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Key Takeaways
- Kevin Walker saw the impact of search firsthand after optimizing his restaurant website.
- He worked with Popmenu and saw a spike in catering sales.
- You don’t have to understand SEO 100% to take advantage of its returns.
Technology is moving faster than ever, but restaurant operators don’t need to use every new tool. They need to find the right ones and use them consistently to help grow their business.
For Popmenu co-founder Brendan Sweeney, keeping up doesn’t mean doing everything.
“It’s never been faster, and that means you gotta just stay urgent, stay vigilant, stay curious,” Sweeney says.
Popmenu helps restaurants with websites, search visibility, marketing and customer engagement. Nearly a decade after launching the company, Sweeney and fellow co-founder Tony Roy continue to work with operators to understand where technology can make a difference.
“It’s either you’re doing no AI or you’re doing everything, and both of those are equally bad,” Sweeney says.
Finding that balance matters when restaurant margins are already thin. Sweeney says 42% of U.S. restaurants were unprofitable last year, while the average profit margin was just 2.8%.
“You’re not gonna cook your way out of it,” Sweeney says. “You have to bring more people in. You have to get people back more and more often.”
Roy says that becomes even more important when consumers are eating out less. If someone who previously ordered or ate out five times a week is now doing it three or four times, restaurants need to make sure they remain one of those choices.
“The first thing is you gotta think about, how do I make sure I’m one of those three or four?” Roy says.
That means staying visible, learning more about customers and giving them reasons to return. But Sweeney says operators shouldn’t make the process more complicated than it needs to be.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it needs to be consistent,” Sweeney says.
For Popmenu, the goal is to make that consistency easier, using technology to help operators attract customers and bring them back without creating another job for the restaurant owner.
As AI continues to create more options for restaurants, the opportunity isn’t to use every new tool. It’s to be smart about which technology can actually help the business.
The $10,000 search
For Kevin Walker, online visibility became much more tangible when he saw it turn directly into traffic for his catering business.
Walker operates three El Famous Burrito locations in the Chicago area, along with three locations of Extract Juicery. He first connected with Popmenu nearly eight years ago and says his businesses have grown with the company.
One of the biggest examples came when Walker worked with his account manager to optimize the El Famous Burrito website for search. Within two weeks, he says the restaurant generated $10,000 in catering.
Walker knew where the business was coming from because he tracks how customers find the restaurant.
“It was like Google, Google, Google, Google, Google, and they started rolling in,” Walker says.
One customer was in Arizona and needed catering for an event in downtown Chicago, 30 to 40 minutes from El Famous Burrito’s suburban location. Walker knew there were potentially hundreds of Mexican restaurants between the event and his restaurant.
She had never visited El Famous Burrito. She didn’t know its 40-year history or how good Walker believed the food was.
“She picked us because we showed up first,” Walker says.
The inquiries continued. The day before the interview, Walker says another five came through Google.
For Walker, the experience also reinforced why operators don’t have to become experts in every part of the digital business. He meets monthly with his Popmenu account manager, brings her ideas and relies on the team to help turn them into action.
“I don’t know SEO,” Walker says. “I can throw out a couple of the buzzwords, but don’t get me too in detail.”
Walker wants to scale his businesses. Getting there doesn’t require knowing everything about SEO. His experience shows the value of staying involved, tracking what works and making sure customers can find you when they’re ready to buy.
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Restaurant Influencers is proud to have PepsiCo as a sponsor of this episode. Partnering with PepsiCo Foodservice helps restaurant operators drive sustainable growth through smarter digital experiences, AI-backed menu optimization, and tools designed to create more profitable online orders. Check out PepsiCo Foodservice