With costs rising, staffing challenges and restaurant competitors consistently popping up, finding ways to increase restaurant sales is always at the forefront of owners minds. In this blog, we’ll explore 10 tips and strategies you can implement in your business to increase sales.
Training staff on how to upsell products by giving them the confidence to seamlessly make dish suggestions to customers will help you increase sales exponentially. By improving product knowledge, staff will have the ability to suggest dishes that align with their preferences as well as having the ability to suggest things like wines that pair well with certain dishes.
Adding on to this, practicing scenarios through role play can further embed knowledge and confidence within all of your staff members. You can practice how to make suggestions. For example, saying ‘That sirloin steak would pair perfectly with our Malbec’ rather than ‘Would you like a bottle of Malbec with that’ is more likely to encourage customers to purchase a bottle of wine of higher value.
Our research, conducted through our Customer Experience Management Platform has shown that the top factors that matter most to guests are the quality of food and service. As a result, when training staff it’s important to not only train them on product knowledge but attentive and quick service.
Menu engineering is all about strategically designing your menu based on the dishes that perform best and removing those that are underperforming. By working with Customer Experience Management Platforms like Black Box Intelligence, you can access crucial insights into how each item of your menu is performing, allowing you to make data driven decisions that make a difference to sales and profitability.
To learn more about the challenges involved in menu innovation and how you can overcome them, read our blog.
By improving your table turnover rate you can seat more people, ultimately resulting in more sales. However, it’s important to remember that top quality service standards must still be delivered and customers should not be rushed through their meal as this will lead to a lack of returning customers.
We all know that word of mouth is one of the best ways to attract customers. In fact McKinsey & Co believe that word of mouth recommendations lead to between 20 - 50% of all purchasing decisions. This emphasises the importance of training your staff to deliver quality experiences while increasing your table turnover rate.
Investing in marketing efforts like social media and improving your website will help you build further awareness of your brand, helping to drive more customers into your restaurant.
Utilising platforms like TikTok and Instagram allow you to showcase menu and product launches as well as behind the scenes of your restaurant. Remember, people buy from people, so add some personality and start spreading brand awareness.
At Black Box Intelligence, our Review Boost helps you drive more reviews and boosts your ratings, enabling you to gain more customers. Obtaining more reviews and displaying them on your website also helps boost your SEO efforts and Google presence, contributing to an increase in brand awareness and new customers.
Streamlining your kitchen operations enable a smooth flow of service, preventing accidents, mishaps and miscommunication, ensuring your guests leave happy and increasing the likelihood of upselling and increased sales.
When streamlining your kitchen operations you should:
By improving kitchen operations, you can cut costs such as regular replacements of kitchen equipment or replacing gone off food. This paired with increasing sales, will positively impact restaurant foot traffic and profit.
Implementing effective POS systems that not only process payments but track peak dining times, popular menu items and staff performance in terms of service will give you better insights into how your restaurant is performing.
Investing in a POS system that integrates with other systems like guest feedback will help you make data driven decisions like promoting deals on popular dishes, amending floor layouts to accommodate more tables or extending happy hour to encourage more drink purchases, all of which can lead to greater sales.
Online ordering and takeaway options offer simple ways for customers to purchase from you. With most people's lives becoming increasingly busy, takeaway and online ordering options allow customers to still purchase from you, even when they’re too busy to dine in. You can offer these options independently or work with takeaway brands like Uber Eats, Just Eat and Deliveroo.
It’s important to remember that staff will need to be trained on the correct steps of service for both in person service and takeaway to ensure top quality service is delivered no matter the customer's chosen service offering. Furthermore, before introducing online ordering and takeaway options, it’s important to consider whether this aligns with your brand image and values, as well as if it’s an offering that you can deliver well. At the end of the day, just because they offer more sales opportunities, it doesn’t mean you should implement them in your business.
Discover more about improving your restaurant's steps of service in our blog.
Loyalty apps are a great way to entice customers and increase sales. By offering rewards for dining in or ordering takeaways customers feel valued and are encouraged to make orders in order to receive their reward. You can implement stamp rewards like Cafe Nero where they offer to buy 10, get 1 free or implement a points system like McDonald's, where points can be redeemed in return for food.
At Black Box Intelligence, we have helped Cafe Nero gain detailed insights into service quality and performance by integrating our customer experience management platform directly into their app, allowing them to easily obtain feedback. As a result, they have learned more about what their customers are looking for and how they can amend or introduce products and offerings that meet their expectations.
Discover more ways you can maximise customer loyalty, in our blog.
Hosting events like themed restaurant nights or cooking classes provide extra sales opportunities. By offering more than just your regular menu, you're showing customers that you’re different to your competitors, making them more likely to choose you over them. Within this you can offer special discounts and set menu options, such as a lunch menu at a set price.
Adding new revenue streams to your restaurant offerings give you more opportunities to increase revenue. Consider offering things like:
These all contribute toward increased brand awareness, helping to boost sales even further.
At Black Box Intelligence, our Customer Experience Management Platform is here to help you make data driven decisions that improve the efficiency of your restaurant, boost customer satisfaction and increase sales.
Book a free meeting today to learn more about how we can help you boost restaurant sales.
Restaurant revenue is the total amount of income from sales within a certain period, before any expenses are deducted. To calculate this you will need to add all of the money earned from food, beverages, merchandise, online orders and any other revenue streams your restaurant offers.
To calculate sales revenue you will need to multiply the average amount spent per customer by the number of customers served in that specific period.
Revenue streams are the different ways a business makes money from their customers. Example revenue streams include: