Restaurant industry visionary and marketing expert predicts five areas for growth that successful concepts will be employing by 2025.
When Carolyn Walker began working in restaurant marketing in 1993, she was struck by how fast-paced and dynamic it was. Fast-forward 30 years later and the opportunity for innovation and technology advancement has only accelerated. Walker’s full-service marketing and advertising agency, Response, is known for helping ambitious brands punch above their weight.
For restaurants competing in today’s demanding industry, Walker shared five of the top trends she predicts, each with the potential to considerably impact business in 2025 and beyond for businesses of any and every size.
1. The use of AI in operations will expand to marketing.
AI is becoming more and more pervasive in today’s restaurant operations, from using virtual assistants as order takers to forecasting demand for menu ingredients and creating personalized recommendations based on loyalty card data.
Walker’s agency, Response, has also successfully leveraged AI tools also in marketing for restaurants for more than five years. Currently, they are utilizing Google Performance Max for Piesanos Stone Fired Pizza and also for Gator’s Dockside, which employs AI to mix and match assets including search ads, video ads and display ads to show the most compelling ads to potential guests across Google Search, Google Maps, YouTube and more, reducing cost per conversion and driving a positive return on ad spend in key markets.
For another Response restaurant client, Fortina, Response created a custom Pizza Bot. The restaurant had a relationship at the time with celebrity chef Christian Petroni, whose presence at a Fortina location attracted customer traffic. Because he was always on the go, this bot enabled him to simply send a text message about his current location, and the AI tool automatically updated Fortina’s restaurant homepage with his location to drive business in real time.
“There are so many new tools coming online every day, and we keep up with the possibilities to make recommendations that streamline, simplify and amplify our client’s objectives,” Walker said.
2. Experiential dining will become even more important.
In today’s world of work-from-home, smart restaurants are making the food just part of what diners can expect when they venture out.
“Today’s diners are seeking more than just a meal; they crave unique dining experiences that blend food with ambiance and interaction,” Walker noted. Interactive tableside experiences do just that, she explained. Whether it’s dining in the dark or watching your custom drinks made tableside, there’s an activity that goes along with the meal, “and boom – a memory is made,” she said.
Marketing that experience is juice that’s worth the squeeze. Walker and her team at Response worked to create marketing magic around an experience created by their client, Uncle Julio’s. The upscale Mexican restaurant brand created a Chocolate Piñata, handmade ball of decadent dark chocolate stuffed with homemade churros and fresh fruit, and then served suspended on a platter with homemade caramel sauce and fresh whipped cream. The guest is given a mallet to smash open the piñata to delight in discovering what falls out, often accompanied by cheers from their friends and family, and live on social media, in many cases.
“We knew it had the potential to be a game-changer as the best dessert experience ever dreamed up,” Walker said. “We put the marketing machine at full power to create accompanying marketing that was just as disruptive as this dessert.” Response created an integrated marketing campaign centered around Chocolate Piñata video — a high-impact :15 TV spot, storytelling on a dedicated microsite, pre-roll, social video, and promotion encouraging guests to take their own video. The results were nothing short of a smashing success, driving more than a million dollars to the bottom line and Response being named their client’s “Strategic Partner of the Year.”
3. Marketing will become even more personalized.
To compete for business, smart restaurants will find many ways to show guests they’re seen, valued and remembered. Personalizing marketing ensures that messages the guests receive are relevant to their preferences and behavior, ultimately enhancing their experience and making interactions with the brand more meaningful and memorable.
Having customer data aggregated in a CRM tool can allow the hostess to know who someone is when they check in and swipe a loyalty card or give a phone number (depending on your system). You can also encode preferences like where the guest typically prefers to sit, or whether there are special requirements, like gluten-free or vegan, that would be good for a server to know. Customization can also happen digitally, so that when you visit a brand’s website for the first time, a guest might receive more of the brand message and when it’s the fifth or tenth visit, perhaps it gets right to the menu. If it’s sunny in their area, perhaps they receive a message about patio dining, and if it’s Taco Tuesday and you have a special, start with that. “We work with our clients to ensure that what diners receive in person and what they see online are connected,” Walker said. “Just like in the restaurant: optimize to who you’re serving!”
4. Brand will not give way to performance-only tactics.
Today’s competitive market can lead many astray with a singular goal of “getting butts in seats.” While focusing on conversion from potential guest to diner is absolutely important, restaurants that do so at the risk of their brand, or who neglect their brand at the hands of the race to compete for dollars today only will be left behind in 2025, Walker predicts.
“Brand – told unforgettably through consistently strong narrative – is what keeps you in someone’s mind even when they’re not immediately in the market for a dining experience,” Walker said. “They need to have an idea of who you are and what you stand for.” Walker notes that her clients know how passionate she is about brand because she knows how it can assure long-term success despite economic ups and downs and other hard news and changes in competition.
For client Piesanos Stone Fired Pizza, Response fast-tracked brand work to solidify the company’s core belief and lock down a differentiated market position in a crowded market. That work resulted in a powerful brand manifesto and brand building video. Simultaneously, Response built an advertising campaign that leveraged the brand communication and layered in relevant messages to in-market guests around items that are only available at Piesanos, as well as reminders about takeout, lunch and catering. These strategies resulted in average unit volume (AUV) increases and a positive ROAS.
“It isn’t about choosing between brand-building initiatives that drive equity over time over performance marketing that drives sales now; it’s about finding the right balance between the two,” Walker explained.
5. Traditional Interactions Are Still Important
One of Response’s valued industry partners, Sandy Alexander, is a print production company with a multitude of restaurant clients. The company conducts research on restaurant trends every couple of years. In 2022, with memories of the pandemic still fresh, their research showed that most guests — despite changing behavior during COVID — preferred traditional interactions over digital ones, including:
- getting and ordering from a printed menu when dining-in (80%),
- paying a server (72%), and
- ordering from a restaurant’s website (68%) versus a 3rd party delivery app (17%).
In this year’s research, they uncovered that using food photography in the menu still goes a very long way in influencing item selection (over 80%).
“Traditional interactions are still of paramount importance,” Walker said. “If you’re an operator trying to decide if you can still get away with a QR code instead of having a printed menu, please stop right there. If you’re not getting that human engagement and personal touch, which can include interaction from wait staff and bartenders or even the people with whom you’re dining, how is it any different than staying home and ordering delivery?”
Smart operators are going to find ways to leverage the humanity while they drive digital forward. “These tools are never meant to take the place of that in-person service, interaction and touch; they should only empower more personalization and opportunity to make a great impression with your guests.”
Put Success on the Menu in 2025 with 25 in 25 for 25: A Giveaway for RestaurantMagazine.com Readers
Carolyn Walker and her team at Response are offering an exclusive, live experience for 25 lucky readers of RestaurantMagazine.com. Response has dedicated 25 25-minute slots for complimentary consultation to the first 25 restaurant operators who book an appointment. “We want to see restaurants achieve their goals,” Walker said. “Call us and let’s discuss how you can leverage marketing smartly in the new year.”
Click here to schedule a complimentary conversation with Carolyn Walker.
