How Twitter Has Transformed the Restaurant Industry

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By now, most web savvy citizens are familiar with the free micro blogging site known as Twitter, allowing users to send and read up to 140 characters in messages known as tweets. But what many do not know is how Twitter has revolutionized customer service for businesses — especially for restaurants and chefs.

Be they street roving taco and burger catering trucks or plush gourmet eateries, restaurant owners and chefs across the globe tweet anything from daily specials, wine list, menu changes, and special recipes, to seating availability, supply shortages, complaints, and instantaneous handling of customer service issues.

Geoff Alexander, managing partner of Wow Bao, an upscale fast food place in Chicago, explains the way his company utilizes Twitter: If somebody has 1,000 followers and writes a negative Tweet about Wow Bao, then 1,000 people could think the restaurant is bad. But if Wow Bao publicly responds to that Tweet, 1,000 people may see the issue is being handled.

When a Chipotle customer in Fort Worth tweeted about a lack of corn tortillas, less than two minutes later the company replied. The corporate office called the local manager about the tortilla situation even before the customer left the restaurant. “I was kind of frustrated that they didn’t have them,” said the tweeting customer. “But Chipotle was totally, totally ready to cover me.”

Chipotle has such a high volume of tweets, they have an employee dedicated exclusively to social media, and a tweeting staff of customer service representatives. “It’s time and resources very well spent,” a Chipotle rep told USAToday. “You can either pretend that (the conversation) isn’t happening or decide not to be part of it. To us, it just really makes sense to use those as tools.”

Note Wow Bao’s reaction to negative reviews about their restaurant when someone tweeted: “Going to ‘business’ dinner (at) Wow Bao. Can any 1 tell me if it’s going to suck as much reviews suggest.” Wow Bao caught the tweet and responded back with a coupon offer, and sent two $15 gift cards via an iPhone app. The inquiring customer visited Wow Bao the next night and posted pictures of their food on Twitter.

Kansas Chef Twitters Up Business

Chef Jasper Mirabile, owner of Jasper’s Ristorante tweets at his cooking classes, the farmers market, and even during his radio show. But it wasn’t until his daughter reminded him that national known chefs like Emeril use Twitter that Jasper was willing to set up an account.

“I started Twittering the same day,” says Chef Jasper. “Within three minutes I started getting e-mails from people saying, ‘I’m following you on Twitter.’” Chef Jasper had 103 followers within three days. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt as long as it didn’t take that much of my time. I thought I’d throw a few lines out there. But I had no idea I’d get these kinds of results.”

When Jasper used Twitter to promote seven cooking courses, the event sold out in two days. “What’s so great about Twitter,” says Jasper, “is I can be sitting here in the kitchen and I’ll put, ‘Jasper is cooking fresh asparagus today.’ And then I will go in my dining room that night, and I will see some guests who say, ‘Hey, I follow you on Twitter. That’s why I came in for dinner.’ So you know it’s working. It’s instantly letting my customers know what is going on.”

Roving Restaurants with a Twitter Account

Ex-New York restaurateur Erica Cohen, and her partner Lori Barbera cashed in on the Twitter trend, and with $30,000 leased a hot pink truck with a kitchen and an order window. They call their venture “Baby’s Badass Burgers”. and they use their Twitter account to broadcast their location.

Erica Cohen says Baby’s Badass Burgers strips out the hard costs of a traditional restaurant, and allows them to deliver greater value at a fraction of the cost more conveniently without compromising restaurant-level quality.

Curtis Kimball realized Twitter’s marketing power when he noticed a stranger among the friends in line for his desserts at his crème brûlée cart in San Francisco; the stranger discovered his roving dessert cart on Twitter.

Kimball signed up for an account and has more than 14,000 followers who wait for him to post the current location of his cart and list the flavors of the day, like lavender and orange creamsicle. “I would love to say that I just had a really good idea and strategy, but Twitter has been pretty essential to my success,” he said. He quit his day job as a carpenter to keep up with the demand.

Thanks to Twitter, a couple of obscure L.A. Korean taco trucks have become internationally known. The two Kogi trucks in Los Angeles serve a fusion of Mexican tacos and Korean barbecue, and have successfully marketed their business by using Twitter as a internet bulletin to “Tweet” customers with of the latest menu items and the trucks’ location. Now Kogi BBQ has over 75,000 followers on Twitter — that’s a lot of customers for two taco trucks.

Top 100 Restaurants Using Twitter



Antonio has assembled a list of 100 restaurants, chefs and restaurateurs who utilize Twitter to its full potential. The tweets highlighted illustrate perfectly how these restaurants motivate customers to travel from their laptops into restaurant doors. Some of the most effective tweets have nothing to do with food, says Antonio. “Instead, these tweets are fun, candid and honest and end up cementing the bond between the restaurant and their clients.”

“There is nothing faster for communicating than Twitter,” said Aaron Allen, chief executive of restaurant consulting firm Quantified Marketing Group. “You have to be a complete moron to ignore it.”

But there’s also nothing faster to bring a restaurant down, as Domino’s Pizza discovered after a Domino employee prank went Viral on YouTube. To mitigate the damage, Domino’s launched a Twitter account.

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