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The adage in the foodservice business is that if you only do four things you’ll be a success:
Easier said than done. The word increase is doing some very heavy lifting in that list. To accomplish this quadruple increase, a lot has to go on behind the scenes. It’s the attention to detail that helps accomplish the increase. Since the pandemic, resilient owner/operators have developed survival strategies that are now, as seated diners are returning to pre-pandemic levels, being re-evaluated and measured to either keep or discard as part of a multi-faceted restaurant business model.
🔓 Unlock the secrets to restaurant success with actionable strategies for optimizing operations, maximizing profits, and building a loyal customer base.
Download ResourceIn the spirit of sweating the small things on the way to success, we’ve put together six proven and actionable steps that can help increase restaurant sales in 2023:
Successful restaurateurs know that providing a unique and memorable dining experience is key to increasing new customers and encouraging them to return. This is the intersection of the art and science of restaurant culture and can often be achieved through creative menu offerings, exceptional service, unique ambiance, and attention to detail in every aspect of the customer dining experience.
You don't have to go so far as to combine an amusement park ride with an eight-course gourmet dinner, but that's exactly what they're doing at Eatrenalin, located in Europa-Park, one of the busiest theme parks in Europe. This self-described restaurant of the future features chair vehicles that transport guests through a series of themed rooms per dinner course.
Other more conventional ways to deliver a memorable dining experience that does not require a "You Must Be This Tall To Ride" sign can include:
It’s all digital these days… With more and more consumers relying on social media and online platforms to discover new restaurants and place orders, it's crucial to have a strong digital presence. Research points out that 41% look at your reviews on social media before making a reservation and 80% look at your website before visiting. So having an updated website, active social media accounts, and listings on the most popular food delivery apps is a good investment for attracting new customers.
Here's one prominent restaurant leveraging ALL the digital platforms: Well-known Sketch, in London, describes itself as a "destination for food, drinks, music & art, comprising an artist-conceived gastro-brasserie restaurant." The restaurant’s management team has invested heavily in optimizing its online presence.
In addition to having an interesting and interactive website relying heavily on the humble crouton, it has a strong and entertaining Twitter game with almost 20k followers. Sketch’s social media team is also busy on Facebook. On Instagram, some of the most-shared photos of Sketch originate from their loo, designed to encourage diners to take mirror selfies. Reviewed as one of the "16 Most Instagramable Toilets in London," Sketch’s bathrooms feature individual egg-shaped pods, all of which sit below a dramatic rainbow glass ceiling. This is one very photogenic bathroom!
If you lack Instragramable egg-shaped toilet pods, there are other ways to create your strong digital presence:
Online platforms and social media sites are incredibly useful tools for promotion. Your website is your digital storefront and should provide information about your menu, location, hours of operation, and contact information. It can also be used to showcase photos of the food, your staff, the ambiance, and special promotions.
Online advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads can be used to target potential customers with relevant ads and drive traffic to your website and social media pages.
Offering promotions and loyalty programs are a proven way to attract new customers and retain existing ones. This can include discounts, special menu items, and rewards for frequent diners.
Before implementing any promotion or loyalty program, you should set clear objectives such as increasing sales, customer retention, or attracting new customers.
Highlight your promotions and loyalty programs through multiple channels – social media, email marketing, and in-restaurant signage can all be used to cost-effectively maximize their reach and effectiveness. Also, promotions and loyalty programs should have clear start and end dates, and create a sense of urgency to take action.
Promotions and loyalty programs should obviously be targeted at the right customers, such as frequent visitors, new customers, or those who have previously shown interest in a specific menu item or event.
Rewards offered through your loyalty program should be relevant to the customer's preferences and incentivize them to return to the restaurant. Think about receipt coupons.
Monitor the effectiveness of your promotions and loyalty programs and adjust them as necessary to achieve the objective of increasing sales and revenue. Experiment.
Customers are increasingly interested in sustainability and healthy food options. The National Restaurant Association’s report “2023 State of the Restaurant Industry” declares that “consumers dining at restaurants say they want more sustainable and locally-sourced foods on menus.”
