Mastering Social Media for Restaurants (PT 1)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We are back here on the Restaurant Masterminds podcast, and
today is going to be a good one because we're
going to master something. We're going to master social media.
And joining me today, of course, is mister Paul mullin
the go to market whiz Kid. I don't know if
it's a genius or wiz Kid, which should I use?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
You know, I prefer whiz Kid. I prefer whiz Kid.
I like that a lot.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Whiz Kid and the long Lost Mastermind coming in from
Texas after her.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
I don't know what was this break you had?

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Oh gosh, just lots of work. But I was at
south By, so that that took up a lot of
my time was preparing for that and attending south By
Southwest this year.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yeah, south By going on right now, So hey, listen,
we're going to be talking about mastering social media and
some very cool tools that you guys should be using
as operators. Stick around right here, get started. My name

(01:17):
is Paul Baron. As the early pioneer in fast casual,
I've seen the industry evolve from just a few operators
to the most sought after segment by consumers around the world.
Now we're planning to shape its future. Tap into decades
of my expertise identifying the emerging brands and tech winners

(01:37):
in the space. Saber Capital will be fueling the next
generation of fast casual innovation. All Right, we're back here
on mastering social Media on the Masterminds today and we're
going to get into it. So obviously, Anna, we got
a chance to get you on the show today because
you actually get to do the stuff talk about. So

(02:02):
you have one up on us. Of course, as usual,
you're one up on us. Give us a rundown of
your operation again, so for new listeners, and then start
with like the first area of social that you guys
are focusing on.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Sure, sure, So I'm the chief marketing officer for a
company called Molac Corporation, which is a family owned series
of brands. We own restaurants, retail, e comm and entertainment
in Central Texas. So our entertainment venue also just happens
to be called Green Hall. It's the oldest dance hall
in Texas, oldest continually running dance hall in Texas. So
all of us have a passion for music, but also

(02:42):
we're in a tourist destination. Most of our concepts are
in a tourist destination. So in the little town of
Green which is next to New braun Folds, it's basically
like if you were experiencing like a Disney restaurant Wonderland.
That's what we've got for people, several different concepts in
the area. But then we also have two restaur taurants
in a highly competitive area in San Antonio, So we

(03:03):
were kind of blessed with like the tourist destination and
very competitive down in San Antonio. So I spent a
lot of my time thinking and doing social media every
single day. I'm blessed to have a wonderful team and
some really talented people on the team. My social media
person is out on maternity leave right now, unfortunately, and
fortunately so we're all just trying to fill in for

(03:24):
her while she's out, and she did a really really
good job on sort of preparing us while we were out.
Because with nine different concepts, if you count all the
restaurants e com, that's nine different brands in the beautiful
nine different brands that we are supporting on social and
within nine different brands, you obviously have a lot of
different channels of social that you can choose from to

(03:44):
use to promote the brand message there. I would say
that we go hard on Instagram across all of the brands,
and then we see, depending on which one it is,
we see a lot more traffic on Facebook versus Instagram.
But then we also are working our way towards TikTok too,
so we have some TikTok going on as well. It
kind of depends on the brand for like who gets

(04:07):
gets it and who doesn't. For example, we have this
wonderful restaurant down in San Antonio called down on Grayson.
It's very trendy in a very trendy area called the
Pearl or near the Pearl. Yeah, and so that makes
sense for TikTok, you know, for our users to be
on TikTok. But right next door we have sort of
an old school Texas roadhouse style called Josephine Street, which

(04:27):
our audience members, guests are aging out, I'll say it,
And so we have to be aware of that and
then also try to get some of that energy from
TikTok if we can to drive people towards both of
these brands down in San Antonio.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Now, what does this join the waitlist? What is that?

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Oh? So we do not accept reservations at the moment
and so, but we do end up having people on
a weight and so we use weightless meet as a
technology behind this, where you can just join the waitlist
before coming to the restaurant, so he's already on the list,
which is really helpful, especially for some of the really
popular times. We get really busy for lunch service, dinner,

(05:07):
and brunch. Actually we're pretty busy.

Speaker 4 (05:08):
I like it.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, you guys got a nice looking menu there.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
It's crazy. Yo is gorgeous. It is like our shining
jewel because it's just so nice out there. We have
fans and misters and heaters ready to take on the
Texas weather at any time of year. And it's one
of the best patios in San Antonio.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
How is you know? San Antonio has kind of had
those ebbs and flows of really high e commerce or
should say commerce and then you know challenging times. What's
the current state of San Antonio right now?

Speaker 3 (05:39):
San Antonio is hot? Right now?

