprinted.”
PopTip
With Popmenu, a dynamic menu is part of your website—so you can finally 86 those PDF links on your website!
Making the menu a dynamic destination
- 7,600+ restaurant followers gained through Popmenu
- 6,000+ menu interactions (loves, likes and reminders to try!)
- 2,000+ dish reviews across menus
- 2:25 average time spent looking through the menu & website*
“Having a website that is visually appealing to the guests, allows comments to be submitted for their favorite menu items, and helps create searchable items....Our customers are wanting information about us and our menu fast—the [dynamic] menu gives them all that they’re looking for—and with our Popmenu website, we can showcase the menu items we’re most known for.”
Reviews that build reputation
Reviews of a restaurant/dishes is the No. 1 reason why diners choose one restaurant over another. Positive reviews can also contribute to how much customers spend at a restaurant, with 31% of diners saying they would pay more at an establishment with positive reviews.* When reviews are that important to influencing guests to dine in, why let third party sites like Yelp! control them?
With over 2,000 reviews across the menu, Winking Lizard knows the importance of guest feedback in bringing in new business. Through Popmenu, the restaurant hosts reviews within individual menu items and is able to manage reviews that come in—giving them the ability to approve the positives and respond to service missteps without making them public to potential diners.
“With guest reviews living directly on the menu, we can oversee what is posted—as opposed to third-party sites like Yelp! where we have no control—and we have the ability to handle negative reviews in private and directly so we can ensure the guest comes back in the future.”
PopTip
In addition to the positive-press reviews give the restaurant, each new review also serve as a fresh content update to the website, driving additional organic (free) traffic by improving SEO rankings!
Winking Lizard food fanatics
Waitlisting that brings more walk-ins
Modern waitlist technology should do more than just help organize a list of names. Waitlisting has the potential to encourage guest engagement and upsells, increase table turnover, drive more reviews to the menu, and turn first-time guests into loyal followers.
Winking Lizard Tavern never misses an opportunity to connect with its guests. With digital waitlisting, guests receive wait updates to their phone along with a prompt (and link!) to browse the Winking Lizard food menu—driving more traffic to the website and keeping them entertained while waiting. What’s more? After being seated, guests are prompted to leave reviews on dishes while the taste is top-of-mind—leading to an increased number of reviews across the menu.
“Our guests really enjoy the digital waitlist—it definitely helps keep them engaged while they’re waiting for a table. We had a digital waitlisting platform we were using previously, but what we like about waitlisting with Popmenu is that guests are texted a link to the menu while they wait so they can browse beforehand and then they’re texted again after they’re seated, encouraging them to leave a review.”
An added bonus? Because guests spend their wait time checking out the menu, they spend less time menu browsing at the table (helping Winking Lizard turn tables faster!)
Marketing that keeps guests coming back
65% of guests say they want to hear from their favorite restaurants at least once a week; 1 in 3 diners want to receive special promotions and other news from restaurants every week.
These expectations can feel like a lot to keep up with, but marketing your restaurant doesn’t have to be costly, time consuming, or complicated. In fact, even a little bit of marketing can go a long way. Simple marketing tactics like email, text, loyalty programs, offers, and more can keep you connected with new and long-time guests, drive more revenue, and increase foot traffic on slower days. Oh and the best part? With the right technology, many of these efforts can be automated!
Winking Lizard Tavern stays top-of-mind with its 30,000+ followers through custom emails, monthly email newsletters, regular text messages, and website announcements that call out upcoming events, new offers, new seasonal menu items, ordering events, and specials.
PopTip
Check out The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Digital Marketing for Restaurants for more best practices around marketing your restaurant!
Ordering event shows restaurant marketing at work
Last Thanksgiving, Winking Lizard Tavern saw over $20k in additional sales from one single ordering event. The restaurant advertised the event using website announcements, emails, and social posts.
“The online ordering events have been an easy way for us to offer special holiday meal packages that are normally not available on our regular menu…Last Thanksgiving we were able to reach a broader range of guests to market the event with the email marketing, online announcements, and social media integration to help generate over $20,000 in sales for one event.”
Watch this video below to catch up with Tracy Bryan, Marketing Manager at Winking Lizard Tavern!
Winking Lizard Tavern does it all (for less!) with Popmenu
Fact: 90 percent of consumers research a restaurant online before dining. When guest cravings start at the Google search bar, how do you make sure your restaurant website comes out on top? The answer: Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
- With SEO, guests find Winking Lizard through organic channels
-Guests add themselves to the waitlist in advance and receive a text to the dynamic menu
- Dynamic menu with likes and reviews entices guests before dining
- Guests leave reviews and restaurant captures guest information
- Restaurant keeps guests engaged and stays top of mind with marketing—inviting them back to the restaurant again and again
