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.

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.

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!

With tremendous Automotive and Marketing industry experience, there is no better company in Ontario for capturing Dealership Virtual Tours than Point3D Commercial Imaging.

It used to be all about radio advertising, and catching drivers on their commute to and from work, but now most dealerships are opting to spend more and more of their marketing budget on digital marketing. It’s 2022. For some dealerships, traditional media like radio, TV, and Out-Of-Home advertising spend still dwarfs digital. But other dealership groups are using digital marketing to generate local brand awareness and brand recognition at a more competitive cost than blanketing the airwaves with dealership ads. As cars are seldom sold online and without a test drive, the digital strategy of these car dealerships is to attract consumers to their showrooms. Having the consumer confident about the showroom and ready to buy so that a salesperson can easily sell them is everything. Enter dealership virtual tours and take it from Evan McCosham, Marketing Manager at Tony Graham Automotive Group in Ottawa, ON.

“After deploying them on our contact page, the dealership virtual tours enticed online visitors to make appointments and to visit in person more often.”

– Evan McCosham, Marketing Manager, Tony Graham Automotive Group

We’re helping Tony Graham Automotive Group and many other dealerships in Ontario by creating dealership virtual tours with 3D Matterport every year to keep up with the latest-generation flagship models. Our service provides the most immersive and state-of-the-art dealership virtual tours. The 3D Matterport tour is embedded onto the dealer’s website, a Google Street View tour is added to Google Maps, the 3D Tour is shared in monthly dealership promotions (i.e. flyers, newsletters), and in other sales communications.

Using the 3D dealership virtual tour a user can freely preview the entire dealership, learn more about select models, and book a consultation or test drive. Using multimedia labels, the 3D Matterport tour embedded on the websites can add additional context, videos, and more. Our systems are integrated with the inventory stock of the dealership and can let a user know if a particulate model is available to be seen at the dealership. When users do visit in person they are ultimately more comfortable as they will recall the layout and car models in the dealers’ showrooms. This results in confident buyers more often for the car dealership sales staff to work with in person.

We love to capture 3D Matterport dealership tours. One of the unique features of our 3D Tours over other companies is the ability to show the interior of car models in 3D. We scan the vehicle interior allowing users to step right inside of the latest and greatest car models, see the dash, and really get a feel for the car. From the driver’s seat, users can see the sales brochure, watch a video, or even book a test drive.

Dealership Virtual Tours for Toyota

Tony Graham Automotive Group was the first dealership in Ottawa we had the pleasure of visualizing in 3D. Tony Graham has incredible brand power and their radio tagline from the 1990s is still unforgettable to any Ottawa native. In fact, our Founder Spencer MacPherson’s first car, a 1995 Toyota Corolla, was originally purchased at Tony Graham Toyota on Merivale. Since then, MacPherson’s belief in the Toyota promise of reliability and quality remains to this day. The company car is now a much updated 2019 Toyota Corolla. In this dealership virtual tour, the Toyota Corolla Hatchback and Toyota 86 were featured as brand-new models that year.

Dealership Virtual Tours for Lexus

After the first dealership virtual tour at Tony Graham Toyota, other car dealerships were looking at using 3D Tours on their website. Toyota’s more affluent or well-dressed cousin, Lexus, was looking for a way to bring more clients to their dealership With an email request to Point3D, they procured an estimate for a dealership virtual tour including in several vehicles. The cost is nominal and could be co-opted by the Lexus brand as a marketing initiative. This ultimately made it more feasible for a new 3D Tour to be created each year. We now visit annually when new-generation models are released to update the car dealership 3D Tour.

Dealership Virtual Tours for Kia

We don’t just service Ottawa, Ontario. When car dealer Kia Durham reached out looking for a car dealership virtual tour with Matterport, we sold them on our expertise in capturing the very best Matterport scans with cars in dealerships. We chose a day that space was closed to the public, cleaned, and with each vehicle specially placed to allow navigation and completed the 3D Virtual Tour capture. The Matterport scan took a full day to complete, with deliverables ready within that same week. To deploy the marketing collateral, the car dealer set up a “Shop From Home” sales funnel that incorporates the 3D Tour and embeddedd it on the contact page of their website.

