Doing it all can be tough. We’ve gathered some of our top food marketing tips for small businesses getting started, including social media and email.Food marketing tips for small restaurants, cafés and supermarkets

When you run a small food business, you may be involved in all aspects of the business including inventory, staffing, accounting, the menu and even marketing. The more hats you wear, the less time you have for each task and marketing may fall by the wayside.

At Too Good To Go, we work with over 150,000 global businesses of all sizes so we know a thing or two about marketing food. We’ve gathered some of our top food marketing tips for small businesses getting started.

Food marketing tips for small businesses

Whether you’re new to marketing your business or you’ve been at it for a while, there are plenty of ways to optimise what you’re doing to take less time and resource yet garner the best results.

Food marketing tips: email marketing

Do you have a newsletter? Some may believe that email marketing is a thing of the past but with active social media users dropping drastically year on year, using other channels becomes much more pertinent.

77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement in 2021 and 2022, Hubspot reports, and those who use smartphones prefer to receive communication from businesses by email.

Having a newsletter doesn’t need to increase your workload. Tools like Mailchimp and MailerLite have free plans so you can start email marketing without financial commitment.

Email marketing content

“But what goes in my newsletter?”

Good question! Keep it simple - two to three ‘blocks’ of content with one main message each would be our recommendation.

Do you have a new early bird special? Mention that at the top of your email. New team member with interesting experience? Include a short, fun quote from them plus their picture. Lunch deal needs a boost? Remind your users of it in your newsletter.

When you’re working on any marketing communication, make sure to keep your customer in mind. What will they find valuable? That’s what you need to be able to answer.

How often to send a newsletter

This is a tricky question and may depend on your business in particular. A once-monthly newsletter sent on the same week of the month can build a cadence that your customers can come to expect but it could be equally beneficial to only send emails when you’ve something exciting to share.

Our advice would be to not stress about email frequency if you’re just beginning - by sending newsletters at all, you’re reaching eyeballs that may not have seen your content otherwise.

Ps. It’s really important to follow GDPR guidelines when sending email or text communications.

Food marketing tips: social media marketing

If you’re reading this, we’d be willing to bet you already have one or two social media channels so we won’t go into the nitty-gritty of why you should set up social media accounts.

Let’s talk about content quality. The better your content, the better your brand is perceived. Good quality content helps to remind your customer that you are trustworthy, authoritative and worth them returning to!

You should always be aiming for quality versus quantity. One high-quality social post per week could perform better than seven low-quality social posts.

When it comes to imagery, a simple composition with good lighting and no blur is your goal.

What could be improved:

• Lighting - it’s uneven and doesn’t make the food look appetising
• Background - you can see dirt on the counter
• Composition - centred food or food further aligned to left or right will look better

What is great here:

• Lighting - it’s even, food looks glossy and tasty
• Background - minimal and clean
• Composition - aligned strongly to the right, which allows the food to be the star

We recommend that you leave imagery simple without applying text over the top to let your offering shine. Including graphics that mention your deals, early bird times and opening times would work well on your social feed alongside food imagery!

Some free tools that will make social media content creation easier:

Other ideas for your social media content:

• Tips relating to your niche - Are you willing to share a recipe reel? Do you have great advice on finding the best organic veg? Share it with your audience!
• Introduce your team - Your chefs, waitresses and store managers are what help to create your business’s experience! Help your followers to get to know them.
• Engage with key food days and seasonal holidays - if you’re a microbrewery, make sure you take part in World Beer Day with some relevant content but don’t worry, there’s a food day for everything.

Food marketing tips: in-store collateral

If you’ve got the budget for professional printing, in-store marketing could be another way to help inform your customers about what you have to offer.

Like with your social content, you should focus on what your customer cares about. If you’ve launched a loyalty scheme, a simple A5 strut card with a bold title may help you to get the word out.

A window sticker with a tagline about what you do can influence passers-by to try your food, fridge stickers can let people know about your ‘buy a sandwich, get a drink’ promotion and a board at your front door can advertise your specials of the day.

Working with the same fonts and colour scheme across all of your marketing - digital and in-store - will allow your audience to associate those elements with your brand.

Food marketing tips: increasing your reach with Too Good To Go

With over 180,000 users in Ireland, Too Good To Go can be a great way to reach new potential customers while increasing revenue and fighting food waste.

Want to find out more?

Further reading:

How to set your Too Good To Go schedule

How to increase profit as a new restaurant