Who is Fat Fork?
A new family owned Greek restaurant in Mississauga with 20 years of experience at another restaurant is about to hit it’s 1 year anniversary. Located at 2300 Dundas Street East, after opening on February 15th, 2023 the Greek restaurant has had a tremendous amount of growth and reach.
Fat Fork Menu
One of their main marketing pushes are that they offer big portion food for a fair price.
- FAMOUS Pork Souvlaki Dinner
Served with rice, roast potatoes, Greek salad, dinner roll & tzatziki for $19.95 - FAMOUS Chicken Souvlaki Dinner
Served with rice, roast potatoes, Greek salad, dinner roll & tzatziki for $20.95 - Gyro Dinner
Served with rice, roast potatoes, Greek salad, dinner roll & tzatziki for $20.95
Fat Fork Photos
Here are some photos of their establishment and their branding.
Fat Fork Reviews
They’ve reached over 700 reviews on Google Maps in just one year! With an average rating of 4.7 stars on Google Maps, along with 200 reviews on Uber Eats also with 4.7 stars.
Marketing Strategies
Late Night Eats
When they originally opened they were open from 7am to 11pm, they later changed their hours until 12 am. Across their marketing channels they emphasize a strong push on their “late night eats”. This is a very strong advantage for them as there are not many restaurants in the Etobicoke and Mississauga area that are operate late throughout the week. Most Greek restaurants in Mississauga close around 9-10pm at the latest.
This gives Fat Fork an advantage with a few extra hours, and by taking a look at their Google Analytics Popular times, we can see that their Friday and Saturday late night traffic is higher than their average customers through Monday-Wed, on an hourly basis. The restaurant gets quite busy on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Big Food Portions
Quoted by the Owners themselves and plenty of their customers videos across social media, they’re prideful of their big portion servings and fair price. This is an amazing marketing tactic, especially because in the past few years there has been many negative influx on businesses keeping high prices and lowering quantity or portions at restaurants or stores. It’s great for the average customer to find a restaurant that focuses on big portions and allowing for left-over food for the next day.
https://www.instagram.com/fatfork.ca/reel/C1-nVtGuS3V/
Reviews
Reviews are a great for way for customers to trust businesses and Fat Forks Reviews are quite impressive. Reaching over 700 reviews in one year on one platform (Google Maps) is a google milestone, especially in a city the size of Mississauga. Many of the local restaurant businesses have 200-800 reviews, the top ones at 1,200-1,500 but they have been around for over a decade. If Fat Fork is able to consistently get new customers to write reviews and reach over 1,500+ they will be plenty ahead of local and this will be strong for establishing their presence locally.
Website
With a good domain and a custom website, and consistent branding across their website, these are all good decisions to improve their customers experience.
They even took a further stuff and used a white-labelling service to make it possible to place online orders through their website! This is great and it would be even better to see more local businesses adopting this strategy because it let’s them create their own channel for online orders instead of only utilizing Uber Eats, Door Dash etc. It’s also a benefit for the business because they are saving costs from those platform and they can react and improve their services and experience more directly through their customer data.
https://fatfork.order-online.ai/#/
App
Partnering with the same software service, they also launched a FAT FORK APP. This app allows customers to order their menu for pick-up, and can be downloaded both on Apple and Android devices.
This is great to see as they are including more in-house features and their customers can now quickly order their favorite Souvlaki meal and come it up at the Mississauga restaurant.
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/fat-fork/id6456609428
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.ueat.fatfork&hl=en&gl=US
Social Media
Collaborations
On their Instagram and Tiktok they have made some notable collaborations. These collaborations are great because they are engaging with their audience, but more importantly reaching a new audience. Majority of these have been with food bloggers and it seems to be working because these posts are getting higher than average reach on their page.
Some of the accounts they’ve worked with are tfoodieblog, visitmississauga, torontofan, yyzdateideas, jameshung and more. Along with a strong post which showed 270 cheeseburgers they catered to another local business named thebutchershoppe_to.
Giveaways
For only being open for a year, they have been quite generous doing multiple giveaways throughout the year of $100 gift cards. In this particular video they brought on a Santa Claus and gave away 5 $100 gift cards to their restaurant.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C0m_T-OOjyn/
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1DSyN1udrO/
Skits
On their Instagram you can find various skits done with the two Owners, celebrities or actors, and some of their employees, along with plenty of other skits. These react well with their audience and perform quite well statistically. This is great because it adds a more welcoming and personalized feel to their brand, and isn’t just full of direct promotion.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C0fU49iuq70/
Sponsored Ads
We’re aware that they’re spending money on promoting their Instagram posts, but at the moment the amount isn’t disclosed but we’ve heard that it’s returning strong results.
Professional Photography & Videography
Having a lot of content is very important for a brands page, but having quality content is even more important. Majority of their content seems to be higher quality along with their phenomenal food photography. The food photography is very important because if days are slow or not much content to post, they can include a mouth-watering meal on their story which keeps their audience updated and always fresh on their minds. It’s the same effect as when you drive by a certain food location, and all of sudden subconsciously you are craving that food now, or in a few hours. The same goes with Instagram stories it may result in a customer coming in that moment, in a few hours or maybe a few days later because now Fat Fork is on the top of their mind when they’re hungry.
Sponsorship’s
A unique but interesting company they’ve decided to sponsor is Awaracingteam. Their branding is placed on the race car and tagged in many Instagram photos. This is a unique audience to reach and also shows more local support.
Partnerships
They’ve developed a few partnerships, but the most notable has to be with Z103.5 after catering food to them and building a relationship. The restaurant has been featured on their radio station multiple times, even joining in giveaways in store credit together.
Graphics
These graphics can be see across their restaurant, website and social media. It’s amazing to see more brand consistency and a unique way of design, definitely distinguishing themselves from competition.
Orange Juice
They’ve even went as far as branding their own in-house orange juice. This is great because the orange juice bottle perfect matches their brand with the black and yellow, and it continues proving their strong consistency.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CuaBo-pgz4R/
Gift Cards
A strong feature that I strongly believe more restaurants should do, especially early on. Is including a branded gift card. Fat Fork used their branded gift cards to give away $100 store credit. But what also came out of it was a strong marketing push as not only do giveaways bring a lot of attention to the page, but it also promotes the gift card as an option to give your close family and friends for the holiday.
Wrapping Up
In just one year, Fat Fork, a family-owned Greek restaurant in Mississauga, has become a local sensation. Their focus on offering generous portions at fair prices has garnered over 700 reviews on Google Maps with an impressive 4.7-star rating. Key marketing strategies include extended late-night hours, engaging social media collaborations, and strategic partnerships.
Their menu features popular items like the Famous Pork Souvlaki Dinner and Gyro Dinner, contributing to their positive reputation. The restaurant’s online presence is strengthened by a user-friendly website, a custom Fat Fork App, and white-labeling for online orders, showcasing a commitment to customer convenience.
Social media plays a crucial role, with collaborations, giveaways, and sponsored ads creating a dynamic online presence. Unique branding elements, such as in-house orange juice and branded gift cards, add to their distinct identity. As Fat Fork approaches its one-year anniversary, the combination of quality food, strategic marketing, and community engagement positions it for continued success in the competitive restaurant scene.