We are Car Dealership Virtual Tour Experts

Capturing Dealership Virtual Tours with Matterport requires a comprehensive understanding of 3D virtual tours and the automotive industry. Trust the firm with experience in Matterport virtual tours for dealerships and car showrooms. If your Ottawa, Toronto, or Montreal dealership is thinking about how a 3D Virtual Tour can help attract new customers and bring more people through your front door, contact Point3D to learn more about the service. If you want to know more, visit our About Us page.

At Point3D, we’re creating large Matterport scans at scale.

Since our beginnings, we at Point3D have been avid enthusiasts and proponents of everything 3D. The platform we trust the most for 3D Virtual Tours has always been Matterport. There just isn’t anything like it available on the marketplace and with the latest generation Matterport Pro2 camera (which we’ve named ours Matty), offers stunning 3D visuals with high-quality 36-degree views and is easily shared to any device with an internet connection. It’s not just single-family homes we’re scanning either. We’re pushing the envelope with Matterport scanning to create immersive 3D experiences for all sorts of creating and unique applications.

When scanning more complex or larger spaces with Matterport, our technicians use refined survey and laser scanning methodology to properly capture a space. While a single-family home may only take an hour with under 100 scans, some commercial and industrial real estate take days to scan with Matterport using over 1000 setups.

The biggest mistake new Matterport operators make is not introducing trusted survey methods into their workflow to make it easy for Matterport’s scan registration automation. A haphazard or “misaligned” scan will not impress their clients. Without proper scanning methodology, a square space can skew to one side inaccurately or be missing data.

We have experience with large Matterport scans in Canada and in the United States. We can scan using Matterport in complex and outdoor areas, and up to hundreds of thousands of square feet. Our team enjoys the challenge of scanning large open warehouses for space planning, entire buildings for commercial real estate transactions, and outdoor spaces for art/culture purposes.

Our Largest Matterport Scans

We’re proud to show some of the spectacular spaces we’ve had the opprtunity to visit and capture with Matterport 3D cameras. The platform has allowed us to share thousands of unique places with others online and in 3D. Over time, we’ve excelled in championing Matterport scanning and have since captured several large Matterport scans in Canada.

We are Matterport 3D Experts

Our team has captured large Matterport scans in Canada with a comprehensive understanding of 3D virtual tour technology. Trust the very best and most experienced Matterport Service Providers when a large Matterport scan is needed. Point3D services Ottawa, Toronto, or Montreal with large Matterport 3D Virtual Tours. No space is too large or too complex for Matterport capture as we can develop a navigation plan between 3D models for most applications, contact Point3D to learn more about this service.

This month we are touching on Warehouse Virtual Tour work we’ve completed for the Industrial Real Estate Industry in Ontario.

A warehouse virtual tour is a multi-functional digital asset for building owners and managers. Having a 1:1 digital twin of any space available for viewing anytime is a powerful tool to reduce vacancies, solidify brand confidence, and even increase orientation or overall productivity. Point3D has performed reality capture to many warehouses in Ontario for commercial real estate listings, brand digital marketing, and facility management. No size of warehouse is too small or too large for us to capture. In Ontario, we’ve created 3D Tours of crawlspace mechanical rooms to warehouses spanning hundreds of thousands of square feet.

Warehouse Virtual Tour for Space Planning

After all the work of finding the right warehouse, it’s time to move in. For manufacturers and production facilities, moving and installing their operations can cost millions of dollars. When installing new equipment in a new base fit-up or existing complex conditions, smart designers and engineers are using 3D Tours to see the existing conditions and learn how to optimize the space. With the tool, the spaces can be measured, viewed, and checked for walking clearance. Existing equipment can be spatially rearranged and configured virtually, other 3D models of equipment can also be imported. This helps the planning process move from vision to reality while reducing change orders and on-site issues when installing equipment in a new facility.

