Yext Is Driving Restaurant Discovery And Online Orders

---

It’s no secret we live in a very competitive restaurant environment.

Not only do we have more cuisine options, but we have more brick-and-mortars that offer different atmospheres and experiences than ever before.

There’s also the increasing shift towards online ordering and food delivery by consumers with a fast-paced lifestyle who are looking for convenience and speed.

Needless to say, restaurant visits have been declining year over year and it’s more important than ever to capitalize on the few opportunities available to amp foot traffic to your restaurants.

So how can restaurants maximize visibility in such a saturated environment?

Enter Yext for Food, a service with the goal to help restaurants better attract and serve diners.

Foodable sat down with Lee Zucker, Yext’s Head of Industry for Food Service to get a quick rundown of how the service keeps restaurant operators top of mind and why it’s important for them to be detailed about the food and amenities they offer.

Foodable: What are the top three things your service does for a restaurant operator?

Lee Zucker:

Yext helps hungry consumers find restaurants fast. Smart devices, voice assistants, and AI are changing the way people are making dining decisions. People are searching for food more than any other business category, and Yext makes sure each restaurant location shows up across top search sites and restaurant-specific sites where customers are looking.

86 percent of consumers read a menu online before dining out. Yext allows restaurant brands to manage their menus per location and publish those menus to the top sites and apps online to help restaurants rank in unbranded search. Publishers, include Google, Bing, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, Postmates, Delivery.com, AllMenus, MenuPages, MenuPix, AllergyEats, and over 70 other.

A restaurant business can use Yext to ensure its brand’s external and internal-facing information is in sync by connecting Yext to the systems it uses every day. Brands can consolidate the data being housed in their POS systems, franchisee databases, loyalty programs, CMS systems and menu printers, by utilizing Yext as their brand's single source of truth.

Foodable: Can you share with us research data points supporting why it is important for restaurants to be detailed about what menu items they offer?

Lee Zucker:

68 percent of consumers search by either cuisine or food item—not by restaurant name.

76 percent of consumers say they're more likely to choose a restaurant that gives them in-depth attribute information in search results (like, ‘has outdoor seating’ or ‘good for kids’)

86 percent of consumers always or frequently use a menu before dining out

34 percent of consumers state that the menu or menu item is the most important factor when deciding to eat at a restaurant that they found online

Foodable: Can you give us an example of how one of your clients have benefited from Yext's services?

Lee Zucker: According to Qdoba, over the course of a single month, Yext-powered listings and local pages drove more than 16,000 orders via Qdoba’s online menus, resulting in a return on its Yext investment of 14.45X, as of October 2017.


By March 01, 2018 Vanessa Rodriguez Source: foodabletv.com