Abuelo’s Mexican Restaurant

The Challenge

Abuelo’s was in the process of piloting half of their locations with paid search and search engine optimization (SEO) programs when COVID-19 hit. The upscale restaurant chain leaned on us to swiftly adapt the initiatives to best serve their customers during this unpredictable time.

The Goal

Efficiently manage data across multiple locations and increase transactions while transitioning to a temporary takeout- and delivery-only model.

The Solution

Before the outbreak, our team was making significant strides, decreasing the cost-per-acquisition rate from $53.10 to $19.98 and increasing organic website sessions 11.7% year over year, which accounted for a 14.6% year-over-year increase in revenue.

When the crisis struck, we moved from weekly to daily touchpoints with the client and proactively switched the strategy to focus on online orders and curbside pickup:

• Updated ads with “takeout and delivery” messaging
• Updated website copy with the highest-converting keywords from paid search
• Updated restaurant information such as opening and closing times and curbside pickup through our local presence management (LPM) platform
• Kept customers informed by publishing posts about sanitation procedures and alerted Abuelo’s to Google’s COVID-19 updates so they could adjust messaging accordingly

The Results

During a month when many restaurants were closing their doors and laying off employees, Abuelo’s saw increases in conversion rates, online orders, and revenue.

12%

Increase in paid search conversion rates, February-March 2020

12%

Increase in YoY Google My Business actions

66%

Increase in YoY takeout transactions

71%

Increase in YoY revenue

4%

Increase in click-through rates, February-March 2020

1.5%

Increase in website sessions