Are you worried that you can’t achieve the profit that you planned for a particular year or month? Running a restaurant business is a tough job. You have to analyze new business opportunities, keep up with market fluctuations, and understand customers’ demands.
If you are thinking of leveling up your restaurant sale, then this blog is for you.
We offer five practical tips that improve your restaurant sales.
Having an on-demand food-delivery app
Today as everyone has turned online to get their groceries and food, restaurants can get an on-demand food-delivery app for their restaurant business to get orders from customers and deliver to customers.
The on-demand food-delivery app can help in attaining customer awareness of your business and increasing your restaurant sales.
Strong social media presence
Social media plays a significant role in increasing the sales of the restaurant. It is one of the freeways to market the restaurant brand and its offered menu.
Today, people spent more time on social media to check the latest updates, news, and other interesting news. Social media offers different kinds of information suiting a user’s needs.
Market your restaurant by posting appealing pictures of food that just creates the desire to order them and eat it. It creates engagement to your social media page which drives more sales to your restaurant.
It builds brand awareness around your restaurant. Customers can easily identify your brand and trust the quality of your food item.
Social media is also a key to share more information about your restaurant with your customers. You can:
- Share the location of your store
- Announce upcoming events organized in your restaurant
- Advertise the launch of a new cuisine
- Proudly talk about the honors and awards received for your service
Tips to market your restaurant
- Take advantage of hashtags: Hashtags are a way to create awareness about your restaurant. Using the right hashtags that suits your brand. You can also create new hashtags that build the brand of your restaurant.
- Post quality pictures of food: Posting quality pictures of your food creates curiosity for customers to try this flavourful dish.
Advertising
Advertising is about selling your business to your potential customers. It is used when you want to bring new customers to your restaurant and create awareness of your business. It can be creating an ad and broadcasting over television, radio, social media. You can post your restaurant ad in local newspapers.
You can utilize banners, posters, wall art, or pamphlets to advertise your restaurant.
The advertising cost depends upon the medium, campaign, and the number of days an ad has to run. Also, the campaign cost differs from an online and offline medium.
Tips for advertising your restaurant business
- Your ad message has to be short and appealing to your customers. It has to hold the customer’s attention and stick your brand in their mind.
- Use the power of social media to advertise to a large audience. You can prefer Instagram to send a visual message to customers.
Upselling tactic
Upselling is a sales tactic of encouraging or motivating customers to buy more from their restaurants. This can increase the profit of the business. But, it shouldn’t look pestering or very pushy to the customers.
The tactic has to be approached smartly and professionally, understanding the customer mindset as well.
Tactics to upsell to your customers
- Suggest food dishes that contribute maximum profit to the restaurant. It can be a side dish or a special dish that immediately gets customer attention. When upselling to customers, you need to express the taste and how it is made to instigate the interest of customers.
- Offering extras is a smart way to make a profit. For instance, you can offer different toppings for pizza or fruits to add when customers prefer a salad.
- Offering beverages, desserts, milkshakes, starters to customers can increase the profit. Families who dine out with kids are most likely to order desserts and milkshakes.
- Offering drinks like soda, water, margarita, and cocktails could add profit to the restaurant business.
- You can also suggest if the customer wants anything for takeout. If the food is great, customers would show interest to take it home.
Faster Table turnover time
Table turn over time means the time customers take in utilizing a table from the moment they sat on to till they pay the bill.
A faster table turnover time can impress the customer, at the same time, boost the revenue of the restaurant by serving more customers per day.
Also, customer service has to be exceptional to gain loyal customers for your platform. Being more polite and needful to customers’ demands can impress them and make them willing to revisit your restaurant.
Tips for faster table turnover time
- Greet customers with a smile. Ask the waiter to attain the table immediately when they sit down to eat. Taking the orders very late can also extend the table turnover time.
- Make sure to deliver the order within 30 – 40 minutes. As we are not aware of how long a customer takes to complete their food plate. But, the restaurants can control their time management on food-delivery and billing.
- Introduce technology like self-order kiosks, kitchen display screen, contactless payment to efficiently manage your kitchen and for a faster table turnover time.
Pricing
Pricing your food items also contribute to the profit of your business. Sometimes a customer might not prefer your restaurant when the cost is higher than their financial plan.
You have to price your menu that is affordable for your customers and also helps in gaining profit.
First, you need to identify the profit of your business.
The formula for calculating gross profit is:
Gross profit = (menu price – ingredient cost)/menu price
To know the net profit:
Net profit = Gross profit – (operating cost + labour)
You need to set the menu price that helps in gaining profit for your restaurant business.
For instance, if you price chicken nuggets at $25 and the ingredient cost is $5, the gross profit is 80%. You are gaining a high-profit from this dish.
Second, Understand the market demand and price of food ingredient
Apart from pricing, you need to understand the market demand. Plus, the price of ingredients to make a particular food item.
If the cost of chicken has gone higher for a month, you benefit less profit compared to the previous month. Hence, resulting in rating the price higher to maintain your profit.
Likewise, if the demand for chicken nuggets has decreased due to various other reasons, your restaurant profits also become lesser. You have to analyze the reason for the decrease in the demand – is it due to the opening of a new restaurant nearby, a change in customer preference, or any other environmental factor.
Conclusion
Remember, there is no short-way to increase your restaurant sale. It takes a month or two to view the effects of your new strategies.
I hope this blog was informative and gave you enough insights to improve your business.