Family Owned Restaurant Takes Strides in Digital Marketing Initiatives
Owned and operated by the Mouselimis family, the Thorndale Family Restaurant has been a staple in the Thorndale community after serving the public for well over thirty years. However, with the pandemic impacting indoor dining so severely – it was time for the restaurant to expand its operations by restructuring their digital presence to generate new engagements and create a more straightforward online ordering system. With the help of the Digital Main Street, Future Proof Program, Thorndale Family Restaurant hopes to be more prepared for the possibility of a continuation while following lockdown protocols. The Transformation team set the business up with new branding, a series of website enhancements – both to their home and menu sites, alongside new approaches to digital marketing that are sure to attract a larger group of potential customers from a broader demographic.
The first step in the implementation plan of these new digital media strategies was a complete revamp of the home and menu pages of the website. The team was able to provide the restaurant with an entirely new aesthetic for their current site, updated navigation links, a series of logo iterations, and with Thorndale Family Restaurant having such a wide variety of food options – an updated menu certainly makes online ordering that much easier. In addition, much of the content was redone to input keywords to enhance the restaurant’s opportunities in search results.
The second step of the plan was to enhance the restaurant’s social media presence, both through the development of profiles on new platforms, as well as the improvement of current efforts on channels they were already engaged on. The team provided Maria, and the rest of the family, with a series of social media guides that would serve to improve photography for these services, a general guide of how to approach social media, and lastly a series of Canva templates to make the entire process that much simpler.
The third and final step of the plan was to provide them with one last tutorial that aimed to give further explanation of how to work with the google ad credit – placing ads to generate more potential customers when they’re searching for similar businesses.
The Mouselimis family has already found success operating their business – but with the help from Digital Main Street – Thorndale Family Restaurant is that much more prepared to bring their home-cooked meals to your kitchen table.
Our Digital Main Street innovation partner in this region is TechAlliance. See how they can help.
Written by James Short
Digital Main Street was created by the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) with direct support from the City of Toronto. DMS is also supported by a group of strategic business partners, including Google, Mastercard, Shopify, Meta, Intuit QuickBooks, Square, Lightspeed, Ebay and Canada Post.
A $42.5-million investment from FedDev Ontario brought together the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas, Communitech, Invest Ottawa and the Ontario Business Improvement Area Association to expand the Digital Main Street Platform in order to support more businesses going digital as a response to the impacts of COVID-19 in Southern Ontario.