The restaurant industry depends on two ways to attract people to their food and products, one is word of mouth and the other is media. With the imminence of new social media applications, many in the industry have capitalized on the wide coverage these communication platforms provide, to interact directly with customers.
The Kingdom is no exception to this popular trend, as restaurant accounts mushroom across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Pink Camel is a local pastry shop, specialized in making French macarons with a local twist and has become the place to go for these delicacies. Mayada Badr, founder and executive chef of Pink Camel, turned to social media to market her products.
“My sister was the one who actually encouraged me to create a Facebook page, she’s more of a networking person than I am. I loved the idea because I could post pictures and we all know that a picture is worth a thousand words. Also the best part, is all these applications are free,” said Badr. “We started getting followers on Facebook and Twitter but we gained greater prominence when we started using Instagram as it was the ideal platform for us. I’m personally terrible at tweeting, but I love taking pictures and I think our fans appreciate the pictures, as the art entices them to visit our pastry shop. There’s a popular Arabic proverb that says ‘You eat with your eyes’, and that is how we plan to allure our clients, by appealing to their senses,” she added.
In Badr’s own account, social media platforms boosted her business beyond measure, especially since she didn’t have a media budget to launch a marketing campaign. “These applications helped us spread the word and easily reach out to our clients to inform them about our new flavors of the day and fresh products,” she said.
“Instagram has encouraged me to be creative in terms of presentation and photography because I have to constantly engage my followers and Pink Camel’s fans with tempting images,” said Badr.
According to co-founder of Toasted, social media has facilitated communication with customers, allowing them the opportunity to directly share promotions, giveaways and products.
“Social media is the fastest and cheapest way to reach our customer. We rely on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram the most because they have the highest traffic in the Kingdom,” Omar Ajam said.
Inspired by social media to maintain constant interaction with customers and to keep apace with special occasions, the Toasted team has creatively come up with special promotions for events such as mother’s day and valentines.
Famous local food chain, Albaik, did not officially launch their Facebook page, nevertheless their dedicated fans did. The Albaik page has more than 86,000 followers and a constant stream of messages, suggestions and comments.
“We are very much honored and humbled by our fans’ loyalty, commitment, and pride and we hope that this level of engagement only gets stronger,” said Rami Abu Ghazaleh, CEO of Albaik Food Systems. “Social media changed the world and everything around it, setting new platforms and dynamics for communication. The world is now at our fingertips.”
Abu Ghazaleh went on to add, “In a nutshell, social media has transformed the recipients into initiators; suddenly people can create and disseminate news.”
Social media has empowered people and made them strong advocates for companies and brands, he elaborated.
“From the outset, we at Albaik understood this concept and realized that this will only gain momentum. And to be ready for this new phenomenon, we had an internal challenge to prepare our systems and procedures. Our level of engagement had to be as streamlined and efficient as our service. This was the only way we can ride the wave,” he said.
Social media serves you food
Social media serves you food
