The fact that so many world-famous restaurants and chefs have come to the UK in recent years speaks volumes about the reputation of the UK restaurant scene. When a concept comes from abroad in search of the best food & drink Public Relations UK, they come to Sauce: Aquavit made the jump from NYC to open a new restaurant in St James’s in 2016, called Aquavit London, while three-Michelin-starred chef Anne-Sophie Pic from Valence in France chose London for her venture across the Channel. In 2017 Anne-Sophie opened La Dame de Pic, which was awarded a Michelin star less than a year after opening. These restaurants both required a leading restaurant Public Relations UK, especially with Aquavit London achieving the same Michelin feat as La Dame de Pic. Both brands worked with Sauce Communications on their opening campaigns.
Why Do Businesses Need UK Restaurant PR Agencies?
You may have been told that you need press support, but do you understand why and the great benefits you can gain from such strategies? From launching a start-up successfully to raising the profile of an international giant, Public Relations helps businesses of all sizes, industries and with varying requirements. Whatever your goals, Public Relations will help you to get there both quickly and successfully.
Can Public Relations & Marketing Go Hand in Hand?
Clients often wonder whether to focus on marketing or Public Relations to achieve their goals, and this includes brands who want to move their brand in a new direction, get more customers through the door or step up their profile. However, for those using the best London restaurant PR agency, both Public Relations and marketing strategies can complement each other, working side by side to efficiently reach the same objectives.
While working as independent services, a collaborative approach between marketing and UK food & drink Public Relations ensures campaigns are most effective. For example, content marketing can be repackaged through press strategies, angling emerging stories and valuable information to third party press outlets and social influencers. To create strategies which work together well, credibility is the key to engaging a wider target audience.
10 Benefits of Restaurant PR
1. Reputation Building
Through influential and credible sources, Public Relations helps those audiences seeing your brand to trust stories about your business, encouraging positive interactions. Audiences are more likely to believe what they read if it’s not heavy on self-promotion. Forming relationships with the right press outlets is therefore key to getting your messages to the right people.
2. Press Relations
Food & drink PR takes engaging stories about a restaurant directly to those who can deliver such information to its target customers. This includes editors, journalists, broadcasters and online influencers who have a loyal readership of their own. Public Relations isn’t just aimed at your target audience, it must capture the attention of decision makers whose agenda must align with the stories emerging from your brand.
3. Higher Visibility
Restaurants often find they fade into the background of their industry if potential customers aren’t aware they exist. PR helps launch new concepts further into the public eye so that audiences build up greater familiarity with your brand.
4. Stay Ahead of Competitors
While good PR does promote collaborations between brands, for those you’re in direct competition with, London restaurant PR ensures you stay one step ahead, always leading the pack via innovative ways to connect with target audiences.
5. Become an Expert
Gaining recognition as an expert in your field is something most ambitious chefs and restaurants aim for. Public Relations helps to provide valuable information to those who can make the biggest impact. Doing so on a regular basis will give your brand kudos as an authority in its niche, leaving both press outlets and fans seeking you out for information and opinions on certain subject matters or trends.
6. Achieve Financial Goals
All PR and marketing strategies should aim at achieving both short and long-term objectives, keeping the wider plan in mind. London food & drink PR is an effective way of consistently working towards these, focusing efforts on where you want your brand to end up.
7. Gain Local Support
In any location, businesses form part of the local community, and the more they get involved, the further they’ll be rewarded through the loyalty of others while becoming known as an established part of the area they’re based in. Top PR will help you achieve this from becoming the ideal venue for a local club to meet each week to sponsoring a local team.
8. Find Unique Selling Points
What makes customers use your brand over competitors? What do you offer them that persuades them to visit your establishment time and time again? Public Relations not only promotes this, but the analysis gained through measurable results can provide restaurants with an insight into their target market’s buying habits.
9. Better Search Results
Google’s algorithms are a long-held secret, but search engine optimisation (SEO) experts help businesses to rise up search engines so that consumers looking for a brand like theirs will find them. With the rise of social media, signals that a brand is relevant have now become an important part of how search engines measure a brand’s value. Mentions and discussions via reputable third party sources may therefore help with your own site’s findability.
