Why aren’t restaurateurs on Linkedin when they should be?

Most of the restaurateurs predominantly focus on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, while completely ignoring another powerful medium – LinkedIn. 

I have been personally messaging owners to get more active on LinkedIn and you may wonder why. How does it help? Are you thinking “My customers are not in LinkedIn?”. 

Think again. 

• As of 2019, they have more than 60M users just out of India. It is estimated to be about 68M now
• About 34M users in the age group of 25-34 and growing 

Here are a couple of articles on the internet. Aaron Allen is one of the world’s best restaurant consulting firms. In fact, you should subscribe to their newsletters. 

7 Tips for How to Market a Restaurant with LinkedIn

Brandon Hull, a branding and marketing expert, founder of ‘nextrestuarants’ talks about how restaurateurs can leverage the power of LinkedIn and cites a couple of case studies to buttress his arguments.

He says “I’ve learned first-hand that restaurateurs make bad assumptions about LinkedIn. But the assumptions are based on a transactional view of their business. LinkedIn won’t generate a walk-in or online order right now so it’s not quite as worthy of my attention, is the reasoning.” 

A Case Study: One Restaurant’s Results with LinkedIn

Some more references that will aid in your decision making.

https://appinstitute.com/restaurants-need-linkedin/

https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-and-insights/articles/using-linkedin-to-get-more-business-customers/

You don’t have to believe me, but am going to share how some of them are performing in LinkedIn. If you don’t have a page, create one, if you have one, do post your updates. Most of your name searches will throw LinkedIn as the first result over others. LinkedIn has better SEO, compared to Twitter or Facebook. 

BBN – 8K followers, regular updates @barbeque

Arbor – 5.5K followers, no regular updates

Chaayos – 17K followers, regular updates

Potful – 1.2K followers, regular updates

BBK – 1.6K followers, regular updates

Chai Point – 17K followers

Apart from regular posts, may I suggest that you actively participate in conversations that are of interest to you? There are ample discussions on cloud kitchens, economics, third party charges, P/Ls. Many VC’s and PE’s post about their investments, why a DoorDash or GrubHub might never become profitable, etc. 

You are building a great brand. Make it bigger, better and more visible. Let us know how you leveraged LinkedIn for your restaurant in the comments section.