Kelly Higginson, CEO, Restaurants Canada, shares insights and action items inspired by HT’s 2024 Canadian Restaurant Customer Engagement Technology Study: What Guests Really Want onstage at MURTEC Executive Summit Canada, in Toronto, on June 20.
How Do Customers Discover Restaurant Brands?
The ways in which customers discover new places to eat have evolved significantly in recent years, with digital channels like social media and online ads and reviews becoming central to marketing efforts. But when we asked Canadian customers how they discover restaurant brands (Fig. 1), the top answer — by quite a margin — was word of mouth, at 73%.
Is it counterintuitive in our technology-driven age for word of mouth to rank so highly? “There is a trust factor,” explains Kelly Higginson, CEO, Restaurants Canada, who joined HT’s editor-in-chief Robert Firpo-Cappiello onstage at MURTEC Executive Summit Canada, in Toronto, on June 20 to discuss our study data. “We’re creating an emotional experience — for example, when you get your morning coffee, your barista may know your name and the time you generally arrive for that 10-second interaction. So I’m happy to see that word of mouth is number one.”
We also noted that social media, arguably an extension of the human touch, ranked second, at 40%, followed by deals (30%), and online ads (23%). Online reviews ranked last, at 19%, which Higginson believes speaks to credibility. “As a former restaurant operator, I can say that when I realized that anyone can leave a review for a restaurant they have never even been to, online reviews lost some credibility.”
