Richoux Piccadilly

As a tea house and a bakery, Richoux has a storied history across London and the world spanning over a century. But, consumer appetites changed, and the once-famous cultural hotspot lost its way and closed its doors.

Despite the closure, Richoux was still a name with gravitas. So, in 2022, with renewed focus, a vibrant new location, fresh investment and two young and hungry chefs, Richoux came back swinging. 

Not as a bakery but as a holistic dining experience, bringing French cuisine, delicate pastries, and an elegant, fully stocked bar to a new 21st-century audience. 

Richoux initially hired an agency to manage their social platforms alongside the chefs. But the reality of starting a restaurant meant little time, and communication between the agency and the chefs broke down. This led to a stale Instagram page with no personality, stagnating growth, and no clear style.

Knowing to make an omelette, you need to break a few eggs, Richoux decided to reach out to Climb Online and tasked us with taking their social media page to the next level while driving bookings and bringing the restaurant’s soul to an untapped audience. 

With less than 5k followers at the time of taking over, Climb Online saw this as a challenge with the right ingredients but not the right recipe.

To fulfil the brief, we would approach each goal in isolation and then bring it all together, 

• Giving the page more personality

The page only used static images, which were all taken when the restaurant was closed, giving a sterile feel to the page. So, Climb Online brought in a photographer and videographer to collect a bank of assets – both video and statics. Our aim here was to showcase the experience of Richoux, so we decided to have three shoots across a typical day. During the opening, the lunch and evening service – taking shots of the food, atmosphere and Piccadilly as a whole.

While statics gave colour to the food and the staff, the video content gave life to the whole Richoux experience.

• Increasing the number of followers
• Appeal to a younger audience

We knew our page would capture more attention by utilising hashtags with engaging assets, but organic social, like SEO, can be a slow process. So, we introduced influencer marketing to boost our coverage across Instagram. Our influencer strategy used a mixture of nano and micro-influencers with a following of 100K or less, primarily with an audience within London. 

As a restaurant, we could offer the influencers a beautiful place to dine in exchange for a post. The effect was instant, with huge follower spikes after each influencer post; alongside these spikes, we would time our organic posting schedule with captivating video content and engaging statics. 

Keeping a consistent daily posting routine with a mix of formats, including static, videos and reels. This scientific posting schedule both increased followers and post interactions.

• Increasing online bookings

The cherry on top of our holistic strategy was paid social, and we used this in two ways. 

The first was to boost our organic posts to capture a wider audience and keep our page visibility high throughout the week, and the second was to use social ads with a book now CTA for both prospecting and retargeting.

We used Paid social as our following grew rather than at the start of the partnership. At that point, we better understood what resonated with our audience from an asset perspective and had a better idea of how to segment our targeting.