Restaurant Virtual Tours could be the Food Industry’s Secret Ingredient for Success
They say we eat with our eyes first, and when it comes to visually engaging and sharing content with restaurant customers, 3D virtual tours speak louder than words.
One of the pandemic’s most highly impacted industries, Covid-19 altered the restaurant game forever. Restaurants needed to quickly pivot from in-person dining to take-out/online operations in the blink of an eye. What was once a novel exception, delivery began ruling the food game.
Restaurants that once competed for in-person clientele, today’s kitchens serve delivery, take-out, dine-in, event venue rentals, and private events all at once. And with new restaurant business models bolstered by online apps like Uber Eats and Skip The Dishes, ghost kitchens are beginning to flood the market. Competition among restaurateurs is fiercer than ever.
With lockdowns a thing of the past, the restaurant industry is experiencing pent-up demand for unique and memorable food experiences. Whether you own a trendy street fooderie or an established upscale establishment, to meet the demands of today’s food consumer, restaurants today require innovative, intelligent, and strategic marketing to whet their customer’s appetites.
No longer tempted only by directly mailed menus or old-fashioned newspaper ads, today’s food fans expect more information, insight, and transparency before opening their wallets and making a reservation.
As more restaurants begin to use traditional video in their marketing efforts, it’s important for businesses to stand out for customers to take notice.
That’s where Restaurant Virtual Tours come into play.
Restaurants are using 3D Tours to introduce their ambiance and menu to consumers for the first time online, turning impressed first impressions into booked tables.
Beyond this, restaurant patrons appreciate being able to see the “best” seats in the house when making reservations.
Restaurant owners and managers are using 3D Tours to market their restaurants to both corporate and private party planners looking to rent a space or the entire restaurant for their events.
To rise above the internet noise, restaurants must find creative ways to engage with their customer base and attract new business. The next wave in the food service marketing game is digital and 3D Virtual Tours are a secret ingredient in a successful restaurant’s recipe box.
As more restaurants begin to use traditional video in their marketing efforts, it’s important for businesses to stand out for customers to take notice.
Changing the way we see restaurants
Virtual Tours for restaurants are one of the answers to the food service industry’s call for something more. Using virtual tour technology, offering a 360-degree, panoramic view, we are helping meet the ever-evolving needs of restaurants, ghost kitchens, and food retail establishments with onboarding and digital marketing with immersive virtual tours. Customers spend 5 to 10 times more on websites with virtual tours.
With restaurant virtual tours on websites, shared on social media channels, and recorded to create video content, they’re offering a wide range of marketing applications and facility management uses for restaurant owners.
Savvy restaurateurs are using 3D Tours to showcase their event venue spaces, providing corporate meeting planners with an immersive preview of their restaurants’ event space. Busy, out-of-town executives that are strapped for time are finding the convenience of touring a space without having to leave their office highly beneficial, making 3D Tours an essential marketing tool for this potential customer base.
Caterers, large groups, and families looking for event venues to hold weddings, bridal showers, birthday parties, reunions, bar mitzvahs, etc. are more likely to click on a restaurant’s event space website that features a 3D Virtual Tour, which offers a view of the space that traditional video or still photography cannot.
We also have food court establishments using 3D Tours to highlight their ambiance, offering a striking first impression online, and enticing first-time customers to visit their favourite restaurants.
And with the ability to be embedded with multi-media tags filled with videos, photos, and links, the uses can be further expanded for facility management, onboarding, training, and other operational purposes.
An essential tool used to illustrate menu items, introduce cooking techniques, explain inventory and inspection procedures, aid in customer service training, and assist with upselling techniques, virtual tours offer limitless opportunities to run an efficient business and boost a restaurant’s bottom line.
From quaint coffee shops upping their online ante to large dining spaces hosting corporate functions or private events, 3D Virtual Tours can be an effective tool to connect with customers, drive website traffic, enhance social media posts, and entice guests to visit physical locations.
Like wine and cheese, Restaurant Virtual Tour marketing and the food service industry are a perfect pair. And while there are plenty of angles you can take when creating a marketing strategy for your restaurant, first and foremost, it’s essential to produce content that is engaging and relevant to your customer’s needs.
With sustainability, safety, and health being key decision factors at the top of consumers’ minds these days, folks want to know more about the brands they choose to patronize.
To that end, studies show that the public wants to see more visual content from local businesses because it gives them a behind-the-scenes view and makes the establishments seem more trustworthy and transparent. Customers aged 18 to 34 are 130% more likely to book a table at restaurants with virtual tours.
This holds especially true for restaurants, giving customers upfront and personal views of the food they’ll be eating and the space they’ll be dining in.
Leveraging the power of 3D Virtual Tour marketing for your restaurant will give you a better shot at attracting hungry diners by enticing customers with realistic mouth-watering images that can’t be captured with traditional video or still photography. It also gives customers a sneak peek into the restaurant’s workings behind the scenes.
