I have been dining out my whole life. As soon I as was old enough to sit in a high chair I was out on the town. I say this because I think it gives me witness and wisdom in what I am about to convey to restaurant marketers. I have 40 years of listening to and being apart of the "What do you feel like eating?" dance.
It goes something like this:
Hungry One: "So what do you feel like eating."
Hungry Too: "I don't know what do you feel like eating."
Hungry One: "Okay, what kind of food sounds good."
Hungry Too: "Ummm (deep breath) I dunno."
Hungry One: "Hey, does Mexican sound good?"
Hungry Too: "No."
Hungry One: "How about a burger?"
Hungry Too: "No, I had a burger for lunch."
Hungry Too: "I feel like something delicious at a place with a good atmosphere."
Hungry One: "Okay, how about the "local tried and true?"
Hungry Too: "No, I ate there yesterday."
Hungry One: "Alright, let's make a decision I'm starving. (mildly impatient) What about Chinese?"
Hungry Too: "No."
Hungry One: "Pizza?"
Hungry Too: "No."
Hungry One: "Italian?
Hungry Too: "No."
Hungry One: "How 'bout that place that serves that amazing chicken and dumplings on the river?"
Hungry Too: "Yeah, that sounds good let's go there."
Hungry One: "Cool, let go there."
This "What to eat dance", of course, has endless variations and takes places everywhere (at home, at work, etcetera) moreover, the conversation will happen face-to-face as well as via texting, cell phones, home phones and on the computer. Seldom are people sitting in front of their TV and watching your food ad on the tube and saying "let's go to there." In all my years of picking a place to eat with family, friends and co-workers this has never happened. Now, I'm not saying someone out there hasn't done it. I am just saying that it's NOT at all typical.
If you'll notice in the conversation above, the two repeated words were "feel" and "sound" seldom do you ever hear people in the process of picking a place to eat use words like "look" and "see" as part of their food deciding vernacular. "Feel" and "sound" are important because they explain peoples proclivity to internalize and link feelings to sounds to the mental images of what they want to eat.
The average person interested in eating doesn't run around looking for pictures of food in order to decide what they want. They tap into their own mental Rolodex and make decisions from their emotional mind's eye.
Which begs the question: Why do so many insist that your food needs to be seen in order to sell it?
Respectfully, I just don't understand.
Deciding where and what to eat is a process of matching emotion with relevancy, both of which radio has proven itself as a best-in-class medium in reaching these very common human facets. The visual part of food enters only in the delivery of your product to your customer. Your unique food experience is your best opportunity to visually influence your customer so they bank your food in their emotional and mental memory.
Strong advertising is a multi-pronged process of engagement and what better way to engage than to position yourself as the "music solution " part of "the dance"? Radio's ubiquitous nature and interactive format does an excellent job influencing listeners. Tapping into the connectivity assets the medium offers, such as it's ability to target specific parts of the day or leverage large audiences through real-time texting technology, can make your restaurant a community icon. What you need to do is be clear about what makes your establishment unique ( ie. the best chicken and dumplings in town) and relentlessly deliver that experience in everything you do.
The golden phrase to your revenue stream is "That sounds good!" and radio is the right medium to deliver your music to the endless "What to eat dance".
