Prince Blakaj opened Mare E Monte 10 months ago with lofty ambition and a limited track record. He had never owned a restaurant or even managed one. His only experience was waiting tables for five years in New York City.
On opening day, April 2, a trickle of customers occupied three of Mare E Monte’s 22 tables for lunch and seven tables for dinner. Three days later, nearly all 22 tables at the Italian restaurant were filled for lunch and dinner.
Blakaj credits one post on April 4 from the San Antonio Restaurants Facebook Group. In a glowing six-paragraph review, group founder Alan Williams called Mare E Monte “a brand-new culinary gem.” Williams described a delicious four-course meal with photos of calamari all’arrabbiata, carciofi al tartufo, lemon sole oreganata and chocolate caramel cake with sea salt.
“San Antonio Restaurants is one of the best things that’s happened to our business,” said Blakaj. “The servers can feel it. The kitchen can feel it. I can feel it. We were worried in the beginning how difficult it would be to establish ourselves. But the word-of-mouth support from the group grew the restaurant to where we are today.”
With an audience reach of nearly 500,000 across multiple social media platforms and a weekly television segment, San Antonio Restaurants boosts start-ups like Mare E Monte, helps struggling eateries, illuminates hidden gems and celebrates iconic establishments, all of them local.
From hobby to business
Stop-N-Go Gyros opened on Babcock Road with five tables in November. Owner Ahmad Alotaibi had never heard of Williams’ group until customers began telling him, “We saw you on the San Antonio Restaurants page.” Not a handful of customers. A parade of them.
“Sixty percent of our business is because of San Antonio Restaurants,” said Alotaibi, “We’ve been very busy since that first day we were in San Antonio Restaurants.”
Excellent food and customer service can take a start-up so far. A strong media review, however, can propel business to the next level. In the case of Stop-N-Go Gyros, numerous customer touts appear in the San Antonio Restaurants Facebook group. The reviews get shared and reshared, multiplying their impact.
San Antonio Restaurants started in 2014 as a hobby. Alan and wife Beverly Williams created the group to discuss a favorite pastime: eating out. The idea was to have fun and support the restaurant industry. Political comments and profanity were prohibited. Negative reviews were strongly discouraged.
The Facebook group began with a couple of thousand members. Membership exploded in 2020 as restaurants teetered or shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic. To support a collapsing industry, the Facebook group highlighted restaurants that sold pre-packaged meals to H-E-B or pivoted to drive-up and carry-out options. Membership multiplied exponentially.
“When we grew to 47,000, I was shocked,” Alan Williams said. “I never dreamed we would get that big.”
As followers flocked to Facebook, Williams recognized a business opportunity. He partnered with marketing professional Susie LaFredo, retired from his job with the City of San Marcos and devoted himself to San Antonio Restaurants in 2021. Within a year, membership had doubled to more than 100,000.
Today, San Antonio Restaurants boasts more than 280,000 followers on Facebook. Similar platforms that sprang from San Antonio Restaurants enjoy robust followings as well: 88,400 on the Ask A Local Facebook group, 34,300 on the San Antonio Bars Facebook group and nearly 26,000 on the San Antonio Restaurants Instagram account. The San Antonio Restaurants TikTok account registers only 5,000 followers but multiple videos have gone viral, with one logging more than 120,000 views.
Williams and LaFredo also appear on San Antonio Living’s weekly “Flavor Friday” segment, which attracts an estimated 20,000 viewers on NBC affiliate WOAI-TV and thousands more through social media and the web.
Then there’s a weekly podcast, “The More You Know, The Better It Tastes,” a quarterly magazine, The Flavors of Texas, and the San Antonio Restaurants website.
Impact on San Antonio’s culinary scene
If it seems the San Antonio Restaurant group is everywhere, it is. And with the group’s wide reach comes real impact.
In December 2023, Green Vegetarian Cuisine posted a plea for help, saying the establishment was struggling. San Antonio Restaurants shared the post in its Facebook group. The impact was immediate.
Owner Ellen Roberts said the post was picked up by other media and brought customers through the door.
It’s helpful that Alan and Susie don’t approach their work as social media influencers,” she said. “They approach this as a business. They don’t look to see what they can get out of it. They are looking for solutions for restaurateurs. Nobody in this town is more supportive than Alan and Susie.”
Regina Gonzalez agrees. During the pandemic, she and her brother Jose Gonzalez began selling carne asada from a ghost kitchen in their mother’s house. Their deliveries became popular and the siblings posted about it on San Antonio Restaurants. In March 2021, the siblings opened Tu Asador in Castle Hills.
“We started having a full house right away,” Regina said, “because people knew about us from our plate sales and carne asada deliveries.”
Business accelerated after positive reviews in the San Antonio Restaurants group.
Long lines formed. Waitlists grew. “We had a lot of overflow,” Regina said, “so we opened a second restaurant in Encino Rio in Stone Oak.”
Not every positive review brings such success. The restaurant industry, overall, is struggling. Food prices are up. Profit margins are low. A post-pandemic lull lingers.
Many restaurant-goers got used to staying home or ordering out.
Some establishments, though, are thriving. And more than a few trace much of their business to San Antonio Restaurants. “When your mission is to help others, there’s nothing more gratifying than that,” said LaFredo. “Knowing that we’re having an impact on local, family-owned restaurants feels amazing.”
What happens when the Williamses or LaFredo have a poor dining experience? When the food is overcooked and the service is bad? “We won’t post about it,” Beverly Williams said. “We just chalk it up to an experience.”
A positive review on San Antonio Restaurants only goes so far. To succeed, restaurants must serve consistently good food. They must deliver outstanding customer service. Even then, business can be challenging.
It helps if you have an on-the-floor owner like Prince Blakaj. A man with a great big smile, authentic charm and exuberant personality. He greets diners at each table at Mare E Monte and engages them in warm conversation. He never forgets a face.
Blakaj is one reason people keep coming back. But he knows there’s another. And he’s spoken with enough restaurateurs to know he’s not mistaken.
“Every time somebody gets posted on San Antonio Restaurants, they always get an increase in business,” he said. “The impact they make on the local restaurant industry is just incredible.”
