Alioto's Restaurant, CAFE 8, and Crab Stand

Alioto’s Restaurant is San Francisco’s oldest family owned and run restaurant with three options at one location.  Alioto’s Restaurant is the fine dining option with scenic views of the Bay and Golden Gate Bridge. CAFE8 provides a more casual ambiance with tasty fare.  The Crab Stand provides takeaway for those who wanted to experience the wharf with tasty treats in hand.  It’s been around since 1925 and still uses some of the same recipes that have been passed down from the original owner and founder, Nonna Rose Alioto.

The Challenge:  How to stem the decline and counteract a 15-year cover count, sales slide and overall brand decline. 

The Solution:  Created a vision and a mission statement for the family business. Clarified the brand architecture and management of revenue.  

Results

• Increased online bookings by +20% YOY as of Sept, 2017 through booking engine.

• Developed and implemented the Alioto’s first brand plan for cohesive and synergistic communications.

• Grew list from 100 to 11,000 members in just over three month test period, list is currently at 15,000 members.

• Increased facebook fans by 27% since managing Alioto’s social media accounts.

• PR - achieved key press hits monthly, for example; CNN’s top 10, Bay Area’s Best, a feature in BBC documentary, “Great American Railroad Journeys." and call out in Better Homes & Gardens, Australia, “8 Reasons to Visit San Francisco,” Alioto’s was listed #2.

• Shifted media spend to in-language, tour guide magazines/mapguides, reaching 580,000 visitors per year.

• Successfully rebranded all three eateries and rebranded and relaunch synergistic internal and external menus and communications vehicles  for all three.

Major accomplishments

In addition to advertising and PR, here are major accomplishments that we achieved during our 1.5 years working closely with family members and employees:

• Created new mission statement, positioning statement, and a brand personality for all three restaurant concepts, complete with aspirational imagery. Presented to Board of Directors and obtained family buy-in, leaning to full implementation.

  • Created and developed graphic standards and implemented brand consistency throughout the organization.
    

  • Implementation graphic standards throughout all touch points.

• Revenue Management - looked to an underutilized booking engine, to improve yield and increased bookings.

  • Managed the Alioto reputation on OpenTable - arguably the only platform that authenticates each diner, assisted ops to personally respond to each review, at times handling hundreds of reviews, and responding through a marketing email.
    

  • Spearheaded leveraging of existing investment with OpenTable, fully-leveraged revenue management systems and encouraged operations in using OpenTable management system with training.  Spearheaded IT innovations to enable consistent connectivity.

  • Identified a new technology that would allow Alioto's to reach new potential guests, and harness repeat guests:  Zenreach

    • Led Email/WIFI Integration: Created Alioto’s email through innovative Zenreach platform program.
      

    • Zenreach implementation necessitated IT upgrades:  Sourced IT consult and new Wiline microwave technology to bring WIFI to guests.  Oversaw Zenreach implementation of this upgraded IT infrastructure, prompting the new WIFI installation.

  • Overhauled Digital Marketing

    • Completed an overhaul of the Alioto’s websites: Launched new CAFE 8 website.

    • Sourced, negotiated and managed four photoshoots, capturing key brand assets used to tell the Alioto story across all media vehicles.  

    • Management and re-engineering of The Alioto’s Restaurant website garnered an impressive +23% increase YTD (9/17) in OpenTable $.25 covers over prior year's increase.

  • Social Media Marketing

    • Hired social media agencies (Main Street Hub for Alioto’s & Social High Rise for CAFE8) to assist in creating content and managing restaurant reputation across key social platforms.

    • Managed the transition of all platforms from Waterside to CAFE 8 with social media agency (Social High Rise), including TripAdvisor.

    • SOCIAL MEDIA results since onboarding agencies:

      • Alioto’s

        • Facebook content has been seen over 6.4 million times and reached 12,969 unique people in the last month, which is up 95% over last month.  Facebook content received 357,649 impressions in the last 30 days. Acquired 933 new Facebook fans in this period since signing up with the agency, amounting to about 4,406 total.

