By now, you and your competitors probably know the importance of taking good photos when marketing your restaurants. But have you thought about video marketing?
Videos can tell compelling stories in a way that images never can, making them ideal for generating buzz about your restaurant and its dishes. Plus, with a decent smartphone and a powerful video maker platform, you can easily make stunning restaurant promotional videos without professional video expertise. And without breaking the bank!
The only question is: what will your videos be about? That’s exactly what we’ll cover in this guide if you’re hungry to get into video. Read on as we share four restaurant video marketing ideas that will get people talking about your food—and lining up at your door.
1. Do a video introduction of your restaurant
Dining at a restaurant isn’t just an exercise in eating enough calories to survive. It is an experience, and you can cultivate one by doing a video introduction of your restaurant.
Get the restaurant owner—we’re talking about you here if you’re the boss!—to stand in front of the restaurant and give their best megawatt smile. A staff member should then whip out their camera phone and film the restaurant owner introducing the restaurant to potential customers.
The video could cover:
- Who the person in front of the camera is (“Hey there, I’m Harry, the proud owner of Harry’s Diner!”)
- The food you serve, including the restaurant’s best dishes (“We serve only the finest fried chicken in town.”)
- The restaurant’s location (“We’re located right next to Sally’s Supermarket on Green Street, so be sure to stop by after doing your shopping!”)
We especially love this enthusiastic video introduction by the owner of Graffiti Breakfast:
The video shows off the restaurant’s premises and kitchen, and also informs viewers of the restaurant’s address. And judging by the thousands of comments on the video, such as “Can’t wait to come visit,” you know that it was a hit!
2. Create a video menu
If you already have a static image menu of your offerings, jazz things up by turning your menu into a video.
When you make a video menu, you get to take advantage of cool animations and special effects that catch your audience’s eye. After that, they might just get so entranced by the visuals of your food that they make a reservation.
Just take a look at Yummy Fried Chicken’s video menu, for instance. The restaurant has done a good job of using motion graphics and transitions that keep viewers’ attention on the video—and hence on the dishes that the restaurant has to offer:
You’ll be glad to know that you won’t need to engage a video production agency to make a video menu. Instead, grab a free restaurant promo video template online. You can then use a video menu maker to insert your restaurant’s name and dishes into the video.
The final step is to publish your video menu on your socials. You can even put it up as digital signage in your restaurant! Learn more about digital signage.
3. Show off your dishes
Not all dishes are created equal. Some of them are your restaurant’s top sellers, lovingly prepared from recipes passed down across generations. Others may be limited-time menu items that use seasonal ingredients.
Whichever is the case, such special dishes deserve extra attention in your videos—possibly starring in videos of their own.
Here’s an example from Patty&Bun:
In its Instagram video, Patty&Bun featured some (quoting the restaurant) “BEAUT PORK BELLY” and boy, is it a beauty all right. Just look at the glistening surface of the pork! If we could reach into our screen and grab a chunk of that pork for ourselves, we definitely would.
When prepping your own food for video features, take steps to make it look good. For example, you can hire a food stylist to apply “make-up” to the food so that it looks mouthwatering.
In addition, pay attention to your plating and lighting! You don’t want your tasty food to appear unappetizing just because your videos are dimly lit, or because you’ve placed the food on cheap-looking plates.
Ask yourself: would you happily post the video on Instagram, where everyone else’s posts are glam and gorgeous? If the answer is no, then your video needs more work.
4. Share cooking tips in short videos
People want to know that their food is cooked by pros who know their stuff. So apart from making your dishes absolutely delicious, you can prove your team’s cooking expertise by sharing cooking strategies and tips in—pun not intended—bite-sized videos.
Of course, we aren’t saying that you give away your top-secret recipes (and you shouldn’t, for obvious reasons). But you can still share nuggets of information that can help viewers instantly level up their cooking skills. These include:
- How to cook the perfect steak
- How to season a wok
- How to roast chicken without drying it out
Your cooking tip videos can also be tied to seasonal events. For instance, here’s a video from Gordon Ramsay Restaurants sharing how to repurpose Christmas leftovers into turkey and ham pie:
We also like how Gordon Ramsay Restaurants has linked to the full recipe on its website. This way, when Twitter users see the restaurant’s tweet, they might just head to its website to check out the recipe—and give the restaurant’s website traffic a boost!
Restaurant video marketing is now a piece of cake
We hope this guide has given you inspiration on how to get started with restaurant video marketing! When whipping up your videos, there are a few key ingredients that you’ll need to add to ensure their success:
- Enthusiasm and passion for your food
- An engaging story
- Demonstration of your expertise
- Smart use of transitions and motion graphics to excite viewers
You’ll also need a video maker platform for putting your video clips together into the final product. And PosterMyWall fits the bill perfectly.
Our drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to create videos containing custom text, images, and filters. We’ve also got a huge collection of free restaurant promo video templates, just waiting to be turned into polished videos!
Check out PosterMyWall here to explore how it can help you kick-start your restaurant video marketing efforts today.
Qasim is a senior editor at PosterMyWall. Qasim is a reader and writer during and after work, and likes to explore a wide range of topics and niches. Outside of work, he likes to meditate, listen to good music and journal.
