Inside the social media blessing of restaurant business

If your CGPA is below 3.00, you will have a 5% discount, and a 10% discount if you are on probation. The more ex you have, the more discounts. These are the captions of PizzaBurg's Facebook posts where each post corresponds with a beautiful picture of pizza.

More than 500 people shared their post corresponding to the "more ex more discount" caption, 26K people liked it and the post reached over a million users.

The restaurant's CEO said this apparently cheesy caption is their style of catching the people's attention equivalent to saying "excuse me" while the picture is the message they spread.

This is their way of connecting with more customers because users most possibly have friends with a CGPA less than 3.00 or friends with multiple former partners who they tag for fun and share the post, but this in effect is promoting the PizzaBurg to a customer base that the restaurant is targeting in the first place.

They mostly post their promotions in the morning or before lunch every day.

While the users laugh at the cheesy captions which sometimes are relevant for them as they share the posts not necessarily for pizza but for the humour of the caption, the restaurant's promotion keeps popping up on others' timelines from the beginning of the day.

"Our brain is more functional in the morning. By lunch period when you are hungry, or in the evening when you go out with your partner, you will have PizzaBurg in your mind because what you see in the morning remains in your head," Mir Mehadi, the CEO of the restaurant, told The Business Standard.

So the social media activities of this restaurant chain, which has lately been in the trends a lot for an influencer like Salman Muqtadir was regularly promoting them, may appear somewhat playful or even tacky, but it actually has a well thought out business plan by a pool of professional content creators and marketing head.

Today, the case of PizzaBurg is true for most restaurants as their active and cautious presence on social media is regarded as essential for business.

Most major restaurants in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country have taken social media promotion as the primary tool for their marketing, and this has consistently been paying off with more customers, exposure and sales.

Abid Hasan, an in-charge of Khana's branch in Malibagh Chowdhury Para, opened up how important social media was for the rising popularity of this chain.

"Our business actually started in the time of social media and it played a big role in our business," Abid said. "We regularly update our Facebook page with promotions and offers. Around 30% of our orders are served online through Foodpanda, Pathao, and our own website.

Also, the current trend of checking in restaurants and showing off pictures of eating on social media also plays a big role in spreading our fame," he added.

We explored several restaurants this week and interviewed the owners and managers to learn how they are utilising social media in boosting their business.

From small and mid-range to larger restaurants, we have learned their strategies and their experience of how social media platforms have transformed their business in recent years.

While the experience is mixed, the blessing is shared. Depending on the creativity and seriousness of the investment in marketing, most restaurants are benefiting from social media presence.

On-boarding influencers pay

Daud Mohiuddin, proprietor of Café Cherry Drops restaurant in the Khilgaon Taltola area said around 10% to 15% of his sales is now generated online and a lot of the overall customer base derives from social media.

Daud said they advertise and boost their posts on Facebook.

"We also advertise on groups like FoodBank [a Facebook group]. We do photography, videography, and modify our menus to [make them appealing on the internet]," Daud said.

He said the restaurants that have onboarded influencers reach more people.

"If you don't engage influencers, you will reach far fewer people. The restaurants that have stronger influencers have a higher reach. There are different types of influencers depending on various apps like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. If you have influencers you don't need a paid boost [on Facebook], it gets boosted automatically with their followers," Daud said.

Chery Drops is a medium-range restaurant. Daud said they invite medium-range influencers with moderate fame – basically depending on their capacity. And sometimes influencers themselves come and review which helps them.

PizzaBurg, on the other hand, was founded in 2018 in Mirpur. They have around 14 branches in Dhaka, Chattogram and Narayanganj at present.

When they branched out in different areas of Dhaka, they also enhanced their social media activities. After the initial stage of focused sale-driven marketing with mostly young customers, they are now conducting exposure-driven marketing.

"Our marketing head is Salman Muqtadir [an influencer]. Salman lives an expected lifestyle of a lot of people who live outside Dhaka," Mehadi said.

Salman Muqtadir has been with PizzaBurg for three years now as its brand ambassador. But he has been working as its marketing head for only a few months now when PizzaBurg saw a meteoric rise in fame as he actively promoted it with millions of his followers on social media.

"So when someone from Chattogram sees Salman promoting PizzaBurg, they can connect. Or someone from outside Dhaka coming to study in the capital can connect with Pizzaburg immediately," Mehadi added.

Proper marketing strategy matters

Iffat Hossain Onik, a partner at Mr. Burger said ever since their journey in business in 2014, social media's significance for the restaurant business also grew hand in hand.

"We cannot do business without social media at present…We wanted to grow organic customers more than boosting and hyping up on social media. It worked for us, but perhaps if we adopted social media the way others are doing [onboarding influencers or paid reviews], perhaps we could reach more customers," Onik said.

"Many of the restaurants, Chillox for example, came here to this point of business based on social media. So we cannot ignore its importance," he added.

Chillox and Madchef, two popular burger joints, indeed have long dominated the business with their apt social media presences. For example, in 2021 on Madchef's anniversary, Chillox posted a "happy birthday" card on their Facebook page with a caption commemorating their friendly rivalry.

In response, Madchef posted a "thank you" card honouring their "friendship" with Chillox. The conversation between the rivals created a buzz on social media as both posts went viral.

Did your reliance on organic customers only put you somewhat backwards in the race?

"Not much," Onik replied. "Because suppose I created hype and many customers came, if my quality and service were not up to mark, the hype would die down. I would lose customers."

According to Mehadi, however, the right kind of marketing in the right phase of the business matters.

"The marketing that we are doing now, if we did this from the beginning, our page would turn out to be nothing but a meme page because we didn't have accessibilities," Mehadi said.

But now that they have accessibilities in many places in Dhaka, they are conducting exposure-driven marketing, he said. "In the initial stage, we only did sales-driven marketing. Back then our posts were about how beautiful our pizza looked, how tasty and how much meat we were giving etc. Now that you know about PizzaBurg, all I need to do is to put this into your head," he added.

"I believe social media should be used for customer recovery rather than customer requisition. I cannot for certain say how much sales are generating from here, but it is helping in recovery or for recurring customers," Mehadi said.