Here are some ways that you can focus on sustainability and health to attract these customers:
The pandemic has drastically changed the business model of almost every type of restaurant and foodservice business. An amazing trend reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “A typical restaurant today is managing an average of seven service models, including table, curbside, delivery, catering, and drive-through.” Scrappy restaurateurs responded to the near 100% drop off of seated diners in 2020 by evolving their business model. Offering non-traditional delivery options saw many restaurants weather the shutdown.
Today, as seated diners are returning to near pre-pandemic levels, restaurateurs are keeping or even improving delivery sales as an ongoing element of their business models.
Veteran operators have used these strategies to increase both food delivery sales and attract potential seated diners:
To improve delivery sales, some operators modify their menus to increase delivery sales. Some proven valuable steps to take:
Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash, and Postmates can be good options. But as many restaurant managers have experienced, there are advantages and disadvantages of using third-party delivery services. So do your homework and choose wisely:
The Advantages
The Disadvantages
So, how should restaurants think about balancing growth in third-party delivery services vs. their in-restaurant dining? Check out this conversation among industry experts in a McKinsey Forum about the growth of the food delivery sector and what lies ahead for this complex ecosystem.
From online ordering systems to digital menus and self-service kiosks, technology can help streamline operations, improve efficiency, enhance the customer experience, and increase profitability. Investing in technology can also help you gather data and insights to make informed business decisions.
A recent article in the Michelin Guide reports on the trend that restaurants are turning to technology to tackle the global restaurant staff shortage.
Here are some of the best technologies that restaurants can use:
Increasing restaurant sales is never a simple formula, and requires attention to detail and the hard work of staff and management. But fortune shines on the prepared, and most restaurants succeed more through hard work than luck. So applying lessons learned in the tumult of recent years can be a playbook to use to increase sales.
Focusing on the customer experience; improving your digital presence in the age of digital native; launching effective promotions and a restaurant loyalty program; adopting sustainable practices; sharpening your delivery sales strategy; and improving your restaurant’s use of information technology, website, and social media are all foundational and necessary restaurant business needs today.
If you have any questions or need help, feel free to reach out
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Calculate ROIThe adage in the foodservice business is that if you only do four things you’ll be a success:
Easier said than done. The word increase is doing some very heavy lifting in that list. To accomplish this quadruple increase, a lot has to go on behind the scenes. It’s the attention to detail that helps accomplish the increase. Since the pandemic, resilient owner/operators have developed survival strategies that are now, as seated diners are returning to pre-pandemic levels, being re-evaluated and measured to either keep or discard as part of a multi-faceted restaurant business model.
🔓 Unlock the secrets to restaurant success with actionable strategies for optimizing operations, maximizing profits, and building a loyal customer base.
Download ResourceIn the spirit of sweating the small things on the way to success, we’ve put together six proven and actionable steps that can help increase restaurant sales in 2023:
Successful restaurateurs know that providing a unique and memorable dining experience is key to increasing new customers and encouraging them to return. This is the intersection of the art and science of restaurant culture and can often be achieved through creative menu offerings, exceptional service, unique ambiance, and attention to detail in every aspect of the customer dining experience.
You don't have to go so far as to combine an amusement park ride with an eight-course gourmet dinner, but that's exactly what they're doing at Eatrenalin, located in Europa-Park, one of the busiest theme parks in Europe. This self-described restaurant of the future features chair vehicles that transport guests through a series of themed rooms per dinner course.
Other more conventional ways to deliver a memorable dining experience that does not require a "You Must Be This Tall To Ride" sign can include:
It’s all digital these days… With more and more consumers relying on social media and online platforms to discover new restaurants and place orders, it's crucial to have a strong digital presence. Research points out that 41% look at your reviews on social media before making a reservation and 80% look at your website before visiting. So having an updated website, active social media accounts, and listings on the most popular food delivery apps is a good investment for attracting new customers.
Here's one prominent restaurant leveraging ALL the digital platforms: Well-known Sketch, in London, describes itself as a "destination for food, drinks, music & art, comprising an artist-conceived gastro-brasserie restaurant." The restaurant’s management team has invested heavily in optimizing its online presence.