10. Increased Enjoyment
When running a company, the passion and joy for what you do can get lost in a sea of accounts, long hours and endless challenges. Public Relations brings a fresh outlook on your brand, reigniting energy within your company and bringing people through the door. Many choose to outsource their Public Relations to specialists for this very reason – to give them back time and energy to do what they do best – run their company!
How to Find the Best Public Relations Agency
When looking for a company to handle your Public Relations, it’s important to find a team who’ll not only get results but are a great match for your brand. Here are some important points to consider when looking for the UK restaurant PR.
Expert Knowledge
The best restaurant PR companies understand which news and media outlets have a quality readership which is suitable to connect with your brand and make an impact on business. This comes through years of experience and working with a wide variety of businesses. Try to find a Public Relations specialist who works with brands from your sector. This means you’ll receive press support which is specifically matched to your sector while providing your strategies with valuable expertise. For those in the food sector, this may be leading restaurant PR for example, or top UK hotel PR if wanting wider cover in the hospitality, tourism or leisure industries.
Great Contacts
The purpose of Public Relations is to use relationships with press outlets to boost your profile. This requires having access to the right people who’ll take your brand to the masses. Top agencies will have a team who work consistently to build long-lasting relationships with key figures in the media, forming an impressive database of contacts for businesses in your sector. A high-quality database won’t just include media outlets such as newspapers, TV and magazine contacts, but contacts relevant to your business. This may be other restaurant concepts, food and drinks brands, critics, bar owners, nutritionists, chefs and wine experts, for example. Building up contacts in your own field can be just as beneficial as promotion through popular platforms.
Methods
The way in which a PR company works and the values they take pride in will tell you a lot about what they’ll be like to work with. Look for a team who’ll listen to your needs and develop a deeper understanding of your brand, its challenges, target audience and both short and long-term aims. One of the benefits of outsourcing PR to a specialist team is the value they can bring to your brand. This means thinking outside the box and offering an innovative spin on your strategies to steer your brand in the direction you want it to go. It’s also worth checking what other services they provide and whether they can put together a bespoke package for your needs.
Your PR Expert, Sauce Communications
Sauce Communications deliver award-winning PR which leads the way in the food and drink industry. This has led us to become one of the leading food & drink PR London agencies in the business, working with an eclectic range of clients and contacts which would leave many other PR companies green with envy. Since 2001, our hard-working team have built up an incomparable database of influential media connections and opinion makers who can take brands to dizzy new heights in the world of food and drinks. This includes working with some of the top restaurant concepts in the UK as well as raising the profile of countless other brands. Our range of contacts includes editors, journalists, publishers and bloggers, as well as forming relationships with chefs, restaurants, pubs, bars, critics and other key figures in the industry.
• Work with a talented team who bring innovative ideas to life for all clients, with their fresh outlook on your PR strategies.
• Enjoy a flexible approach, with room to take advantage of opportunities which come your way through the amazing work Sauce does to establish your brand with the right contacts.
• Receive an in-depth analysis of your business and its goals, with an action plan for how to get your brand to the place it wants to be.
• Reap the benefits of an experienced PR team whose one-to-one approach will provide a personalised experience.
• Tailor packages to your needs, selecting the most valuable services for your business.
Sauce’s Hotel PR UK
Providing a full set of hospitality PR services, Sauce specialises in providing PR expertise for brands across sectors such as luxury lifestyle and travel. Offering some of the best hotel PR, we have contacts in global destinations, hotel publications, events teams and tour companies, to name a few of the ways in which your hotel’s profile can be boosted. We also manage the food and drink brands within hotels such as their bars, restaurant concepts and cafés which can attract a whole new audience to use your facilities. With an international team at your fingertips, it doesn’t matter where you’re located, with our teams managing PR for brands across the globe.
Other Services
As well as hotel and restaurant Public Relations, we offer a range of services which can go hand in hand with your comms strategies.
• Marketing – covering any aspect of your marketing including marketing research, content marketing and building an online presence
• Brand Strategy – ensure your campaigns reflect your business and that all activities provide value to your brand objectives
• Social Media – find more ways to connect and interact online with your target customer base
• Talent Management – managing personalities and talents in the industry to support them with commercial projects
• Crisis Management – implement processes to protect your reputation in the face of a crisis such as business disruptions or negative press