Warehouse Virtual Tour for Training and Orientation

Warehouse operations have been heavily impacted by the pandemic while demand is at an all-time high. This has resulted in competitive companies swallowing market share and growing intensely. When operating a warehouse in Ontario, safety is always number one and when hiring a ton of new staff, introducing them to workplace safety is important.  To expedite the onboarding of new hires, some companies are providing a 3D Virtual Tour of their warehouses to allow new hires to walk the space and with the use of multimedia labels, introduce company practices, policies, and equipment.

Warehouse Virtual Tour for Acquisition, Sale, Or Divestment

Industrial Real Estate is also still on fire in Ontario and shows no signs of stopping with this recent industrial real estate transaction in Ontario. So while it’s not possible to be everywhere at once, having a warehouse virtual tour gives building stakeholders the ability to see it from any angle, anytime. Interested buyers and potential tenants can take a look at floorplan and walk the entire space at their own pace. This freedom lets them truly understand if the space fits their needs, more so than real estate photography and video. And while this won’t serve as a replacement for a building inspection, it would provide insight into which areas require more due diligence earlier in the deal. This ultimately saves building owners and national occupiers costs for in-person viewing while quickening the speed to lease or sale.

We are 3D Virtual Tour Specialists

Warehouse Virtual Tours require a comprehensive understanding of 3D scanning and the right equipment. Trust the firm with experience in Matterport virtual tours for warehouses. If your Ottawa, Toronto, or Montreal warehouse is ready to use 3D Virtual Tours, contact Point3D to get started.

This month we are highlighting kindergarten virtual tours for the Ottawa Catholic School Board.

The Ottawa Catholic School Board (OCSB) has over 70 schools spread across Ottawa and surrounding areas; each of which we created a kindergarten virtual tour for. Their approach to learning encompasses more than just memorizing facts and figures – it has a focus on children using information in a variety of creative ways. Throughout their Kindergarten program, the Ottawa Catholic School Board focuses on a ‘deep learning’ approach to education which strives for academic success whilst also focusing on what it means to be a good person. Students work on respecting the universal values of all faiths, grounded in Catholic principles.

Given the Ottawa Catholic School Board’s approach to learning, it’s clear to understand why so many parents and children are interested in attending!

Choosing which school to go to can be a difficult decision both for parents and children. Whilst some factors, such as location, are easy to decide upon, it is often hard to make a decision without actually touring prospective schools. Currently, in-person viewing of schools is next to impossible to coordinate in accordance with gathering measures. That’s where bringing the classrooms online with a school virtual tour makes sense.

With the addition of our school virtual tours to the OCSB website, which are compatible on a computer, tablet, or mobile device, tours are made easy – and virtual. New students and their parents can walk through each of the options for their new school and get a better picture of what their next few years will look like.

Students can tour their future classroom with school virtual tours.

3D Virtual tours offer a completely immersive experience, allowing children and parents alike to walk through all of the Ottawa Catholic School Board’s schools and make a decision about where they would like to spend some of their most formative years.

To make these 3D Virtual tours easily accessible, the Ottawa Catholic School Board shared the tours on their website. This allows students to visit the page and virtually tour their current schools or prospective schools to see which is the best fit.

Take one of the tours for yourself.

Revisit your time as a student, or tour a kindergarten classroom with your child. Take a look inside a 1:1 model of any of the Ottawa Catholic School Board’s institutions with one of our 3D Virtual Tours, from the comfort of your home.

Not only does each kindergarten virtual tour allow you to walk inside the classroom and enjoy an immersive experience, but multimedia labels provide more details and key information for prospective students and their parents alike.

In total, we captured 67 Kindergarten Virtual Tours.

This was a challenging and rewarding project as our team worked around class schedules. Together with keyholders, many of which were the school’s Principals and Vice-Principles, after-hours access was provided with the spaces looking their best for a school virtual tour. To view the full list of schools we created a kindergarten virtual tour for, please see the OCSB website.

We are 3D Virtual Tour Specialists

Kindergarten virtual tours offer a unique and immersive look into schools for new students and their parents. If your school is ready to use 3D Virtual Tours in Ottawa, Montreal or Toronto, contact our team to get started.