        • Yelp page has been visited 48K times since March 2016 with 6,135 of those Yelp visits being in the last 30 days. Managed and approved 457 Yelp review responses. Improved Yelp rating a half star since managing the profile.

        • Twitter impressions have increased by 152.5% in the last 28 day period. Profile visits have also increased by 102% to 188 in the last 28 day period. Sent 388 messages on Twitter driving engagement and reach.

      • CAFE8 - (Started social media management with new name)

        • Acquired 593 Facebook likes and have an average reach of 80 people per posts.

        • Google Business information has been viewed 117 times, clicked for directions 91 times, and clicked to call 7 times.

        • Total Twitter likes - 193 with 30 followers since April 2017. Average twitter impressions are 1,473 with an average of 38 profile visits a month.

        • Yelp page has been viewed 2,913 times with 55 Mobile Check-ins, 125 Clicks to the Website, 29 Mobile Calls, and 65 Map Views.

        • The Tripadvisor page has appeared 43,804 times in search results (98% up from last year), has had 769 page visitors (39% up from last year), and has had 70 website views, 6 menu views, 15 clicks on map location, and 43 new reviews with a 77% positive sentiment.

• Emotional branding and cultural shifts at leadership level, including a 360 degree stakeholder exchange. As part of the emerging brand, we developed a more guest-centric mentality, which enabled us to better listen to the guest. Offered digital listening tools, and upstream feedback.

• Assisted in building marketing infrastructure – developed and trained new marketing team to execute established marketing plan.

• Evaluated marketing spend and ROI and assured each budgeted dollar was driving traffic and creating awareness.

  • Created and developed Alioto’s branded take out packaging program at a time when the standard had fallen to generic paper grocery bags. Assisted in developing packaging with our new graphic standards. Rolled out butter ramekin covers, branded bibs, basket liners and other printed elements to provide a more integrated brand experience.  

  • Through an exhaustive and thorough research process, a competitive menu study, interviews with purchasing and chefs, the team re-concepted all menus from the “ground up”. Included Dinner, Lunch, Kids, Banquets, Dessert and Beverages for both Alioto’s, Waterside and CAFE 8 restaurants.  Achieved comparable pricing and a look and feel that was consistent with established brand guidelines and guests’ perception.

  • Conducted a comprehensive competitive analysis and provided a recommendation for uniforms for all stations of employment, in response to operations’ insistence to make changes. Sourced samples, compared pricing, researched vendors and implemented final choice on many of the chosen areas.  

  • Added new vehicles to promote Alioto’s - expanded brochure distribution (SFO region and digital) for brochure 2018 contractual year, map advertising through expanded coverage through MapWest, in-room magazines, rental car rack and concierge displays, and Cable Car queens, event marketing, and B2B, such as, outreach to cruise companies. Managed authorized a Google adwords program reaching and converting new guests digitally.

  • Outreach - shifted media spend to in-language, free, tour guide magazines/mapguides.  Developed appropriate and compelling translatable in-language copy and artwork. New reach now delivers to tourists that Alioto’s would previously have missed.

  • Presented ideas toward better uptake among the Chinese market:  recommended translated menus (Ops agreed to handle), developed products and recommended shift in cultural training to better appeal to the Chinese tourist - success in re-marketing “Everything Under the Sea,” now a leading item on the menu.  Photographed item and provided snapshots for Servers to sell to tourists.  At $99, this item is now heavily promoted digitally and is our highest dollar contributor.

  • Monthly inclusion of crafted promotion in newsletters, garnering calamari card redeeming covers or inbound website traffic - data collected from website has increased 49.42% for the period of Jan. 2017-Sept 14,2017.

  • Succeeded in acheiving and leveraging press hits such as CNN's top ten, BayArea.com's Best Cioppino, SF Gate,  USA Today's 10 Best, Invited Fiji Airline representatives to dinner. Alioto’s received a call out in Better Homes & Gardens, Australia.