Social Media Use By Restaurants (NYC, SFO & PDX)

Initial Results of New York, San Francisco Bay Area and Portland OR Markets

Chalkboarder.com is compiling the results of an exhaustive study of social media use by the restaurant industry nationally. Some preliminary discoveries are very intriguing.

While the entire study encompasses sixteen (16) major metropolitan areas, we’d like to share initial results from New York, Portland Oregon and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Records were generated from Urban Spoon and Yelp – cataloging the top thirty (30) percent of user-recommended operations in the Urban Spoon $$$ Affordable Fine Dining category.

Here’s the results:

NY % SF % PDX %
Number of Restaurants 932 1491 168
Records Surveyed 272 29% 444 30% 50 30%
Websites 222 81.6% 231 52.0% 42 84.0%
Email (direct link) 131 48.2% 128 28.8% 25 50.0%
Facebook 15 5.5% 32 7.2% 4 8.0%
Twitter 11 4.0% 20 4.5% 5 10.0%
Twit only 3 1.1% 7 1.6% 3 6.0%
Blogs 2 0.7% 8 1.8% 3 6.0%


The remaining metro areas we are compiling are:

Dallas, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Miami, Washington DC, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans and Minneapolis. We’re also curious about rural areas and are setting up an additional study to analyze the five states with the least population per density.

Two things surprise us the most – web presence overall and the opportunity to connect.

We’re surprised that so many restaurateurs choose not to invest a small amount of money in web presence (San Francisco’s 52% is very surprising, given the proximity to Silicon Valley). For the equivalent of three months print advertising, an operation could open a virtual door for years.

The opportunity to connect with current customers, enlist them to share the restaurant with their friends, be engaged directly with your patrons – all with minimal investment – at least, significantly less expense than traditional advertising, is real.

We’ll release the completed study early next week. Originally posted at Chalkboarder.com White Papers. Comments and questions are encouraged!

Jeffrey Kingman
President, Chalkboarder.com