Last week, Short Order featured a list of tweeting, or twittering (whatever your pleasure) Miami chefs. This week's focus is on the numerous food trucks roaming the "M-I-A." There are well over 20 decked-out chariots dishing out delicious grub with menus ranging from burgers and tacos, to seafood and ceviche, subs, wings and even gourmet fare with a Floribbean flair.
Although each meandering food biz has its own identity, they all claim to serve all natural, made-from-scratch delicacies prepared and stored in limited space.
Their owners are colorful and eccentric. And they are all on Twitter, which creates buzz and drives traffic.
The most successful businesses post very often throughout the day and interact efficiently and quickly with their audiences.
Latin Burger leads the pack of great tweeters. For example:
@Arsecroft, an LB follower, tweeted out:
"@LatinBurger is the best burger I've ever had. Dethroned In & Out Burger as champion for me."
Latin Burger followed up by "retweeting" to its 2500+ followers, promoting its success as well as recognizing a fan. @Arsecroft will more than likely gain a few followers from LB's cross promotion, but more significantly, he or she will appreciate being.
But LB doesn't just tweet out its fans, it is also busy promoting this up-and-coming, local dining trend - the business of mobile food trucks. Seemingly unrequited, selfless acts of kindness are rare in the dog-eat-dog world of restaurants.
Tweet by @LatinBurger:
"This Saturday check @lacamaronera, Latin Burger Burger, Sakaya Kitchen Dim Ssäm à gogo, and Wing Commander at... http://fb.me/J46RR7re"
Another good example of Twitter promos is by Jefe's. On Monday they had already begun promoting their weekend activities. Great foresight!
Tweet by @JefesOriginal:
"Friday Oct. 8th 11a-3pm Folk Life Fridays Nw 9th st & Nw 2nd Ave food fun entertainment & free admission, Jefe's on Board!!"
So who's lacking skillz in the Twitter department?
@grillmastercafe, on the bottom of the scale, is not working its Twitter as well as it could be. For starters, @grillmastercafe does not interact with its audience. They are great to post information, but it's a 2-way street; the key is giving people credit publicly when they say something positive about a your brand. Secondly, @grillmastercafe posts irregularly. Specialists suggest tweeting and Facebooking a minimum of four times a day on each platform to get the information ball rolling. But remember, it's not about posting non-sense; information must be relevant, otherwise it is just noise.
Below are the top 10 picks. Catch up with them by following them on Twitter. Engage em and get the conversation going. They will thank you for it.
Four-stars Twitters:
@LatinBurger 542 following 2,517 followers latinburger.com
@gastroPodMiami 639 following 1,756 followers gastropodmiami.com
@FeverishMiami 1335 following 1402 followers feverishicecream.com
@LaCamaronera 658 following 674 follwers lacamaronera.com
@yellowtwiter 308 following 627 followers yellowsubmarineonline.com
@jefesoriginal 5 following 549 followers jefesoriginal.com
Three-stars Twitters:
@latinhousegrill 118 following 418 followers
Two-stars Twitters:
@grillmastercafe 290 following 248 followers
@MyWingCommander 3 following 238 follwers
@NachoMamasGrill 110 following 217 followers nachomamasgrill.com