Speaker 1 (05:40):
It's hot.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yeah, it's definitely hot right now. I see restaurants.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Opening or what are you seeing coming in the market.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
There's a lot of competition, a lot of restaurants opening,
but a lot of restaurants doing really creative things to
bring customers into their stores as well, and so you
kind of have to stay ahead of the curve. On
that we did a promo in during Christmas time where
we brought a Santa Claus and people could come get
photos with Santa for their dogs. So Santa would pull
the dog onto his lap or set him next to him,

(06:07):
and so they could get a photo with Santa. We
are thinking about doing the same thing with the Easter Bunny,
so stay tuned on that one.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
But it's around the corner too.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
Well.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
The good thing is is going to be talking and
I think this kind of is in tune with what
you're doing and in terms of content strategies and visual
content is one of the key things that I think
most restaurants really focus on some more than others. Obviously,
you guys have done a really good job on just photography,
video all that. Do you hire someone as like a

(06:40):
contractor or is it someone on the team. What's the
makeup of how you I guessed all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
It's a really good question. So I actually have two people.
So there's one person who we hired last fall. She's
the lady on maternity ly right now. Claire, she's amazing.
She is our main social media manager, so she's really
in charge of thinking about the whole calendar, coming up
with content pluging, and we use airtable to plan out
all of our content platform. It's wonderful, love it, so
we plug it all in, you know, it's all nicely

(07:07):
labeled and we can approve it and everything. And then
I also have an amazing photographer and videographer named Alan.
He's our kind of content producer, so he gets the
really beautiful shots of the meals and the drinks and
the video of people preparing it, whereas Claire can focus
on sort of more the iPhone content a little bit
faster miant for reels and stories and things like that.

(07:28):
So I have two people and then we use airtable
to communicate for all of it.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah, I was I clicked over onto an Instagram that
all had put in there around So, okay, you mentioned
Instagram and TikTok, So why are you are you doing
both right now? Or are you focused just on Instagram?

Speaker 4 (07:50):
No, we're doing.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Both, although I've reached a point now where I am
going to probably let off the gas on TikTok for
a couple brands for several reasons, but then still go
hard on Instagram.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
And terms that if eat the Facebook, Paul, what are
you seeing out there? I mean you get a chance
to talk to not only operators, but a lot of
the vendor side of it, which are trying to reach operators.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
That's right, yea.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
What is what seems to be the tool of the trade.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Well, you know, I think it's really it's interesting what
Anna was saying about, you know, the different channels, and
let's take a step back for a second and talk
about some of these main platforms that restaurants are using
and why they might use one channel as opposed to
a different channel. So when you look at I kind
of think of it as the Big four with YouTube
in the background. But the Big four is Instagram, TikTok, Facebook,

(08:39):
and x and they all have their different attribute nuances
that make them really effective to reach a particular demographic.
If you look at Instagram, which Anna has been having
tremendous success on, it's very visual, of course, but it's
used by a lot of the younger gender demographics, the

(09:00):
eighteen to twenty fours and the twenty five to thirty four's.
You know, those millennials and Gen zs, they love the
insta u TikTok TikTok along the same lines. Might even
be a little bit younger in some ways, but the
Facebook Facebook is is more for the older crowds. So
you might want to you know, Anna might want to

(09:20):
consider and she probably is, you know, thinking about how
to use faithbook maybe for some of the brands in
her port.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Pins on your demo. Sure, I would think.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Talk on Faceboo too.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
I mean yeah, I was going to say, even though
that you've got a lot more variety there. I'm finding
myself going back to Facebook a little bit more. I
mean not that well, you're getting older, ball, you're getting older.
That's true. Good point. Thanks for the great hair, you know,
doing this podcast is giving me more gray hair than
anything else.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
But listen, there was a data point I wanted to
hit on because it hit on the point you just
hit on, and that was the interaction rate of Instagram
versus Facebook.

Speaker 4 (09:58):
Massive.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
So that's a bit difference. I was looking at the
notes you put in there. Two point two percent versus
point to two percent.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
It TikTok absolutely to work, you know, absolutely, Dwarfs the
nearest competitor. So the nearest competitor would be Instagram. TikTok
is about what three almost three times?

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, they're two and a half. Yeah, an engagement rate.
So Instagram is right there on top of them at
two two. But Facebook X so it looks like and
those are the visual platforms. So to your you know, credit,
you guys have two people dedicated to digesting that content
in here is a question that I think a lot

(10:40):
of operators challenge are challenged with every day. How do
I know what to put on? You know? Do I
do a video that's talking to the customer? Do I
do something candid in the kitchen? Do I some something
of the menu? I mean you got a lot. It's
like a palette of stuff that you.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
Could choose from.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
And especially an operation like you, how do you choose
use what to put on?

Speaker 3 (11:01):
Yeah, so we we think about sort of our content pillars,
I guess, and like what we're going to do. We have,
like we also have retail, right, so thinking about that
a really nice food shot or drink shot or retail
product shot. We try to intersperse with lifestyle, right, So
show them the thing, especially if it's a new item.

(11:21):
We do a lot of ltos and new drinks and
new cocktails. That's always really great to get attention. It's
very visual, but then we try to intersperse that with
how people are enjoying said thing, right, so whether that's
they're wearing it, they're wearing the shirt or the bandana
or the hat that we're selling, or they're enjoying cocktails
on the patio, So we try to intersperse it that way.
But then we also think about back of house and

(11:43):
what does that visual look like too. So we have God,
I wish I.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Could look at those onion rings, I mean your photography.

Speaker 4 (11:52):
God, it really is.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Okay, I gotta play this, I gotta play this. Oh
my lord, Yeah are those real?

