Increase Restaurant Sales – 13 Tips to boost your food business

Running a restaurant business is no longer just about serving good food. Food service industry has become extremely complex in terms of scalability, supply chains and maximizing profit margins. In a rapid and fast changing world, restaurateurs are finding it really hard to keep up with the evolving consumer choices. Streamlining your business is important to boost your sales and we have a guide to help you with the same.

1. Crafting Your Menu

Your menu should be unique and capable of influencing your customer’s choices. You can have high margin items listed at the top of your menu in each category and get the attention of your customer easily. It is always great if you have that one item on your menu that can serve as your USP and all the rest just adds up to it. It will be a painstaking effort to craft that one unique burger or steak or salad or Biryani, but it is sure to scale your business to new heights if you have your own signature dish on the menu.

2. Your customers are your promoters

This is the key to scale up any business and especially with food business, this is the golden commandment. Treat your regular customers well, get their feedback, work on them. Make sure you have a robust customer database that can help you identify your regular customers. You can give them special offers and coupons and introduce new recommendations to them. You treat your regulars with due respect, they will in turn market you through word of mouth and rave reviews.

3. Upselling

It is one of the easiest yet ignored ways of boosting sales. It simply means to convince your customer to upgrade or purchase more. In a restaurant this can be achieved by training your staff to sell the menu. It is important to train your staff to develop a rapport with the customer and be polite and help them choose what they would eat.

“Would you like to try our special ‘xyz’ dish?”

“We do have a special for today. Would you like to give it a try?”

In most cases, these questions would prompt your customer to think, which would result in a sale. In addition, you can try to give free samples of new items on the menu which increases the chance of ordering extra. Training your staff with the requisite skills is key to achieving this.

4. Better Table Turnover Rates

Dine-in is a leisure activity and mostly it takes longer for customers to leave their tables. This in turn results in longer queues and even losing customers who can’t wait in a queue. Table Turnover rates means the number-of customers served in a day. It is important to increase this rate, but without rushing your customers through their experience. This can be tackled by ensuring that orders at the table are instantly sent to the kitchen and orders are served to the guests promptly. It is also important to present the bills and collect the cash from the table promptly. The right mix of tables that can handle different sizes and groups is also a key to faster turnover rates. The tables need to be cleared and reset as soon as your guests leave. Quick and efficient service not only delights your customers but will also help in improving your turnover rates.

5. Using the Right POS

An efficient POS system is vital to scaling up any business. It helps in managing front and back ends of a restaurant effortlessly. Inventory management, to online ordering, loyalty programs and payment, everything is handled within a single application which can help you save time and money. YSUITE DinePro is an efficient POS application designed to help restaurants manage their operations and scale up their business.

6. Influencer marketing/ Social media promotions

Lifestyle influencers, vloggers etc. are your marketing agents and social media users are your potential customers. Never forget to keep your social media handle updated with the latest menu, reviews, offers and, events at your place. Also, you should communicate with your customers and take their feedbacks and apologize for inconveniences if any on your page. These actions can help retain customers and also create new ones.

7. Special Events

Any event hosted can boost up your sales and create a customer base. It is important to market your menu while you are hosting an event. Popups and workshops which would engage many numbers of people can be an extra income without much pressure on your resources.

8. Co-working cafe spaces

Think about customers who come in daily, stay for hours, most definitely order food and beverages while working from there. And furthermore, they recommend you to other people and bring in more customers during informal meetings and gatherings. Co-working spaces are the new thing in restaurant business where you only have to have an unlimited Free Wi-Fi to help young entrepreneurs and freelancers to work from your space and they in turn build you a customer base.

9. SMS Marketing

With an already existing customer database, SMS helps you to use this data to boost sales at your restaurant. Combo offers, new additions, special events etc. can be notified to your regular customers. Inviting them directly in their inbox will increase their chances of showing up and will certainly, create a better relationship with your customer. So always choose a POS application that has an inbuilt SMS marketing feature. The YSUITE Platform offers a service called YSUITE EasySMS, which can be used to send SMS marketing campaigns.

10. Analyzing Reports

Volume of sales, kitchen inventory, employee activity details, detailed sales reports (most selling and least wanted items on your menu etc.) and much more would be available at your fingertips as detailed reports if you use the right POS application. These data can bring you more insight to make your Restaurant operation better. YSUITE DinePro will help you in accessing these reports real-time for your restaurant.

11. Google Business Account

Getting featured on google increases your reach by making it easier to find you on internet. Training your staff to encourage customers to leave positive reviews on your page will attract more potential customers and thereby boost sales.

12. Communicate with your Employees

Restaurant staff get to deal with customers face to face and they will know the pulse better than anyone else. So, it is important to engage with the staff and take their suggestions, which would certainly convert into sales. This will also help make your employees feel important and they will be more sincere at work. It is also important to incentivize for their valuable inputs.

13. Adaptability

It is important to strike the balance between online and offline sales. Make sure your business is adaptable to changing times. You might need to handle more take-outs /online delivery on week days while weekends might need you to focus on table turnover rates as leisure dine-in volumes are higher. An adaptable workforce is the key to handling this.

What are some other ways you can think of to boost the sales in a restaurant business? We would love to hear from you. Share your tips and thoughts in the comments below.