Specials, menu changes and the daily post problem

Restaurants are unusual: the product changes daily, which should make content easy. In practice the daily change is exactly what makes it hard, because nothing can be prepared in advance and the person who could post is cooking.

The fix is not more discipline at 7pm. It is deciding in advance which parts of the week are predictable and treating only the rest as daily.

Separate the fixed from the perishable

Most of what a restaurant could publish is not time-sensitive at all: the room, the team, the regulars, how a dish is made, where the produce comes from. That material can be shot in a quiet hour and scheduled weeks ahead.

Only the genuinely perishable content, today's special, a sold-out item, a last-minute table, needs to happen in the moment. That is a much smaller job than posting daily from scratch.

The weekly skeleton

A restaurant that knows what each day is for stops deciding every morning, which is the step that actually fails.

  • Early week: the quiet-night reason to come, since this is when you need demand.
  • Midweek: process and people, the content that builds attachment.
  • Thursday: the weekend, published before people make plans.
  • Weekend: the room busy, which sells the next weekend rather than this one.
  • Sunday: next week's changes, for the regulars who plan.

Sold out is content

Running out is treated as a failure to hide. It is one of the strongest signals a restaurant has, because it demonstrates demand without any claim being made.

Posting that the special has gone by eight teaches people to come earlier, which is a genuine operational win rather than just marketing.

Menu changes deserve more than a photograph

A new dish photographed is a new dish. A new dish explained, why it is on now, what is in season, what it replaced, is a reason to visit.

Seasonal changes in particular give a restaurant a natural annual cycle that can be planned rather than improvised.

One person, one habit, five minutes

The failure mode is that posting is everybody's job and therefore nobody's. Naming one person and one moment, usually the quiet window before service, is what makes it survive.

Everything else should already be scheduled, so that person's only job is the perishable bit.

In short

Schedule the room, the team and the process in advance so the only daily job is the special, and treat selling out as content.

Noian writes, schedules and publishes this kind of content for restaurants, with every post held for your approval first.

See how it works for restaurants

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