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, we have several different types of Venus conceipts.
But yeah, they're they're really they're really tasty.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Well that's an easy one. That's too easy.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
But if you, I mean, as a content person, I
get really picky about certain things. So you'll notice the
sauce Ramikin is full. You'll also notice that we try
to make sure that the water glasses are full. There's
a real two down from you that like the water
glasses are not full and not try to be crazy.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
You got that Boca effect in the background going.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
To the harbor exactly. Also, colorful plates big one. I mean,
even if your restaurant doesn't serve on colorful plates, I
think we're shooting like bring some with you, Like that's
really really helpful. We also have a strawberry cake that's
the size of your face, so like it's we.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Have some right there, that face right there, that strawberry
face cake.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
It's enormous. It's absolutely enormous. So when you think about
like different types of content, like back to your original
question to put on there, we have some great visuals
in terms of our food. Our food is beautiful, our
drinks are beautiful, but we always want to show people
how they're enjoying the food as well. We and then
we do some back of house builds as well. We
haven't done those in a while. We're going to bring
those back, but like, uh, we'll go to back of house.

(13:10):
And I don't like showing people everything because it's it's
just not for not for everybody, for everybody, but good
close ups when you're in the back house. That's what
I would recommend. Making sure you focused on like a
nice clean board and like watch people build a sandwich
or put together salad. That can be really fun. People
like watching our catfish fry too. They love our fried catfish,
so they love it when we throw a filet in.

(13:31):
Those are all good visuals.

Speaker 4 (13:32):
And let me ask you a question.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
I'm curious about this because your brands are they're gorgeous, right,
these are these are beautiful rest the beautiful food, you know,
beautiful people. It's just it's a real beautiful experience. But
I'm wondering, how do you approach you know, the idea
is to get interaction, uh, you know, and engagement, and
certainly you know you're seeing that, you know, with the
likes and whatnot. But what happens when a user provides content.

(13:58):
We see a lot of brands, particularly you know, the
big mega brands love you know, reposting user generated content.

Speaker 4 (14:05):
Is that something that the independence do too?

Speaker 3 (14:07):
Oh? Yeah, we do it as often as we can.
In fact, we did one recently, I think for our
page for Green Historic District. I think it's just Green Texas, Paul.
A lot of people will use our restaurants or the
surrounding areas in like a recap reel, right, they're like, oh,
I spent my Dan san Antonio, or I spent my
day in Green and here's what I saw. And they'll

(14:27):
include us, you know, we may not even know about
it in that reel. They'll also include some competitors. But
we will still post it, like we will still repost
it reshare it because we're like, yes, you should come
down and have a great time. You know, we want
people to come and enjoy it, so we I love
it whenever there's UGC it's really entertaining. We also, of

(14:48):
course run Green Hall, which is the dance hall, and
people love to post video of their experience at the hall.
Depending on the quality of video, weill, uh.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
No, you need to curate that, you know, because it's
your brand right exactly.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
But we will interact with it and we'll like say like, hey,
this is really great. We also have posted video on
our own of people really enjoying a show and have
said hey, we see you down in front, you and
you and the white hat. We love your passion. Hit
us up and we're gonna send you some swag and
like that kind of like serendipity makes it really fun

(15:22):
and special.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, well, I mean this the way you're engaging, am
showing the Instagram for you guys. By the way, if
you're not catching the video version of this on YouTube
and you're listening to the audio, go ahead and stop
the audio right now. Oh look at that and jump
over to YouTube save FM. You'll get a chance to
see all this cool stuff that we're showing. With that,
and I think the you're you're hitting on so many

(15:45):
points that I think a lot of operators sometimes either
I don't know if they forget it or they maybe
they just don't have the team. Because you've got a
couple of really good people that you're working with. Is
there an ability for because I'm thinking brand now, if
you a lot of our listeners are multi unit brand

(16:05):
guys and or independent operators. We have a lot of
independence that listen to the show. And when you look
at having to hire someone dedicated or if you hire
someone that you maybe they're doing something else, maybe they're
you know, on front of house, or maybe they're even
in back or maybe in the administrative office, how do

(16:27):
you make that decision to go ahead and say nope,
you're going to be one hundred percent social as opposed
to not putting them on other projects.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Oh that's a that's a real toughye you know. I
think you have to look at the operation and see
where you might have the ability to take them off
in front of house or you know, give them a
few hours to go and do it. I don't know
if I would if unless you're ready to hire full
time social, I wouldn't say like, okay, you're now social.
I would say like, hey, we know you're interested in
doing this kind of thing for a couple hours out

(16:57):
of every shift. You know, maybe you need them the
clock can clock out so you can track it or whatever.
We want you to do some social content. But then,
I think one thing that a lot of brand managers
or owners miss, especially on the independent side, is they're
not watching content like I actually currently online, Like I
watch a lot of content and I know what I
like and I know it fits for our brand. So

(17:19):
I will see a real or a TikTok and send
it to the team and be like, hey, let's do
this for this brand. Let's do this for this brand.
I mean, don't you don't have to reinvent anything, like
just copy and there.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
Makes copy and make it your own.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
It's you know, I was wondering with when you look
at TikTok and I don't know. Did you know that
TikTok was named the first non game app to generate
over ten billion dollars in consumer spending.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, it's crazy. It's TikTok shop is is extremely well successful.
We got to talk about the band and we will
get to that.

Speaker 4 (17:53):
Well, that's where I was going with.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Okay, go ahead, Well yeah, with regard to to e
commerce even right, you have these these wonderful brands and
are you looking at TikTok or Instagram as a way
to move merch?

