Ways to Increase Restaurant Sales

It’s easy to lose sleep over your business’s bottom line. After all, cutting costs and managing margins can’t be taken lightly, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While you’re doing all you can to reduce food and labor costs, consider these 16 options to show you how to increase restaurant sales. Some of these ideas can be done virtually or in-person, and you can adapt them as you move through the different capacities of your local government’s reopening phases or save them for later when you’re at full dining capacity.

No matter what options you adopt, pair them with Tripleseat’s world-class features to make event management easier for your customers and your team.

1. Offer signature packages

“I am always brainstorming new creative event packages to keep our image fresh while sticking to the vision and values of my company’s brand,” says Ryan Rosenberry, Event Sales Manager for Red Beard Restaurants & Special Events. “With Tripleseat, this requires just a couple of minutes of your time to compile a package and upload it. This shaves off hours of my time every month.”

Time saved means you have more time for tasks that’ll increase restaurant revenue, like lead follow-up and proactive selling. Win-win!

2. Optimize your menu

Is your menu just a mishmash of apps, mains, and desserts? If so, it may be time to rethink it. The deliciousness of your menu offerings doesn’t mean a thing if they’re not raking in their full potential, right? It could be as simple as re-naming a classic item, or situating your highest margin items where customer’s gaze will first meet your menu.

If you’ve been handing out the same iteration for years, consider refreshing items on a biannual or seasonal basis. A new menu is also a great thing to promote via social media and other marketing tools. Bonus points if you get high-quality photos taken of a few dishes, too.

3. Throw a themed event

There’s no shortage of special events your restaurant can pull off without putting a strain on your profits or stressing out your staff. Whether it’s a father-daughter night or a wine and cheese tasting, leverage the right technology to ensure your event’s success.

With the help of event management software, you can streamline communication with your staff and impress your customers. Most importantly, you can increase restaurant sales.

Looking to maximize your space during times that business is usually slow (or you’re closed)? There are plenty of creative events your venue can host to get a fresh crop of event clients and guests through your doors. Reach out to a local yoga studio, artist, or florist, for example. See if there’s potential to create a partnership that’ll improve restaurant sales.

4. Secure a social media presence

Chances are, the majority of your customers are active on social media. That means you should be too. Restaurants with a strong social media presence blow their “unsocial” competition out of the water. It’s crucial to be where your customers are.

Make sure you’re set up with a Facebook business page, a Twitter account, and an Instagram account. These are great places to promote your daily specials and share drool-inducing photos. Once you’re a certified social butterfly, get set up with a free social media management tool (like Hootsuite) to monitor the activity and engagement on your channels.

5. Sell branded products

Do you run a coffee shop with house-roasted beans? Package them and sell them. If you own a microbrewery with one-of-a-kind brew, offer it for sale in growlers or kegs.

Selling something you’re known for as a branded product is one surefire way to generate a secondary revenue stream to increase restaurant sales. Or, if you invested a lot into your design and branding, simply printing T-shirts could boost business (and serve as free promotion by the people sporting them!).

6. Increase speed of service

You know that the more tables you turn per hour, the more money you make. So why not provide your staff with the tools they need to increase the speed and efficiency of service?

For example, a mobile point of sale (POS) device gives servers the ability to send orders directly from the POS to the kitchen. This way, they don’t have to race to and from a stationary terminal bottlenecked by other servers.

7. Partner with popular delivery services

In today’s app-driven environment, convenience is king. Consider teaming up with popular delivery services in your area, like Seamless, GrubHub, and DoorDash.

Partnering with delivery services is a great strategy to increase sales in a restaurant. This can help streamline your ordering process, attract new customers, and satisfy your existing customers all from the comfort of their smartphones.

8. Embrace the power of upselling

Train your servers to be better salespeople by mastering the art of upselling. “Bottled water or Perrier?” “Would you like to add chicken to your Caesar salad?”

This is another great use for your POS system. It can help to increase average check size and build restaurant sales by prompting servers to suggest add-ons and highlight priced modifiers to the customer.

9. Organize a workshop

Do you have the best pizza in town? Are customers constantly raving about your killer cocktails? Show off your skills and host a virtual or in-person workshop.

Extending the experience of your restaurant into hands-on participation will not only help you make some extra cash with the workshop fees, but it’ll do wonders for customer loyalty as well. It’s a great way to increase restaurant sales without advertising.

10. Try new marketing strategies

Sure, email marketing is a tried and true way to reach potential customers. But why not give text marketing a try? With the high open rates of text messages, it only makes sense.

Create an offer to get customers to subscribe, like “Get Free Dessert,” then start sending weekly specials to your growing list of subscribers. Your customers will look forward to receiving these deals, and you can look forward to the increased restaurant revenue from repeat visits.

SOURCE:

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