Yext, Inc., a leader in Digital Knowledge Management, announced the launch of Yext for Food to help restaurants better attract and serve diners in the US. It enables restaurants, bars, and cafes to appear in search results, not only for general searches like restaurant name or cuisine type, but also for specific menu items and attributes. For example, with Yext for Food, a Mexican restaurant can appear when a nearby diner performs the search, “tacos near me.”
“Diners are searching for specific food items and details about restaurants, and that’s fundamentally changing the game for restaurants all around the world,” said Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer of Yext. “We built Yext for Food to put restaurants in control in this highly competitive climate, so they can be found when diners search for a menu item like ‘chicken parmesan’, or for an attribute like ‘outdoor seating.'”
Restaurant visits are declining year over year in the United States, and restaurants worldwide are adapting to online ordering and changing consumer behaviour. The digitisation of this traditional brick-and-mortar industry creates new opportunities for restaurants to be discoverable for specific menu items when hungry diners search online.
In fact, a Yext blind study found that 83% of consumers read a restaurant menu online before deciding where to eat, and restaurants that stand out with rich details about their locations and menu items attract more business–in fact, over 76% of diners are more likely to choose a restaurant with in-depth attribute information available, like price range, dress code, and meals served. And with over 67% of diners considering 3 or more options before deciding where to eat, the search landscape for restaurants is extremely competitive.
Starting October 11, restaurants using Yext can:
- Publish menu details across the digital ecosystem. Restaurants can control and feed in their menu data to Google, Yelp, Facebook, Bing, Foursquare, AllMenus, delivery.com, MenuPages, and more, making them discoverable for the specific dishes they serve in more places and across more types of searches that diners perform.
- Sync more information from the Yext Knowledge Manager to new food search platforms. Postmates, Zomato, delivery.com, MenuPix, and Slice are now part of the Yext PowerListings® Network, allowing restaurants to control their information across more resources that consumers use to decide where to eat.
- Manage new types of restaurant details. Restaurants can now label themselves with attributes like price range, meals served, attire, happy hour specials, and more in the Yext Knowledge Engine, and publish those details throughout intelligent search.
Kickstarting the launch of Yext for Food, Yext has hired veteran food service technology expert Lee Zucker as Head of Industry for Food Service. Zucker was previously Vice President of Sales and Restaurant Partnerships at food tech startup Slice, and Director of Enterprise Sales at SinglePlatform.
“Restaurants are fundamentally different from any other industry for two reasons: volume and immediacy. People eat three meals a day, which translates to food being the most-searched-for business category, and they tend to search within minutes of wanting to actually visit or order from a restaurant,” said Zucker. “I’m proud to join Yext to provide restaurants with the tools to adapt to and compete for digital-native diners, and today’s announcement is just the beginning.”
“Yext for Food is about empowering restaurants to be there; to be front and centre when hungry customers know what they want to eat, but not where to get it,” added Ferrentino. “For the first time, food service businesses will be able to control menus and other crucial restaurant information all across the internet from one place –The Yext Knowledge Engine — so they can spend more time doing what they do best: serving great food.”
Source: Yext
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