Speaker 3 (18:08):
So we okay, So we have a retail component called
Cotton Eye Joe's and I love their Sorry, my dog's
having a dream, so he's barking in the backround. It's
his birthday. So you doing all dreams exactly anyway. But
you have to reach a certain threshold of number of
users before you can actually even use TikTok shop, and
we haven't gotten there yet. So that's frustrating. And it's
so much for the number.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
It's the same for YouTube on putting at you know
where you're getting your eyes.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
I'll look it up after I finished this thought. And
but you have to hit that number, and so we
haven't gone there yet, but one hundred percent we want
to be on TikTok shop like we have some I mean,
the store itself is beautiful. We have some amazing products
that you can't get anywhere else. We have regular products
that are sold out everywhere else that we still have,
like there's there's a bunch of really cool stuff on there.

(18:56):
So yes, one percent, we're looking at it. I'm also
developed being at the same time making sure that we
tag all of our products on Instagram correctly as well.
Because of the band, you know, the April fifth is looming,
you guys, go ahead, kid.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
That's one of the things I was hoping that we
can cover off on, like the band, the threat of
the band. What does that mean to restaurants everywhere? If
if you cut off these vital channels or direct to
your guest, that's kind of that's gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
I don't think it's going to happen.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
I mean, I'm going to force.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
The sale of the divest assure, I should say the divestiture,
and most likely Trump is going to do a deal
with the Chinese and put by dance either, you know,
as a secondary division that's you know, has a US
tech stack. We've been talking to the people who are
actually bidding on this. Alexis o'hannian, who is the founder

(19:51):
of Reddit, jumped in with Kevin O'Leary and Jimmy from
Mister Beasts. So you've got those three big social media guys,
and then you have a guy by the name of
Frank McCourt who is running kind of the the VC
venture arm, and they're trying to put some pressure on
to do the bid. In fact, I think they're the

(20:11):
only company that has an active bid on TikTok for
the US that meet all of the requirements because there's
a lot of requirements that the government US government in
the ban put on companies to do the acquisition. If
they're successful, now that's a big if. But if they're successful,
because it could still go to someone like Oracle or
Microsoft or I don't think X would make a play

(20:33):
for it, nor would Meta. I think that would get blocked.
But if someone like you know, the Frank McCourt's team
gets it done with those kinds of influencers, which most
likely will drag in a slew of influencers in the us,
which is, you know, going to go back to the
point of TikTok shop and all those kind of things.

(20:54):
So I think it's going to be It's going to
be okay. So I wouldn't if I was consulting a
brand today, should did you put money on TikTok I
actually tell him yeah, because it's not going away, and
I just can't imagine that the Chinese would would back
away from this market. It just is too too critical.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
I have some good statistics for you, by the way,
that I just got from South By Southwest. When I
was there, I went to a session that specifically talked
about influencer marketing, and they did talk about the April
fifth deadline for the TikTok band. But it's very likely
even so, jd Vance is heading up all the negotiations,
it sounds like, but Trump has indicated that he can
punt that deadline again another seventy five days or whatever

(21:32):
he wants to do. There's currently no indication by Byte
Dance that they want to sell which hasn't moved at all.
And this is I thought was really interesting. TikTok Us
was under ten percent revenue for Byte Dance last year,
but the US is about forty to fifty percent of
worldwide traffic for TikTok, which is which shows you know,
the availability, right, I mean, there's a lot of potential

(21:55):
there and there's still a lot of disbelief that it'll
be banned, even from creators on TikTok.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
You know, well think of it if it does get banned,
which would completely surprise me if they actually go through
with it. Yeah, and they create an alternate, you know,
if someone like because if you have mister b'st Alexis,
mister Wonderful and all of the crew that says, Okay,
we you know, we can't get a sale done, We're

(22:20):
going to launch our own because they got the money
they're setting on billions.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
Well, and there's already a few out there that are
alternatives and alternatives that are offering creator funds to try
and pull those influencers and creatives over.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
So that's a that's a good point, is would you
because this is a strategy question that you're going to
have to start making a decision on this soon. Because
you've got Blue Sky, which is the new entry against Twitter.
Some people use it, I'm on it. It's it's a
different environment it's not as Cesspooley, but it is a
different environment. And then you have Instagram really, which is

(22:54):
pretty much operated by Facebook, which people have, you know,
wins and losses with Facebook and they've all and granted now,
Mark Zuckerberg has probably changed his theory a little bit
in his older years. I think he's opening up to
trying to get something decentralized, which is, you know where

(23:15):
this is going. What if a new platform launched, would
you migrate to it and give it a chance. Let's say,
for instance, TikTok, doesn't it bought and Alexis and Shark
tank Man and all these guys, you know, mister beasts
go out there and they launch something and they bring
all these influencers into it really fast. Would you jump?

Speaker 3 (23:35):
No? No, I wouldn't. I mean not immediately. I would
have to wait and see, you know. I'd go and
claim my profile like you do, and then watch and
see what happens. But frankly, if TikTok got banned, I
put all my energy behind YouTube.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
And frankly, we're working on YouTube strategy right now anyway,
and I think that's that's really where to go.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Well, you know, we are on all five. You know,
we've got I would say Facebook is our least you know, integrated.
We're you know, we're utilizing X a lot on the
business side and the tech side. YouTube obviously for a saver,
which by the way, I don't know if you guys
know this, but we are now nearing. Let me share

(24:14):
this tab. We are now nearing. I'll zoom in on that.
We hit one million viewers right there, so big kudos there.
We're about to hit three hundred videos on YouTube and
one hundred and ninety one thousand subscribers. We're going for
two hundred. We're going to make it.

