By Indiana Lee, Contributor
The last few years have been pretty tough for restaurants and their customers alike. Between the fallout of the pandemic and a turbulent economic landscape, dining out isn’t always considered a priority. In fact, one recent study found that 74% of respondents said they’d be cutting back on dining out to preserve their budgets.
This presents a significant challenge for your restaurant. To navigate this difficult period and thrive on the other side, you’ll need to take some definitive measures. One approach that can have positive outcomes is to rebrand. While it requires some planning and investment to pull off well, it can be a powerful way to reintroduce your restaurant to customers.
Let’s look at a few ways rebranding can help your business weather tough times and what actions can help you make the most of it.
Emphasize Meeting Guests’ Needs
Times have changed. It’s wise to recognize that customers’ needs have changed too. If your brand isn’t a good reflection of the current priorities of the dining public, it may appear outdated and irrelevant. Therefore, part of the focus of your rebrand should be on demonstrating your ability to meet customers’ current needs.
Economic Needs
Perhaps the most prevalent challenge for customers at the moment is navigating the tough economic circumstances that have emerged over the past few years. This hasn’t just led to the need to pare back spending. Financial issues can directly impact mental health, too. Rising costs of living and stagnating pay rates are a significant source of stress for many.
The necessity to cut back on essential items can also trigger depression and anxiety. Individual guests can take personal steps like avoiding lifestyle creep and prioritizing self-care. However, your rebrand can also make a difference by supporting their financial needs at this time.
Some approaches to this include:
Offering discounted menu items on specific days of the week.
Producing marketing content around how you source fresh food locally to both boost the local economy and ensure customers can get nutritional value at a reasonable price.
Adjust your menu to include good quality meals in a range of price points. Feature these on your social media channels. This can help customers on a budget see there are accessible options.
Inclusivity Needs
Inclusivity has become a key priority in recent years. People recognize how important ethically and socially it is to embrace and support a more diverse community. This isn’t just about making certain nobody in your restaurant is actively discriminatory to customers or colleagues. Rather, when you’re rebranding your restaurant, you should emphasize the presence of an inclusive culture that makes everyone feel welcome.
Some ways to adopt this into your new brand include:
Recruit a more diverse staff. This doesn’t just have a positive influence on the culture of your business. It also demonstrates to customers that you’re making efforts to produce a more multiculturally welcoming and vibrant space.
Maintain high accessibility standards in your restaurant. Consider renovations to make certain there is enough space for people with mobility challenges to maneuver. Make design choices on your menus and marketing that are readable for people living with color blindness and dyslexia. Talk about these efforts on your website and invite customers to make suggestions for improvements.
These are certainly far from the only needs customers have at the moment. It can be worth doing some market research to gain a better understanding of what the more nuanced needs are in your area.
Elevate Your Identity
Subtle changes aren’t always the most effective when you’re reintroducing your restaurant with a rebrand. When you want to make an impact, it can be worth looking at your restaurant’s identity. This is an opportunity to elevate and adjust how the dining public perceives your brand.
You can begin by getting to know what your current situation is. What do you think your brand identity should be and how far away from that is it at the moment? Perform some customer research to see what they think your restaurant represents and why. This gives you some actionable data that you can use to drive your adjustments.
Additionally, be thorough about formalizing the key tenets of your intended identity. What type of “voice” do you want your marketing text to take? What’s the mission statement that drives your everyday operations? How does your identity feed into how your staff interacts with customers? Creating a document with your brand identity guidelines keeps your activities consistent. Provide this to all professionals connected to your business, from waiting staff to marketing consultants.
Visual elements are perhaps the most immediate communication of your brand identity to customers. Your refreshed brand identity will need design assets that reflect its new flavor. Consider taking a graphic design course that introduces you to the key design principles. You can gain a better understanding of color theory, visual hierarchy, and digital design software, among other aspects. This empowers you to create logo designs and online materials that engage your customers each time they see them.
Combine Values and Resilience
When done well, your rebrand is a great tool for maintaining resilience even through tough economic times. One of the ways this can be particularly impactful is by reinforcing the values that you share with your customers. After all, consumers tend to favor businesses with values that are aligned with their own ethical priorities.
The good news is that many methods to build your resilience amid economic uncertainty can also double as a demonstration of your shared values.
Some of these include:
Prioritizing the safety of staff and customers. This reduces the potential for costly lawsuits and disruption while also highlighting your culture of care.
Diversifying your supply chain. This may safeguard against unexpected product shortages and show your support of various local businesses.
Incorporating sustainability measures. Adopting energy-efficient protocols and using recycled materials can reduce overheads. This, in turn, supports your financial stability. It also keys into the environmental consciousness and climate concerns that consumers are increasingly mindful of.
It’s vital to remember, though, that your efforts here must be based on your brand’s genuine values. If your customers feel that you’re simply paying lip service to values for marketing purposes, this can damage your restaurant’s reputation. Be authentic and be open to fielding customers’ queries, criticism, and suggestions in relation to your approach.
Conclusion
Rebranding your restaurant has the potential to help you thrive beyond the difficulties of the current economic situation. This should include marketing choices that show you’re aligned with customers’ current needs and values. Adjust the components of your brand identity to elevate the public perception of your business. That said, you should know that a rebrand isn’t a magic route to guaranteed success. Rather, treat your rebrand as another component in your wider strategy to fine-tune your restaurant to be more resilient.
