How Do You Rio?

Everyone has a hole in the wall place where not only the food is good, but the story behind the food is memorable. For me Rio’s Brazilian Café is one of my favorite ethnic restaurants. Ben Googins and Elias Martins are the men behind the café and by themselves have grown a community around their restaurant starting from a small table at a farmer’s market.

Rio’s Brazilian all started when Ben met Elias, a true native of Rio de Janeiro, in the summer of 1998. Ben did not know any Portuguese so when he had to spend a whole day with Elias’s mother the way they communicated was through cooking.

Ben was inspired by the Brazilian flavors and culture, and decided to move to Austin with Elias to start on their dream, Rio’s Brazilian.

 

“Moving to Austin, Texas in 2006 gave us a perfect environment to bring our dream to life,” said Ben Googins on their website About Us section.  “It has beautiful year-round weather; a thriving, culturally-interested population; and an active growing Farmer’s Market right in the middle of downtown”.

From the farmer’s market, Rio’s Brazilian gained popularity. They only had a 10x10 space to sell their food, but it became more and popular. Soon after their farmer's market appearance, their sauces were sold in Whole Food Markets. As their farmer's market booth, sauces and website became more popular they decided to open their own brick and mortar restaurant in East Austin.  The rest is history!

I had the opportunity to speak with Ben back in January about his story, and without any public relations training Ben knew everything about building relationships with clientele. 

First he said it was all about the picking the right audience, which is why he chose to start in Austin. Austin had the perfect environment and persona that would accept his cultural dream. Austin’s “keep Austin weird” mantra shows that Austinites except and welcome unique establishments.

Next he told me to start a community you must start a conversation about something other than your product. Daily people are bombarded with messages asking them to buy something. To really grab a person’s interest you need to talk about something that pertains to them and you genuinely want to talk about.

I found this piece of advice is crucial not only for face to face interaction, but in the social media world as well. So many restaurants only blog or tweet about their menu’s or daily deals, they don’t build relationships with their customers.

After my chat with Ben, I immediately went to check out his facebook and twitter and naturally all his posts were topics other than his restaurant.  Rio’s Brazilian tweeted about causes they believed in such as Rainforest Partnership, Austin Pride and Latinitas. They also had tweeted about events going on in Austin pertaining to culture or causes they believed in.

Although Rio’s does not have a blog and their website is a little difficult to navigate, their social media technique is very personal and involved. Everyone should really go check out Rio’s Brazilian Café in East Austin because not only in the food exceptional but the story behind the café is inspiring.

Photos: howdoyourio.com

I Will Take Mine Trashy

Since it has been beautiful weather the past couple of days I decided to open up the windows in my apartment to let the fresh air in. Unfortunately the fresh air was infused with the aroma of Torchy's Tacos downstairs. I took it as a sign that they would be my next victim for my blog post.

After disappointing findings with Amy’s Ice Cream, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Torchy’s Tacos does an excellent job in utilizing their great word of mouth and promoting themselves to the Austin community.

On Torchy’s website, they have a section dedicated to news of the month where they share updates about the chain and announce new topics. This month Torchy’s announced the opening of a new location on South Lamar and the celebration party for it. The celebration will be on Wednesday April 6^th at their new location and there will be free tacos and beer.

To get the word out about their celebration, Torchy’s uses both facebook and twitter to stir up a conversation about the event. They ask their followers who is coming and tweet more details about the event. Torchy’s is very good about responding to their Twitter and Facebook pages in a timely and friendly manner.

Torchy’s is smart to have a celebration with the community for its new opening! By giving away free tacos, Torchy’s is making people familiar with the new location so in the future they will know where it is and can recommend it to others.

Additionally they are making it easier for people to try Torchy’s for the first time. Skeptical and picky eaters are more likely to try new food when it’s free instead of wasting their money on something they are not sure about. Most importantly the celebration brings a community together around Torchy’s tacos.

This is not even the first time that Torchy’s has given out free tacos.  In February “ Goggle Hotpot teamed up with Torchy’s location for one weekend limiting up to 10,000 tacos” (Austin: Can you Taste it?). Torchy’s truly gives a lot to our Austin community, and for that the Austin community loves them.

Not only is Torchy’s giving out free tacos, but they have created a new taco to benefit Japan’s tsunami relief. Torchy’s created the Mr. Miyagi taco as taco of the month, and $1 of every taco will go to Americorps to help with Tsunami relief in Japan. As a customer, when I see this on their website I have a new respect for a restaurant.

To raise more money Torchy’s has been tweeting about their new taco and posting statuses in order to get the word out. I found it fascinating that Torchy’s commented on so many people’s tweets about the taco asking how they liked it. 

I could clearly see that Torchy’s was using social media to not only promote a good cause but to find out what consumers think of their product. Torchy’s seems to be one of the restaurant that will tweet back to you if you tweet them and question or comment.

This Austin franchise is funny in the sense that they are concerned about what people think but at the same time they are not afraid to flaunt the fact they have “damn good tacos”.

On their home page they have a section dedicated to their awards and there is a link to their yelp page. If a company had terrible reviews they would not link their homepage to the negative comments. However, Torchy’s knows they have good tacos so they use their positive comments to boost their reputation even more.

Overall, Torchy’s Taco’s is a great franchise that gives to the community and utilizes their resources and good reputation well. Well done and keep it trashy.

Photos: torchystacos.com