By Dilshan Senaratne Living and working in Colombo and the broader urban metropolitan has a number of perks. One of the highlights possibly is the opportunity to see the shaping of the local economy at the earliest stages of adoption in intimate detail. Over the past decade, Colombo-dwellers had front row seats to the skyline shaping up, the construction industry boom, the expansion of what we now speculate is a bubble in the residential apartment market; and of course the mushrooming of casual dining and quick service restaurant (QSR) businesses. Being located centrally, I now live and work in the vicinity from no less than twenty to thirty bistros, a multitude of coffee shops and as of late an emerging abundance of specialty restaurants. Gone are the days when ‘Commons’ held top of mind recall for the Colombo coffee culture and the ‘Ministry’ was the uncontested champion of the popularity vote for seafood specialty restaurants. The newest development in this upscale, dining business is the entrance of delivery players like ‘Uber Eats’ and an almost simultaneously start-up ‘Eatts’. Anyone who has spent a considerable amount of time in India will be quick to point out; the delivery business possibly holds the most promise in the coming years, seeing how industry leaders like ‘Zomato’ and ‘Swiggy’ hold sway over the Indian market, which draws many parallels to our own market space. The burgeoning food scene and culture in Colombo is propelled by a number of contributory factors including an under-performing entertainment sector due to which consumers are pushed to dine out as an alternative to the lack of things to do in Colombo. Food is engrained to many of our lifestyles and reflects in the market data which suggests that the average Sri Lankan consumer dispenses 42% of his income on food. Disproportionate representation of food business As of today, any marketing consultant with a focus on new media repeatedly engages with brands in the broader food and beverage sector, especially the QSR and casual dining segments of the industry. At this point, it appears that all social media marketing consultants and agencies are engaged with multiple restaurants, bistros and other diners, while these businesses continue to mushroom. This disproportionate representation of food businesses in portfolios of marketing agencies speaks of two realities. The first of course being that the growth of the sector itself is phenomenally underestimated and largely unnoticed. The second being, that marketing is the sole determinant of success for a food business. Decades since Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonalds declared that the international franchise is not in the business of food, but in the business of real estate, it is perhaps now the time to revisit his statement. It appears now more than ever that food business is no longer in the business of food or real estate. Instead, these businesses are now in the business of marketing and it is in this perspective that the future of the food industry must be viewed. The food business is typically cash rich and turns around profit at a margin somewhere in the region of 40% on cost. While we continue to see larger investments placed in such businesses, the typical restaurant or bistro is not a capital intensive operation and the primary cost component for many such businesses is the real estate they occupy. At least, that is how things were. As of recently, many food businesses are occupying repurposed structures that are parts of homes and other existing properties, significantly reducing this primary cost. This ‘Airbnb’ method of putting up restaurants is relaxing the stress of making rent and placing the pressure of the business squarely on the function of marketing, which now is arguably of more consequence to a restaurant business than the property they occupy. However oversimplified the barriers to entry in the food business may seem, business owners encounter a different kind of challenge altogether following entrance to the food business and that is the need to gain an understanding of brand marketing in the context of the new media landscape. Shifting media landscape misunderstood While most will point business owners in the direction of obtaining services from a marketing agency, the reality is that agencies themselves will lack understanding of the domain and often struggle with the rapidly shifting media landscape. Successful food businesses that start up and operate today are run by social media savvy proprietors. Examples of such businesses are abundant in the market today. The casual dining industry in Colombo is heavily saturated at this point and the growth rate shows no indication of slowing down. The market is consistently ripe with new dining options at all levels of the taxonomy from signature restaurants housed in star class hotels all the way down to home bakers. To put the situation in perspective, the food businesses at this point have multiplied beyond reasonable volumes are in competition for the same limited customer groups who dine out frequently based on their lifestyle choices. The sheer number of options available to these customers dictates that the pressure to perform is intensely high in the food business and as we continue to see, mistakes come at a very high cost. This is especially true of the brand risk that these businesses are now exposed to when factoring in content generation activities of their customers themselves. Increasing visibility in a saturated marketplace The eventual outcome of these market conditions is a singular focus on visibility and brings about the need for effectively outlined marketing strategies with special relevance to social media. The need for visibility is obvious. In a marketplace saturated by varying categories of competition all located densely across a limited geographic radius, visibility is synonymous with survival. The emphasis on social media as a preferred