Speaker 4 (24:34):
We're going to make it.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
That's fantastic, Yeah, fantastic. It's but I think the key
there is that you've got to have one thing, and
that is consistency. It is the one thing that I
think a lot of people lose in the way of
social media. Paul, do you find especially on the vendor side,
because this is I see these programs. It's not I'm

(24:59):
not knocking vendor out there. I'm not saying they're doing
it wrong, but here's what happens. You've seen it. I'm
sure vendors say, oh, we're going to launch a new
widget whatever. On social, they do one or two things
and then it's nothing.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah, that's that's exactly what happens on the vendor side.

Speaker 4 (25:16):
There's that you know, the discipline to do this takes
it takes bandwidth.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah, and you know when you look at a restaurant
like in Anna's World, well, you know you literally need
a dedicated team to do this because it's so important
to your sales. With I think we're still trying to
get that message through on the vendor side and the
B to B side. But the really interesting thing is,
I think vendors are still looking at long form written

(25:42):
content as being a way to you know, capture interest
and attention. And that might be so for certain case
studies short form, but short form video, man, you know,
you'll retain ninety five percent more of a message on
a video than you will ten percent.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Perhaps, just here's an interesting stat for you guys that
you may not be aware of. Our short form content
that gets basically pulled out of each podcast that we do.
If you compile it, it gets as many views as
the long form, but you know, stacked in there because
you have to do five or six short form pieces

(26:19):
in it and it gets as many views as the
long form content. Now with YouTube, you know, there are
a lot of restrictions on it of you have to
get to like I think it's four thousand organic hours
of viewership, and they disqualify a lot of stuff, which
is not great. One of the things they disqualifies when

(26:40):
someone views your video on someone else's page. You know.
So let's say you embed a video and which ours
are done that way. A lot of our videos are
viewed on our substack. Well we don't get credit for
that unless it's viewed in YouTube. Interesting, So that's that's
an issue. But it does give you the ability to
go in and do the merch shelf, which I think

(27:01):
would be perfect for Anna and you guys, and of
course you potentially. I don't know that you would ever
run monetization, but you could. You might have a vendor
or two that might want to jump in on that.
Have you had any vendors that have said, hey, we
want to partner with you on something.

Speaker 5 (27:17):
Me?

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah, no, they should. Yeah, like a wine company, a
hot sauce company, and.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
We done so. We do a pretty cool event. We
have a wine bar in our portfolio as well. And
so we do. Actually it's coming up on March twentieth,
we do an event called Common Taste it where we
bring in different wineries sometimes breweries because we also serve
craftier and they'll like showcase their products. It's like an
actual in person activation, which is really nice. And then

(27:45):
we usually partner with a nonprofit for each one of
those too, where we allow them to come and like
talk about their stuff. These are always where it's at
anytime you can get like a puppy adoption agency or
like a rescue agency. I mean, like that's always really great.
So that's when we work with them. We have dipped
our little toes of our boots into sponsorship on the
Green Hall side, so if anyone wants to sponsor however.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
And that's how those work, because that's a.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
Yeah, yeah, it's tricky because it's a you know, nearly
it's one hundred and forty seven year old brand, Like
we have to be very careful with that. So and
it's what's interesting is when you go in the hall,
you can actually see they clearly did sponsorship at some
other time because there's old signs hanging up on the
wall that are from like Joe's lawn service, and it
was when you would only have to dial the four

(28:32):
numbers in town to like reach the person. So it
was kind of crazy. And so we can't remove any
of that, you know, that's part of the flavor. So
we're not going to go in and be like, oh,
just replace all the signage. We're not going to do
any of that. It's really more about access in my mind, right,
I mean, Green Hall tickets can be really hard to
come by. Sometimes we're capped at eight hundred and so
I am looking for sponsors now who might want to

(28:54):
use this as an opportunity for their clients right to
buy a package of tickets that they can use to
bring clients to knowing that we're going to have really
amazing shows throughout the year, so we're trying to be
pretty creative about that.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
We're going to jump over to engagement and community building
real quick, but before we do that, we'll take a
quick break. This episode is brought to you in part
by Gusto, the number one rated HR platform for payroll,
benefits and more. With Gusto's easy to use platform, you
can empower your people and push your business forward. Over

(29:27):
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so we're back here on the restaurant Masterminds and we
are mastering social media today, and let's go over to

(30:59):
the topic of engagement and community building. Paul, you put
in a TikTok channel from Taco Bell that I got
to show, and the livmos concept that obviously has been
around for quite some time. So they've done a fantastic job.
But when you look at engagement, and this is one
of the things that we're seeing more and more on.

(31:21):
What was your opinion of what you're seeing out there
in terms of how brands are engaging right now? Do
you feel like they're doing a good job or yeah,
let's take it.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
Let's take a look at I think we have to
look through that, look at that through perhaps what restaurants
segment are we talking about? Right, So if we're looking
at large enterprise like McDonald's or Taco Bell, you know,
tacob there's nobody that can touch Taco Bell in terms
of their community building and their brand.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Sixty millions likes.

