Kulture Konnect Blog

Yelp has always been known to be one of the top review sites for restaurants. The site offers reviews, tips and photos to give potential customers a glimpse of each restaurant from a customer's point of view. Yelp has over 140 million people visiting the site each month, making it one of the strongest crowd-sourced review sites. 

Today, other restaurant review sites have received almost just as much attention. People are no longer relying only on Yelp, but taking their curiosity to other restaurant/food-related blogs that have taken off over the last several years. These blogs offer an inside look from a blogger's point of view. They have found creative ways to share their experience with food lovers, including video clips of each blogger's experience and more, giving you a real-life look.

These popular food blogs offer more than a good review. They are the perfect platform to market your restaurant. There are several advantages! Being featured on the best food blogs will be a major help to your restaurant marketing. It will also create buzz around your diner or eatery and most importantly, give you a sales boost. We have highlighted 6 of the hottest food blog sites that will no doubt help your restaurant gain exposure.

Whether you consider your restaurant as a lifelong passion or you honestly are simply using it as a way to make ends meet, a role in this dynamic restaurant industry can teach you a fair amount of valuable lessons. The restaurant industry is one of the most difficult industries to survive in with 59 percent of hospitality facilities said to fail within the first 3 years. 

Whether you are struggling today, just closed the doors on a restaurant or planning to open, the truth is some wish they had the resources or the advice from a professional to guide them along the way. Which is why we gathered 6 successful expert restaurateurs that will give the advice you wish you had from day one. 

This is an age where people are on-the-go and an online presence isn’t just a recommendation, but a requirement. According to a new study by Pew Research, eight in 10 Americans are now shopping online. That’s 79 percent of U.S. consumers who shop on the web or their phones, up from just 22 percent back in 2000. This means only one thing: you NEED to get your business “listed” on the web, and the first step to do this comes in the form of a website.

Now, websites are not created equal, and you can go the easy and quick way with a template, or really find your online tone of voice through a customized website. Here are four reasons why you should choose a custom made website over a template:

There's only a few weeks left til 2019 kicks off and with that in mind, it's the right time to start planning your new Instagram strategy. But before doing so, let's take a look at which Instagram trends to expect this coming year.

Brands Will Work With More Micro-Influencers

Nowadays, micro-influencers are more prevalent and relevant than ever. They are present in all categories like health, food, fashion and sports. They have particular niche audiences that they are constantly and profoundly engaged with. Coupled with the fact that they like to collaborate with like-minded brands, these attributes make them great partners for other brands and businesses looking to improve their customer engagement.

2018 experienced some drastic changes in the way people saw and interacted with Instagram posts on their timeline. Today, their algorithm continues to be more engagement driven rather than chronological. But one thing that Instagram has changed for the better, is that everything from ads to posts you see from your friends and family are getting more and more customized. Whether it's a brand that you're loyal to or if it's your best friend, whose photos you like and exchange comments with.

What's important to understand with the most recent algorithm is that Instagram will show you content that interests you, content that matters to you, so, the chances of you engaging with it are higher. Now, this is helpful but also problematic in some cases. When you see content you like you're likely to spend time on the platform and scroll your newsfeed for a hot minute. But this also means in order to show you content from brands that are trying to build your interest, they will most likely have to invest in some form of paid advertising. 

With any business, your hotel's website is there to get customers. While creating and maintaining a website comes at a cost, it's definitely less expensive than commission-based third party services, especially when you consider the value it brings to the table.

With that said, here are some essential tips to make sure your hotel's web design is efficient and your website is performing at its best.

Make sure your website is made with SEO in mind.

These days, SEO should come with any website. However, how optimized a website is becomes more important, and more so for the hospitality industry-related ones like restaurants and hotels.

For these types of businesses, the bare minimum just won't cut it. After checking that your website covers the basics like meta tags, proper use of headings and HTML5 elements, also make sure that it's searchable on services especially designed for helping people find you.

Email lists have been a foundation for essentially every business over the last several years simply because of the utility of incorporating an email list for customers to subscribe to. Having a way to directly reach customers who want to engage with your product or service holds a much higher value than otherwise broadcasting your business, hoping customers will connect with you. 

Staying connected with past customers is as important or even more important than reaching new customers. Pareto's Principle of the 80-20 rule can be applied to business in the sense that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. Now this is not an absolute for every business or even any business, it simply stresses the point that loyal customers make up a large percentage of a business's margin and should not be neglected. This is why so many business professionals will yell from the rooftop about how important building an email list is.

So, you've made the leap into the food truck business and you have your brand-spanking-new-shiny food truck and you are ready to hit the road and sell your amazing food to the public. According to IBIS World data, the food truck industry had 870 million dollars in revenue in 2016. So, kudos to you for making the leap!

As successful as it has become, it is also very stressful. Trucks break down, regulations get tougher and people are unpredictable. This is why you must have some solid marketing strategies to pull out when the going gets tough. Below, you will find 5 marketing strategies that can get you through a pinch for your food truck start up. The common thread through all of these is basic... Be Creative.

When it comes down to wine, the older the better. But does this saying apply to the audience your winery should be targeting? 

It was found that 31 percent of consumers in the U.S. who drink wine at least once a week are millennials between the ages of 21 and 40. With these stats you might automatically think you should be focusing on millennials. Not so fast. 39 percent for ages 40-54, and 43 percent for ages 55 and up of alcohol consumption is attributed to wine. 

Here are more interesting facts about several generations and who you should be targeting for your wine marketing. 

Whether you are working on branding your new restaurant or rebranding an existing one, restaurant branding is about more than creating a strong visual identity or a memorable dining experience for your customers. It’s about understanding exactly who you are as a company and why people are coming to your restaurant, rather than with your competitor.

Here's everything you need to know about building your restaurant branding.