Spices up your social presence
Foodies today love to share every aspect of their palate-pleasing experiences. Whether it’s a perfect finger-licking chicken wing added to an Instagram story or a flaky croissant and steamy latte uploaded to their Twitter feed to ensure your restaurant stands out, you need to rise above the loud social media noise.
Just about anyone with a smartphone can create videos and post them on social media. To increase engagement, breed brand loyalty, and gain followers, matterport virtual tours will capture the attention of your prospective customers and excite your base.
Ridge Rock Brewing Co. in Carp, ON uses Restaurant Virtual Tours on its website to show its locations, tell its rich history story, highlight its chef’s personal style, and announce new menu items or upcoming events.
Paints a vibrant picture
There are few businesses that rely more on physical ambiance and environment than restaurants. It can be a painstaking task to get the look and feel of your restaurant’s interior and exterior with basic images or even traditional video.
Virtual tours allow customers to get a more realistic feel of your restaurant. The ability to adjust the mood with lighting and set a virtual table helps to entice customers more vividly than any other medium. We helped Hyde & Seek, a new hip speakeasy in downtown Ottawa by showcasing their new fresh digs online and enabling online bookings with Tablz.
Faster employee training
As the labor shortage continues to loom large, restaurants and facility management companies are having a difficult time hiring and retaining qualified staff. Using virtual tours in hiring sites, businesses can effectively market themselves to the most qualified candidates. New or visiting employees can access your store from their own computer to quickly understand the flow of the space and overall atmosphere without the hassle of an onsite visit.
Restaurant operators for the likes of Starbucks love using 3D Virtual Tours to understand what equipment is installed at what location. They also get an inside view of the entire restaurant, helping them coordinate new marketing campaigns and construction projects. Helping new employees learn their way around means they can hit the ground running on their first day, speeding up the onboarding process tremendously.
Higher Google ranking
Professional Google Street View Trusted virtual tours can be paired with your restaurant’s Google maps and street view, which helps with SEO. If a prospective customer is conducting a near-me search for restaurants in a specific geographic area on Google, for example, multiple results will be displayed.
Not only will restaurants with virtual tours in place stand out, but the increased engagement and uptick in clicks will boost your SEO, moving your restaurant up in the ranks.
Highly cost-effective digital marketing
Not only are virtual tours more interactive than traditional video production with over twice the time spent on the page, but they are also surprisingly affordable. And because 41% of virtual restaurant tours result in an on-site visit, they are a highly cost-effective marketing tool. Did you know 67% of people want more businesses to offer virtual tours?
Brand Showcasing
When Figaro Coffee House wanted to showcase its brand, featuring fine Arabica coffee beans from around the world, it knew it wanted to brew something that stood out from the competition. That’s when they got in touch with Point3D to harness the power of virtual presence for their new flagship location in Ottawa, ON.
They had us create 3D Virtual Tours to highlight the company’s superior roasting tactics, giving customers a birdseye, behind-the-scenes view that captured the brand’s sophisticated style and high-end standards.
Promotes Corporate Events and Private Party Hosting
Matterport Tours has the ability to allow planners to view your space without having to take time from their busy schedules for a live visit. When customers search for catering venues, restaurants with virtual tours will attract more visitors and draw more business. This powerful showing and placemaking tool can be easily shared and viewed by any device with an internet connection.
To show its separate room styles, Live Real Factory had us create two 3D Virtual Tours, one for its Corporate event venue and another for Events. Having these 3D Tours as separate links helps management show the setting for more event venue space bookings than ever before.
Creates an immersive experience
With more and more restaurants adding video to their marketing strategy, 3D Virtual Tours give you a leg up on today’s crowded online marketplace. An immersive experience that lets customers “walk-in” to your restaurant with their phone or computer long before they ever actually walk through your front door, prospective guests can wander through your restaurant virtually, scroll through your online menu, and gain deeper insight into your business’s unique universe.
By adding additional elements to the 3D Showcase, Aiana Restaurant Collective leads their guests by the hand into a whole new world. Their virtual tour has multimedia labels to show menus, recipes, interviews with chefs, and customer testimonials.
Pique consumers’ curiosity further by providing access to places typically closed to the public like your kitchen garden, wine cellar, or even your office! The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.
We enjoy working with every restaurant to help them achieve the very best virtual tour to use for marketing communication and facility management purposes. Most often the virtual tours are embedded onto their website, used with Tablz for booking tables, and used in email/text for showing their event space. Now that we have shared how 3D Tours are helping restaurants take a bite out of their local market share, what restaurant virtual tour applications could you envision incorporating into your restaurant’s marketing plan?
Restaurant Virtual Tours just might be the missing ingredient in your business’ recipe for success.
We Are Restaurant Virtual Tour Specialists
Point3D Commercial Imaging is a contributing member of the Ottawa Board of Trade. We’ve worked with almost a hundred restaurants in Eastern Canada to help market their tables and event space options digitally. If you are a restaurant and are ready to use 3D Virtual Tours for restaurants in Ottawa, Montreal or Toronto, contact our team!