Salvatore’s Uses Yext to Increase Search Visibility and Generate More Online Orders

Headquartered in Rochester, Salvatore's is a local-favorite pizza chain serving upstate New York. Founded by Salvatore Fantauzzo, the brand started out in 1978 with one restaurant in Rochester, and has since grown to encompass the 30+ locations it has operating today.

While multiplying Salvatore's restaurants meant great opportunities for the upstate NY favorite, growing from one location to dozens came with challenges — especially for a business founded before the digital era.

Because locations had opened, moved, and been renovated over the years, Salvatore's struggled with inaccurate and incomplete listings information — confusion exacerbated by duplicate listings. The brand realized this could hurt its performance in search, and its customer experience as a whole, leading to fewer online orders. Additionally, Salvatore's didn't have a good way to upload and update online menu information for its individual restaurant locations.

Salvatore's was working with Evolution Marketing, a Yext partner. "With Evolution Marketing, Salvatore's redesigned its website and updated its mobile responsivity. After we made those changes, the team asked what else we could do. I knew there was a lot more they could achieve with Yext to bring them to the next level," explains Sam Pizzo, CEO of Evolution Marketing. "They had a good local reputation, but there was a lot of incorrect information out there because stores had closed over time, or numbers changed, or they just had a bad online ordering button. Yext came in and identified all of that right away — and showed them how fixing it could have a major impact on search."

In 2018, Salvatore's began using Yext, becoming a shared direct client.

Consumers search for food more than any other business category, and today, they do so across a growing number of maps, apps, and AI-powered search engines. Salvatore's leverages the Yext platform to control all of the public facts about its brand so that its restaurants show up across the many consumer search experiences people are using to look for places to eat.

The first step for Salvatore's was to update its essential business information like address and operating hours across the Yext Publisher Network — approximately 175 digital services globally, including Google, Facebook, and Amazon Alexa. Providing brand verified information across search experiences is key to discoverability: As Salvatore's corrected its listings and suppressed duplicates, the brand's search views began to increase.

Yext also gives Salvatore's the ability to manage custom entities like menu items across its network of food-specific publishers. Additionally, it improves Salvatore's ability to rank for unbranded searches (e.g., "best pepperoni pizza" instead of "Salvatore's pizza"). By featuring menu items in its listings, Salvatore's makes it clear to search engines — and therefore, to searchers — that it does indeed serve pepperoni pizza. This allows the brand to rank in those high-intent situations, ultimately helping to generate more online orders.

Salvatore's is also now able to pull in both historical and new reviews — getting a single, centralized view into what customers are saying about the brand online across review sites. By gaining greater insights, and the ability to engage with customer reviews directly from a central hub, Salvatore's is able to create a better customer experience in all of its restaurants — driving more positive reviews in turn.

Since launch, Salvatore's has experienced 38% year-over-year growth in listing clicks. The brand has also made more than 1,400 profile updates, and suppressed more than 200 duplicate listings.

At launch, Yext pulled in 3,200 historical reviews from Salvatore's listings, providing visibility into brand reputation across publishers over time. In the 6 months since launch, Salvatore's pulled in an additional 1,000 reviews to allow ongoing monitoring of brand reputation.

Yext has helped Salvatore's increase search views and drive a 39% year-over-year increase in customer actions — generating more online orders as a result. Monitoring reviews has also helped the restaurant to better understand its reputation online — and serve up a better customer experience across its 30+ locations.

"We see growth in traffic back to their website continuing to grow month-over-month," Pizzo said. "This is a truly remarkable 'mom-and-pop' business, local SEO success story."