A Guide To Identifying Restaurant Branding From Restaurant Marketing

Many small business owners think restaurant branding and restaurant marketing naturally go hand-in-hand. I used to think that way too when I first started out. When you market your brand, you are branding it, too. That isn’t always the case.

Most restaurants—or every small business, just about—practice business marketing by identifying key markets, attracting new customers and keeping the loyal patrons in. They put in a lot of time and effort establishing a connection between the product and customer. But once a certain comfort level is reached, when people seem to be aware of the product, amateur restaurant owners think the best move is to drop their marketing activities to start saving money, and rely on word-of-mouth and loyalty of existing patrons to sustain the business.

This is marketing in its classic sense. But is it branding? Short answer is No.

Not all products become brands. Restaurant branding and restaurant marketing are two different things. Don’t let it confuse you or it might end up hurting your business.

Every restaurant goes by a name. Okay. All of them encourage consumption to sustain the business. Sure. But the main difference between restaurant branding and restaurant marketing is that restaurant marketing is short-term, while restaurant branding is a long-term effort to imprint, or engrave, the restaurant’s name into the customer’s mind. A restaurant brand transcends generations.

But what do brands have that commodity products and services don’t? Kevin Lane Keller, author of Strategic Brand Management, believes the following traits characterize a strong brand.

Brand awareness. Most restaurants never achieve a cult following. You don’t have to either. As long as your restaurant enjoys a certain familiarity among customers, if they could remember your name or logo simply by mention of a particular food, that’s a strong sense of brand awareness you got right there.

Brand loyalty. Here is the thing. Customers should be able to look at your restaurant brand as an extension of themselves. That’s true brand loyalty. If your restaurant were a person, he or she’d be everyone’s pal.

Perceived quality. I can’t remember a single brand that doesn’t offer quality. If you want to attract patrons, you need to be able to provide them more than just average food service they could easily find at the convenience store.

Brands should have strong, positive associations. Customers should only have positive, unique associations with your restaurant brand. Anything else means you are entering the dangerous territory of commodity service, and that’s a place you don’t want to be in.

Brands have patents and trademarks. Enough said.

Take Jollibee for example. Jollibee started out as an ice cream parlor in the Philippines in 1975. Then it decided to play its best card and positioned itself as a full-blown fast food chain restaurant against the global giant, McDonald’s. Thirty years later, Jollibee Corporation has more than 650 chain outlets operating under its trademark slogan “Langhap Sarap,” which pretty much underlines the Filipino belief that good food smells good.

Build your restaurant brand on a foundation of long-term goals and efforts, not on temporary marketing efforts intended to make a quick buck and then dissolve like ice on a frying pan. It isn’t worth it. In the end, you lose more than you gain. Invest on a real marketing philosophy that is restaurant branding.