"Squeeze In" Shows Restaurants APP Marketing, SNAPPII Shows You How

On Thursday, November 8^th I shared a post on “Why Every Restaurant Must Have Their Own App”. The same day, I also shared “5 Ways Your Restaurantcan be Using Technology to Gain Customers”. 

This weekend, someone shared an article in the New York Times written by Melinda F. Emerson on September 28^th titled, “How a Diner Gets the Most Out of Social Media”. In the article, Melinda focuses on Squeeze In, a modest little breakfast-and-lunch diner with four locations in the greater Reno, Nev. area. In addition to its Web site and a custom mobile site. Squeeze In also promotes the business using Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.
 

In 2010, the company, led by company president Misty Young, invested $2,500 in building the app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry phones. It took four months to develop and to date, 2,795 people have downloaded it. Certainly, given the number of downloads, the investment seems to already have paid off. Yet, your restaurant or other consumer or commercial business may not have a clientele likely to draw that many downloads. If you use Snappii 2.0’s visual WTSIWYG Editor to design your APP, there is no cost and you can utilize one of the industry specific templates in Snappii’s Rich library to speed up your APP development.

There is much more to learn from the materials Misty and the team at Squeeze In have included in their APP.

1.      You can not only  browse the menu on the way over, you will find app-only deals to show your server once you’re seated. These deals have already been redeemed nearly 2,000 times.

2.      Servers have been trained to offer to take a group picture if they see a smartphone on the table. This, of course, is a terrific way to generate Instagram and Facebook photos that are posted directly by guests and then linked to by Squeeze In in its Flickr photo stream 

3.      The app also has a built-in tip calculator.

4.       “Our Foursquare newbie offer for first time check-ins has been unlocked 1,151 times,” said Ms. Young.

5.       “The mayor special has been unlocked 140 times. People are actively using this stuff.”

6.      The restaurant has 6,800 “likes” on Facebook, more than 42,000 views of its YouTube videos, more than 1,000 followers on Twitter and more than 52,000 members of its Egghead Breakfast Club, a guest loyalty program The program also helps lead

7.       The chain responds to every review posted on Yelp.

8.      The chain produced their own You Tube video, “Omma Lette” for just $600.” It’s been viewed more than 2500 times.

9.      The Food Network’s “Throwdown With Bobby Flay.” found Squeeze In while  trolling the Web. According to Ms. Young, the “exposure immediately increased revenue 25 percent.”

10.  The chain also has multiplied their Twitter presence by 450 percent in a year. They run contests, promote specials, post photos and videos.

11.  The chain also uses social media in its internal operations through a  private Facebook group to help communications with their 96 employees.

In order to effectively maintain this social media effort, Squeeze In’s social media efforts are handled by three people. These are all ideas that show Ms. Young and the team at Squeeze In have truly given great thought to how their customers could benefit from an APP, but also how their chain could grow through the information available on the APP. Finally, as Ms. Young says in the story “All our communications tactics are lame and ineffective if we can’t back it up at the table.” Truly, no APP is going to draw customers repeatedly unless you can deliver a fully satisfying experience once they are in your establishment or once they receive the merchandise they ordered and it is as good or, preferably, better than expected.

So, sit down with key members of your organization and plan out what you need in your organization’s APP. Then, go to Snappii.com and begin to build your own APP. Before you know it, you’ll quickly be ready to release your app for use on Apple, Android, and all other devices using HTML5.

Alex