Team Empowerment

Like, Bite & Share

Alex Floethe is the managing partner at S’macks Burgers and Shakes, a neighborhood Burger joint in Sarasota, FL. S’Macks is part of the Gecko’s Hospitality Group; a family of Fast Casual restaurants in Sarasota and Bradenton. Alex went from being a soccer referee to distributing wine to becoming the HR director for Gecko’s before he took over as the head Burger in charge at S’macks. Alex oversees everything that happens at S’macks including all their social media initiatives and daily updates. He joins Like, Bite & Share to teach us how to manage a vibrant online brand presence with a small but passionate team.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Like Bite & Share is a podcast about marketing in the food business. Each episode includes an insightful interview with food marketing professionals.

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SHOW NOTES

Key Takeaways:

• If you’re looking to get into the restaurant business, it’s a good idea to study similar, successful concepts.
• Though you might get dinged on food cost by locally sourcing your produce and investing in items like grass-fed beef, a customer base that is becoming more informed and interested in where their food comes from will increasingly become more aligned with and drawn to your concept.
• If you care deeply about your restaurant, you will actively drive its social media direction, even while you’re on vacation.
• If you want to reach a young audience, pay attention to what your young colleagues and customers are doing. Meet them where they are. See how they handle a medium like Snapchat and merge that with your brand’s voice.
• Try not to be tempted into gaming networks like Facebook and Instagram for the sake of getting more likes to appear to have more credibility. Organic growth means you’ll be able to measure an engaged customer base on social media, whereas artificial growth is only good for appearing as though you have a bigger audience than you do.
• Empowering your employees to take a role in managing and/or guiding the restaurant’s social media will give them an added sense of ownership and motivation to perform well at work.
• Keep in mind that Facebook now makes public your response time to messages. Think of this as incentive to respond to every inquiry and complaint.

Links for this episode:

• The Schweid & Sons All Natural Burger
• The now-infamous Ironside Yelp review
• The Guacamole S’macks Burger Recipe

Learn more about Alex Floethe & S’macks:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Snapchat -> smacksburgers