By Ailekhu Longe, Class of ’24

Wing Bar (684 Bergen Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07304) is a local night bar known for its flavored chicken wings, smash burgers, and variety of liquor. Their food and liquor, coupled with their friendly and respectful staff make for a great environment for customers to eat, drink, socialize, and watch their favorite sports games while listening to the bar’s playlist of music.

In an effort to promote their bar and attract more customers, Wing Bar has taken to social media to help further their business. Currently, their social media accounts consist of Instagram, TikTok, Yelp, and their website. 

Marc Munson, a co-manager at Wing Bar, said that their presence on social media is a huge reason that they’ve been able to stay in business and make a bigger name for themselves throughout Jersey City.

“Social Media has been very helpful in helping us grow,” Marc says. “When we started, you can imagine it was difficult given that we were new and people were unfamiliar with us. When we started selling our wings and smash burgers, we started showing what we were serving on our social media pages, and our business has only went up from there.”

Wing Bar’s owner and manager, Bryan Lewis, runs all of the bar’s social media accounts. Bryan discussed how he has been using a new Instagram feature, collaborative reels, to collaborate with influencers in the community to bring more attention to the bar. With this new feature, when a user posts a photo or video, they can invite another account to accept as a “collaborator”, and share the post on both of their profiles.

“Collaborative reels allow us to work with influencers in Jersey City, who post themselves at our bar trying our food, and the exposure helps our business,” Bryan said. “Without social media, it would be very difficult to show people what we have to offer. Our food is obviously good, but the public wouldn’t know that for themselves. Knowing how to use and promote using social media is very important for any business.”

Prior to working for Wing Bar, Bryan worked as a director in social media marketing for over 10 years in New York, specializing in making food videos as a part of a marketing team for restaurants. 

The bar’s Instagram page (@wingbarjc) is the social media platform they use most frequently, where they post the food that they serve and any new additions that they add to the menu. Their Instagram page has 24 posts and currently sits at 19.8k followers.

Their TikTok page (@wingbarjc) is similar to their Instagram page, where they show how they prepare the food that they serve. Their TikTok page is not frequently updated with only two posts, the most recent being from November 30, 2023. Their page currently has 641 followers, with 182 likes.

Their Yelp page was made for customers to leave their thoughts and review after attending their bar, to give other potential customers an idea of what to expect from their service. The feedback from customers is also used to give the managers and staff an idea of what business strategies are working, and what they need to improve on. Their Yelp page currently has 25 reviews, with an overall rating of 4 stars. 

At the moment, Bryan and the staff at Wing Bar are working towards posting more frequently on TikTok to appeal to younger customers. They are also in the works of creating a Twitter account, to allow them and customers who come and eat to tweet about their experiences.