communication channel is less obvious unless clearly defined as follows. At the time of writing this, I am familiar with a pizzeria that over a three week period of focusing exclusively on social media traction has succeeded in doubling daily revenue with no other intervention. The absolutely fascinating thing about this experience is that the pizzeria achieved the turnaround with only social media at its expense, effectively cutting the marketing budget which previously was spread across traditional and new media forms by as much as 50%. To explore this phenomenon, it is necessary to revert to the earlier point made on visibility. Food is an impulse purchase. Much like other impulsively purchased commodities such as consumer electronics and retail apparel, the trick is in creating maximised levels of visibility. Given how things stand in the media business, there is no better alternative to social media when achieving maximised visibility and visibility as established is directly and singularly correlated to revenue. Achieving such results is neither unlikely nor rare, however a level of conviction is required wherein the management of the business believes in the reality that visibility is the single metric by which to validate impact on revenue and in turn profit. Upon driving deeper it is of course possible to improve the quality of the visibility accessible to the business, perhaps that is a topic for another day. For the purpose of understanding the directional approach for success in the restaurant business, adopting a metric based, social media first strategy will suffice. Content is King It is in the year 1996, over two decades ago that Bill Gates in an essay titled ‘Content is King’ declared the importance of generating content to navigate the future of a digitally transformed industrial landscape. His words are no less relevant today than they were back then. The second turn following the turn to the adoption of social media as a primary channel is placing the focus on content. User generated content especially is achieving significantly positive results in the restaurant space. This significance is spearheaded by consumers who themselves are able to create effective content around their experiences, and broadcast them to a wide audience base. While user generated content is of uncontested value, the importance of business generated content should not be discredited. Developing the right content for the right platforms enables businesses to shift the focus to the most unique areas of their products and services. The third juncture of the food marketing journey is to understand the metrics of success and implementing the measurement of those metrics. While many metrics exist at a generic level and more specific metrics can be established to suit the business, the key metrics to watch out for are reach, impressions and engagement. Reach is the full audience size available to a business when communicating through the content it develops. The decision to rely on organic reach by expanding audience size or resorting to boosted reach through sponsored content is then available to the business owner. Impressions are a similar metric which helps identify the success potential of specific pieces of content. The final metric of engagement is arguably the most important given the ability to understand the sentiment of the audience towards pieces of content and the brand as a whole. The fourth and final stop on the journey to success in the food business is to understand that communication through social media is a two-way road. By establishing reliable communication channels, businesses are able to rally support, develop communities and passively drive sales through strategically placed communications. Engaging with customers also provides valuable insights to customer pain points and satisfaction, which when acted upon returns significant benefit. While these are still perhaps early stages on the journey towards effective marketing, the future of food businesses are critically reliant on the ability to leverage the realities of the new media marketing landscape and the ability to discern between valid and invalid success metrics for specific business cases. It is of interest for all stakeholders in the food business to observe the trajectory of these businesses hereon. We are at a transitional stage of the business itself with technology driving the traditionally relationship based business to new scale and towards an entirely transformed competitive landscape. Managing a food business will not be a mom and pop-esque experience for much longer with the increasingly digital nature of operations. Admittedly, a lot of what is said above can be judged as conjecture or simple over-engineering of a seemingly simple business. However, it is of interest to evaluate these sentiments. The next time you head out for dinner; think about why you chose to dine where you did. What means of communication and relationship building is the restaurant leveraging to hold your attention? Mull over these questions and perhaps you’ll come to realise that the proof indeed is in the pudding and a lot more goes on in the kitchen than you first thought! The author has a decade of experience in marketing and marketing communications and is the Head of Marketing and Communications for Virtusa Corporation (Sri Lanka) and the Founder of communications consultancy Cyaniq Inc. He holds an MBA from the Birmingham City University (UK) and is reading for his MSc in Strategic Marketing from Cardiff Metropolitan (UK). While most will point business owners in the direction of obtaining services from a marketing agency, the reality is that agencies themselves will lack understanding of the domain and often struggle with the rapidly shifting media landscape. Successful food businesses that start up and operate today are run by social media savvy proprietors. Examples of such businesses are abundant in the market today.