Experience and Retention in Contemporary Food and Beverage
With digital ecommerce platforms offering food and beverage customers more options than ever before, brands in the space need to stand out from the crowd if they want to attract and retain new business.
As with any business, customer retention is the key to a long-lasting and profitable business. Retaining existing customers costs less that attracting new ones, with research showing that 65% of a company’s business comes from its core customer base. However, the restaurant business has one of the lowest customer retention rates out there with a paltry 30% of customers returning for a second visit. This means, on average, a massive 70% of customers visit a restaurant once and then never return.
The food and beverage business therefore needs to improve its customer experience and retention strategies if it wants to improve these numbers and keep diners coming back time and time again.
Consistency
Speaking from personal experience, consistency is the number one reason this author abandons a food and beverage brand for other options. There are few things more frustrating than having an amazing experience at a restaurant and raving to your friends about it, only to return and find the second time around underwhelming.
When it comes to food and drink consistency is king. You can throw all the fancy technology and loyalty schemes you like at customers, but if you aren’t able to deliver a consistent experience – both in terms of food quality and customer service – your customers are not going to stay around long enough to become valuable regulars.
Consistent and detailed staff training is the key here. Both your front of house and kitchen staff need to be regularly reminded of the brand’s expectations and values and instructed to ensure that – as near as is humanly possible – each customer receives a comparable experience when dining at your business. Don’t settle for half-baked food or service at your business and your customers are far more likely to hang around.
Impulse Purchases
According to 2022 research by IPSOS, 56% of adults in the US had reduced the number of food and beverage impulse purchases over the previous month. This is mainly due to ongoing economic struggles and the rising price of food. However, food and beverage brands can still leverage the urge for impulse treats even in this challenging environment.
During the financial crisis of 2008, pizza chain Dominoes was one of the few brands to open more restaurants than it closed. This was because it recognized people’s desire to enjoy treats even when they had less money to spend on them. Dominoes answer in this situation was to offer customers incredible discounts which inspired them to treat themselves.
In fact, the same research by IPSOS discovered that the top two reasons people conducted an impulse purchase was the price being too good to pass up [34%] and a desire to treat themselves [34%]. This shows that, even in this challenging environment, people are still looking for excuses to splash out on experiences.
Keep customers coming back to your food and beverage business by regularly updating and refreshing your special offers and make sure you are giving existing guests every reason to submit to the urge to treat themselves.
Keep Customers Engaged
This point feeds into the previous one somewhat, but keeping your brand alive in the minds of customers is another fantastic way of increasing retention.
Be active on multiple social media channels and consider where the audience you want to attract is spending their time – TikTok for GenZ, Facebook for Baby Boomers, etc. Post regular content and make sure your social media team is engaging with comments and messages. 66% of customers use at least three different communication channels to contact support. Clients usually expect a fast response to their questions, requests, and complaints, so remain active for as much of the day as possible.
Make sure you have a good balance of advertisement type posts and more entertaining content. Social media users today don’t want to feel they are just being advertised at all the time and are far more likely to remain following and engaged with your social media platforms if there is a good mix.
Final Thoughts
There are three ways you can help increase customer retention for your food and beverage brand. Consistency is king, so combine this with great prices and offers to inspire impulse purchases, and keep existing audiences engaged online and you’ll have the best chance of your brand being one of the 30% rather than the 70%.
Customer experience and retention is sure to be part of the conversation at Digital Food and Beverage 2023, being held in June at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines, CA.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.