In addition to having an interesting and interactive website relying heavily on the humble crouton, it has a strong and entertaining Twitter game with almost 20k followers. Sketch’s social media team is also busy on Facebook. On Instagram, some of the most-shared photos of Sketch originate from their loo, designed to encourage diners to take mirror selfies. Reviewed as one of the "16 Most Instagramable Toilets in London," Sketch’s bathrooms feature individual egg-shaped pods, all of which sit below a dramatic rainbow glass ceiling. This is one very photogenic bathroom!
If you lack Instragramable egg-shaped toilet pods, there are other ways to create your strong digital presence:
Online platforms and social media sites are incredibly useful tools for promotion. Your website is your digital storefront and should provide information about your menu, location, hours of operation, and contact information. It can also be used to showcase photos of the food, your staff, the ambiance, and special promotions.
Online advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads can be used to target potential customers with relevant ads and drive traffic to your website and social media pages.
Offering promotions and loyalty programs are a proven way to attract new customers and retain existing ones. This can include discounts, special menu items, and rewards for frequent diners.
Before implementing any promotion or loyalty program, you should set clear objectives such as increasing sales, customer retention, or attracting new customers.
Highlight your promotions and loyalty programs through multiple channels – social media, email marketing, and in-restaurant signage can all be used to cost-effectively maximize their reach and effectiveness. Also, promotions and loyalty programs should have clear start and end dates, and create a sense of urgency to take action.
Promotions and loyalty programs should obviously be targeted at the right customers, such as frequent visitors, new customers, or those who have previously shown interest in a specific menu item or event.
Rewards offered through your loyalty program should be relevant to the customer's preferences and incentivize them to return to the restaurant. Think about receipt coupons.
Monitor the effectiveness of your promotions and loyalty programs and adjust them as necessary to achieve the objective of increasing sales and revenue. Experiment.
Customers are increasingly interested in sustainability and healthy food options. The National Restaurant Association’s report “2023 State of the Restaurant Industry” declares that “consumers dining at restaurants say they want more sustainable and locally-sourced foods on menus.”
Here are some ways that you can focus on sustainability and health to attract these customers:
The pandemic has drastically changed the business model of almost every type of restaurant and foodservice business. An amazing trend reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “A typical restaurant today is managing an average of seven service models, including table, curbside, delivery, catering, and drive-through.” Scrappy restaurateurs responded to the near 100% drop off of seated diners in 2020 by evolving their business model. Offering non-traditional delivery options saw many restaurants weather the shutdown.
Today, as seated diners are returning to near pre-pandemic levels, restaurateurs are keeping or even improving delivery sales as an ongoing element of their business models.
Veteran operators have used these strategies to increase both food delivery sales and attract potential seated diners:
To improve delivery sales, some operators modify their menus to increase delivery sales. Some proven valuable steps to take:
Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash, and Postmates can be good options. But as many restaurant managers have experienced, there are advantages and disadvantages of using third-party delivery services. So do your homework and choose wisely:
The Advantages
The Disadvantages
So, how should restaurants think about balancing growth in third-party delivery services vs. their in-restaurant dining? Check out this conversation among industry experts in a McKinsey Forum about the growth of the food delivery sector and what lies ahead for this complex ecosystem.
From online ordering systems to digital menus and self-service kiosks, technology can help streamline operations, improve efficiency, enhance the customer experience, and increase profitability. Investing in technology can also help you gather data and insights to make informed business decisions.
A recent article in the Michelin Guide reports on the trend that restaurants are turning to technology to tackle the global restaurant staff shortage.
Here are some of the best technologies that restaurants can use:
Increasing restaurant sales is never a simple formula, and requires attention to detail and the hard work of staff and management. But fortune shines on the prepared, and most restaurants succeed more through hard work than luck. So applying lessons learned in the tumult of recent years can be a playbook to use to increase sales.
Focusing on the customer experience; improving your digital presence in the age of digital native; launching effective promotions and a restaurant loyalty program; adopting sustainable practices; sharpening your delivery sales strategy; and improving your restaurant’s use of information technology, website, and social media are all foundational and necessary restaurant business needs today.
Talk to a restaurant expert today and learn how MarketMan can help your business