Speaker 4 (31:53):
They just they just know how to touch that.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
That's who they are. I mean you look at Taco Bell.
That is gen Z, that is is Alpha, that is
they know everything about them. It's really a perfect execution
by the Taco Bell people. But Live Mass Live is
who else can put on a gigantic live event in
the middle of Brooklyn, focus nothing on nothing but your

(32:17):
brand and unveiling you know, thirty menu items and like
having this giant celebration and generating social media content for eons.

Speaker 4 (32:28):
It's truly remarkable.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Well so can do you guys feel? Because I feel
like Anna, You've got a brand that kind of has
this this you know, adoration. I mean, people love it.
It's something that probably get behind it.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yah. That's the music festival. I mean you gotta that's That's.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
What it would be a natural? Why not we do?

Speaker 3 (32:51):
So?

Speaker 4 (32:52):
It isn't okay?

Speaker 1 (32:53):
When are we coming?

Speaker 3 (32:54):
It's Actober. It's called the Green Music and Wine Festival.
We do it every year. It's been with the It
in October.

Speaker 4 (33:01):
October October on field trip.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
We got to go.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
We're going we're doing the pod live there. Let's just
get that would be fun. That would be fun.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
I would enjoy it all right, So.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
What explain how it works? What's is it? Uh?

Speaker 3 (33:16):
What's the we social media engage? I mean, I mean
Paul's right, I mean the team behind Taco Bell. They
do it so well in terms of engagement, like so
much so that people want to brand themselves with products
from Taco Bell. It's just incredible. I love it. We
are close, you know, we're close because we are where
a lot of memories are created. People have really positive
feelings towards our brands, so they often buy things that

(33:39):
have our brands on them too, which is really nice.
But in terms of engagement, a lot of ours is
everything we do is to try and drive traffic in store.
That's everything we do. That is our store.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
And so how do you measure it?

Speaker 4 (33:53):
Though?

Speaker 1 (33:53):
How do you how do you measure it?

Speaker 3 (33:55):
So, because we do a lot of we do a
lot of events. So we just got finished doing one
and called Texas Independence Day. It was Texas Independence Day
and one hundred and eighty nine years I believe we've
been independent state. And so we did this amazing activation
in the Hall where we brought our mental races. We
brought a live longhorn. I know, it's crazy, uh, I

(34:16):
go all over town. It was just it was wonderful
and we were able to keep a decent number of
count on people in the main activation area. But then
we can also you know, every time we opened up
a check right, someone's taking number or counting the number
of people at that table, so we can all always
use our traffic number that way. And we saw really

(34:38):
really great returns on that, Like it was fantastic now.
But of course everything has to be right for that
to come together. We have to advertise it. We have
to put it on social We have to you know,
tell the people on Facebook. No, you cannot bring the
armadillo from your backyard to enter in the race.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
You know, training there's secret training camps for armadillos top SA.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
This is like CIA level stuff.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
It was really cute. It was really the photo of
my team holding the armadillo.

Speaker 5 (35:07):
You have to worry because of or something I don't
know really, yeah, I use offscreen right now. And for
you guys, go armadilla races in at Texas. This might
be pretty fun fun.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
It's amazing it's amazing. So so we're always trying to
drive traffic right and we have Easter is a big
one for us. Of course we have a lot of
people that come out for Easter, so we're always trying
to drive traffic that way. Social engagement wise, one of
the things that I'm trying right now, which is very
similar to what I did last year with Big Chicken,
is we're doing a bracket challenge. So March Madness is

(35:41):
coming up. Sorry that's trademarked, I can't say that word,
but n C Double A is very big brackets for
both women and men for their basketball tournaments in March,
and so we're doing a bracket challenge where if you
get a perfect bracket, we will open up a Moss
Bars have for you for an entire year, which is
not going to happen. Right now, You're not going to happen.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
So that should be just March Mayhem then exactly exactly Mayhem.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
So but we have for first runner up perfect perfect.
You can't get a perfect bracket, it won't happen. But
if you last the longest, we're going to give you
a gift certificate to Moses, which is another one of
our concepts okay, and you'll also get some swag from us,
which is a great nice And what they don't know
is I'm also going to put their photo on a
table tent in the restaurant because I'm always trying to

(36:27):
bring that online offline offline online engagement like across omni
channel as much as I can.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Which is really cool because you just mentioned it right there,
the omnichannel approach on this where you can start to
really you know, utilize content, whether it's repurposed or the
potential even if you spend it just a little, you know,
it's part of the same shoot setup that you're doing,
whether it's for a menu or maybe something on the
entertainment side or on the events side. Definitely kind of

(36:56):
flows into this and measuring success. I don't know if
you answered that question when you measure, like you put
a campaign out, whether it's an event driven campaign or
maybe something on on Instagram, how is there? How's the
model that I mean when you know that they came
to the restaurant because of that.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
So we measure a lot of things we have. You know,
we work very closely with our accounting department to measure
period over period as well as year over year of traffic,
and so we look at that campaigns exactly timing in
with the campaigns. We can also tell like what if,
Like if we're doing an lt O, right, I can
tell how many. So that's really helpful too. We do

(37:35):
not offer online ordering right now, so that's that's really interesting.

