We work with so many amazing organizations in different industries and fields. It’s inspiring to see all sorts of businesses use the power of video to their benefit. No matter what type of company you are or what field you work in, you have a story to tell.
While nothing beats a great location, great menu, and great word of mouth for a restaurant, video marketing is a vital ingredient for companies in the restaurant industry. Video has the potential to benefit restaurants of all sizes, from the smallest mom-and-pop shop to the biggest franchises in the world.
We’ve seen firsthand how video can elevate a brand or offering and bring a restaurant’s more intangible qualities, like great atmosphere or fantastic service, to the forefront. You are more than just your menu or your Yelp reviews, and video is one excellent way to show it.
Here are some of our favorite five-star quality restaurant videos, along with some ideas for how you can use similar techniques to reach your own restaurant’s marketing goals.
Carmen’s Italian Ice creates homemade ice cream, custard, and gelato at their cafe in Rockville, Maryland. We worked with them to create this docu-style brand promo to engage with online visitors interested in learning more about their delicious creations.
Using a tasting event as a backdrop, we created an event video that doubles as a brand video, capturing testimonials from real Carmen’s customers while promoting the brand itself. It ended up being a short and sweet creation of our own – and really worked to invite intrigued web visitors to check out the cafe themselves. Think about how you can turn an upcoming community event into an opportunity to promote your restaurant’s brand and core values – and even capture some customer testimonials, too!
SusieCakes is an all-American bakery offering classic desserts made entirely from scratch using simple, natural ingredients. We worked with them to create a series of social content videos to nurture their social media followers into taking a bite. Naturally, we did that by making them as hungry as possible with tantalizing recipe videos. No voice-over; delicious baking only.
You can create a similar video for your restaurant, or even add step-by-step instructions to turn more into a tutorial video. Or, keep your social content simple, and just show off your delicious treats with a fun visual gimmick, like this six-second clip we shot for Susie Cakes. No sense spoiling it, but be warned: you may spoil your appetite!
When promoting your restaurant, you don’t have to try to tackle every aspect at once. Take BurgerFi for example: BurgerFi is an American fast-casual restaurant chain focused on all-natural hamburgers, french fries, hot dogs, and custard. Trying to make a video that does all of those categories justice isn’t going to cut it.
Instead, check out this product video we created for them focused solely on their custard. By making the custard the subject, we could dive deeper into what makes BurgerFi’s custard uniquely delicious. This type of content is great for engaging audiences and delighting followers into coming back!
Zen Foods is a meal-prep delivery service that sends delicious meals prepared daily directly to your door. We worked with them to create a series of three commercials in 60-second, 30-second, and 15-second formats for attracting new customers with paid advertising.
An obvious video choice, the key with commercials is to keep them short – especially for paid advertising on social media sites like Facebook or Google. By creating a 15- or even six-second version (depending on the ad format), you’re that much more likely to capture your audience’s attention quickly – as long as you make your case fast!
Video isn’t just for attracting or engaging customers. You can use video to improve your internal team as well. Creating a training video can augment and improve your training process for on-boarding new employees, giving them content to absorb and learn before ever going out on the floor.
Check out this great example of an instructional video from BurgerFi on the company’s expectations and processes for order accuracy.