Speaker 4 (37:38):
I know, I know, no reservations and I got inter
This is crazy.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
I know, such a tech person to have ended up
at a brand, but I wanted this challenge and we
are going to be rolling out both next this cup
this year. Actually soverservations now at one of our restaurants,
but we're going to roll it out for others.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
One of the things that's a really good segue because
one of the sort of the hidden tricks and tips
you know, for using social media is you can actually
embed things like this directly into your channel. Right, you
can reserve a table now through your Instagram. There are
ways that you can do that. Yeah, it's pretty.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
Cool and or you know, create campaigns around it, you know,
being able. It's kind of like what Blackbird's doing, you know,
where they're integrating a really kind of a new evolution
of loyalty platforms where people are having to do almost
like quests and app quests to be able to gain
certain access, which will be We're going to do a
whole video on that probably coming up, so we'll definitely

(38:37):
talk about that.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
Well I know, yeah, well, but before you go wealth,
I just want to say, like last year when I
was with Big Chicken, you know, we rolled out Thinks
are our loyalty platform, and I have still a big
thanks fan. Like, they put out some amazing data. Whether
you're a client of theirs or not, it's incredible. I
would highly recommend looking at how they integrate social with
loyalty using their platform. It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
Well, and that's okay, so you're this I want to
this is kind of a side note, but you're running
multi brands right now, okay, doing it at the you know,
on the independent operator side. Big Chicken just announced the
other day this merger over with crave Worthy. So what
do you think about that? I mean, because now you've

(39:18):
got crave Worthy, who has all of these other brands,
and I mean they're all I won't say they're not.
I wouldn't say they're great brands. Some of them are
pretty good, Okay, but there's not like ten A stars
in there, and I would say Big Chicken is kind
of an A. I feel like it's an A player.

Speaker 4 (39:38):
On the up and up.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Yeah, how do you think that's going to work out?

Speaker 4 (39:42):
Anna?

Speaker 1 (39:45):
You're a multi brand brand lady. You know the challenges
that are.

Speaker 4 (39:50):
I do.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
I do know the challenge over there. I think that
at Big Chicken you have you have a bit of
a branding issue because it's is this a Shaquille O'Neill
themed restaurant or is this just owned by Shaquille? And
franchisees are really the stars Like that needs to be
figured out, and it's mainly a franchise brand. They only

(40:13):
have like two corporate locations, right, So I think that
in anyone who can help steer that help Josh Halpern
steer that ship more would be Greg Majuski because he
has handled franchisees entire career.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
I think that truely, let's benefit right, there's going to
be really really helpful for them and the franchisees.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, the franchise system. I would say Greg is probably
one of the best franchise guys in the business right now. Yeah,
but again you get back to how you're handling multi brand,
multi franchise, because you know, it's like us when we
have six or eight podcast you know, and you have
whether it's partners that want to come in or associations,

(40:57):
you know, different ones. They're all your children. I mean
for me, it's a hard you know, and they kind
of cheow, oh, I want to go this direction, you know.
I think of that like when a multi brand is happening.
Now for you, it's a little different, is it the
same guest? You know, demographic that you feel like kind
of sprinkles across all brands or slightly.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
A little bit little differences here and there. Right, So
we did a demographic survey last fall, and I could
see that some of the demo was a little bit
different between each one. Obviously, in the area where we
have a lot of our tourism, it's a very similar market, right.
But I'm always trying to get locals to come out, right, So,
who are my locals? How do I get them to
come out and recognize that it's worth dealing with the

(41:38):
tourists and also coming to eat, but mainly during the
week or in off times or something like that. And
in San Antonio, right, it's a very interesting demographic because
where we're located near the Pearl, that's a really hot
up and coming area. You got a lot of young
professionals in there, but you still have a lot of
families in San Antonio. San Antonio is very homely friendly city.
So the demo is slightly different. Psychographics are slightly different

(42:01):
for each of the different brands. Yeah, so it's definitely
a challenge.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
Paul on on engagement and being able to measure success.
I know, you guys over at Popcorn do a lot
of like, you know, custom websites and landing pages and
you know flow, you know our funnels, I guess is
what they call them. What what do you think about that?
Because this is a question that I think more and
more operators, I said on a handle a handful of boards,

(42:26):
we're starting to invest in restaurants now, and this is
a question they asked me now, is should we we're
getting ready to launch kind of this entire campaign, whether
it's about a menu item or it's around a new theme.
Should they launch a brand new micro site landing page.
Do they integrate it in and it gets lost in
their current website? What's the model that you would suggest

(42:49):
to someone.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
Like that, well, I think that you know kind of
and I kind of hit on it with you know,
these integrations of you know, loyalty programs and the data
that they provide, like whether it be a thanks or
you know, a hang or whatever have you. You know,
you have these different layers of technology around loyalty and
and and measurement and that includes you know, every starting

(43:15):
with your CRM, your CDP, you or your customer data
platform you might be working with, you know, a larger
advertising platform as well, you know, because you're you might
be doing retargeting. We just read this week that there
was a major brand that is completely reshifting how they
are doing their marketing with Oh and it escapes me.

Speaker 4 (43:40):
But it's a let's just say that it's this.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Network or cadre of technologies that have to work together
to give you an overview. Perhaps those and perhaps those
measurements are then actually funneled into you know, a power
bi you know, to create some kind of visualization so
that you understand what the hell just happened. Yeah, not
just raw data. And then moving even further, there's prescriptive then. Okay,

(44:11):
so we have all of these analytics, what is there
a technology that is now should recommend what we should
do next to capitalize on where the successes were, are
better yet to maybe shut off things that weren't working.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
So well, yeah, what are you using right now? And
for for your social media management tool? Do you do?
You use a platform like a Sprout.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
Or a No, we're not using anything, and.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
You're all native on each platform.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
You're native on each platform. And but we do other
we use other tools. So we use cap cut great
video editing, Yeah, video editing. We use final Cut for
other stuff that we might need to use. It's a
little bit more sophisticated. And then I mentioned airtable. Airtable
is really where we.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
Do project management. For sure, it's.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
Amazing at project management, especially when you have all these
different brands and all these different people touching it and
lots of different teams that like, oh, I need the
retail team to drop in that photo for me over here.
I have not found a social media management tool that
can do all the things that we need to do
across all of our different brands that is actually affordable.
And that's the tricky thing is you know, we we

(45:24):
do well. You know, we have high volume restaurants, but
We're still an independent brand, and we can't afford some
of these quotes that people throw out at us. And
it's like, well, it is pricing it like a big
franchise group or like multi unit you know, group that
would work for them, but for us, there's really nothing.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
So yeah, independence. Most of the independence I talk with,
they say, hey, no, we run it right directly on
the organic platform itself, whether it's Instagram or TikTok or
even YouTube to a certain extent. Now you are seeing
a lot of people using a lot more contractors and AI, yeah,
you know, to help generate a lot of ideas, which
I have found, you know, some of those have been
pretty pretty effective. We use AI in a lot of

(46:04):
our brainstorming sessions with our videos. And one thing I'm finding,
even though a lot of times I will challenge AI
and probably say I wouldn't have gone that direction, you know,
even though you fed it enough information. I feel like
you've feded enough information. But it doesn't make a good
always make a good decision. Sometimes it makes a good

(46:24):
decision that I would have Yeah, I would have chose
that way, but sometimes I did it. This morning, we
were working on a naming convention for you know, a
project we're working on. We had some really good human
generated names. Then we plugged the list of human generated
names into AI and said pick the winner, and everybody

(46:48):
that was in the meeting we all kind of jotted
our own version of what the winner would be. About.
Half the crew picked the same thing, the human the
human crew, and there were six of us. They picked
the same thing. So three were picking the same thing.
And then we had all the other ones picked something else,
and they AI picked something that was completely different than

(47:09):
all six. Huh, what'd you do? We went with the
top three. We went to the human. We chose the human
good Man good Man and and said, yeah, I don't
think when I don't think, the machine kicked it on
that one, and we feded all of our research. So
it was like, here's all the data.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
Yeah, so we did the same night thing, Paul. So
I have set up in chat GPT, we use four
point zero, and I've set up different brands within each
of the you know, so I can go to like
my Moses one and it already has like, it has
my voice, it has my demo, it has all the
different tone, has personality. I've given in all of that,
so I can go to that one and be like, hey,
we're working on a series of emails, give me some
ideas for this, you know where this is the lto,

(47:49):
you know, give you some content ideas or whatever, which
is really helpful. But sometimes it's a miss. Sometimes I'm like, hey,
do you not remember that I told you that the
demo is this age group, not this age group.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
They can go.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, I think nowadays, I mean I'm using about three
or four different platforms, and yeah, I feel like I've
been Nothing is perfect, nothing is perfect.

Speaker 4 (48:07):
Personally, I enjoy Grock frankly the best.

Speaker 3 (48:10):
It's been pretty good.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
Yeah. I use Grock for search, Like if I want
an answer to a question and it's good, I just find.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Bluck City is good. Claude is great for writing, you know,
if you're needing that is one thing.

Speaker 4 (48:23):
That's awesome for business.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
I mean, you know zero point five we're using now,
and uh, you know a four point.

Speaker 4 (48:28):
Zero is great too, But it's It's one tip.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
To you operators out there that are watching this right now.
If you're running into writer's block, or you're running into
you don't know of what you should be doing next,
plug your basically plug your menu ideas or even your
own menu into something like Claude and ask Claude to
write a short story around each menu item and then

(48:51):
just take that as feedback and think about what you
could generate in terms of content off of that. I've
done it with a few things and I've been pretty
impressed with it. But it's a good writing tool. And
by the way, we're going to cover this is a
multi part series that we're talking today. I know we've
been running a while, but we were going to come
back with you guys next week or possibly than a
week after. I'm not sure which one. We'll do this.

(49:14):
The next version of mastering social media is going to
be built on content ideas. So we're going to drill
down on next steps and that is building content ideas
for you and your brands. So of course, if you're
not subscribed to the Masterminds the Restaurant mastermind podcast, well
this is where you hit the button right now, right

(49:37):
that one right there, that button, and that will get you,
guys into the YouTube channel. And of course if you're
following over on the audio version of the podcast, you
guys can catch it there as well.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Then standst

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Mastering Social Media for Restaurants (PT 1)

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