The restaurant industry is a highly competitive business. New York is flooded with such a variety of public eating places that the best way to visit them is to use electric scooters. To keep the restaurant afloat can take great efforts. But thinking outside the box will help you to encourage existing customers and to attract new ones. Here are the proven ways to increase your sales.
Expand Your Menu Items
Let your menu be as diversified as possible. Your dishes needn’t be reduced to daily specials or a traditional set of appetizers, mains and, desserts. Play around with ingredients, invent something new, give fancy names to your menu items to make your customers curious to treat them. Do not focus on the target audience only, attract new customers – let your menu include organic or vegetarian products.
Host More Events
Use any opportunity to host an event. Except for the celebration of traditional holidays (Halloween, Thanksgiving Day, or New Year), there exist various reasons for your guests to have a good time in a restaurant. Find imaginative ways to make your restaurant unique. You can arrange your new dessert tasting, Monopoly game night, themed party, beer fest, or a poetry evening – anything that can attract the attention of the customers and increase restaurant sales. Do not forget – the more people come, the higher your revenue will be.
Market Your Business
Advertise your restaurant on local marketplaces, radio, TV, and billboards. Being famous worldwide is good, but it is better to focus on the target audience. Use any available marketing strategies – raffle a free dinner for two, give welcome cocktails for those customers who came after 7 p.m., etc. Best way to do it is to contact a small business SEO services provider that will help you to increase your revenue with marketing.
Work On Branding
All people like to get branded swag. If you are thinking over how to increase restaurant sales, why not offer branded merchandise? Of course, it will require an initial investment, but the value will be recovered soon. You should sell a product which will have demand. For example, high-quality branded beer or goat cheese made on the brewery or farm especially for your restaurant will make your place unique and attract connoisseurs of such products.
Improve Your Local SEO
To ease the navigation, make your menu well-structured – divide appetizers, mains, and desserts. Separately group traditional, most popular, and fancy dishes, organic, vegan, and branded products, soft and alcoholic drinks. Structure each group according to their price – from the cheapest to the most expensive ones. Add good images of the dishes and their brief and clear description to simplify ordering online. Let the first word in the name of your dishes be the one most frequently used by the customers while ordering online, for example, PIZZA “Napoletano”.
Consider SMM
Widely use social media – share stories on Instagram and Facebook, post updates to subscribe customers, hold communication with them, answer their questions. Make the customers follow your updates with interest – advertise all the events you are going to hold, try to invent new ways to attract the attention of the customers (for example, free bottle of beer/dessert for those who order dishes on Saturday night). Host your menu online and make online ordering available.
Start a Loyalty or Reward System
To make your customers visit the restaurant on a regular basis, implement a loyalty or reward program. Membership cards offered to your new clients will encourage them to become regular customers. Tracked through your POS system, these cards will give the customers a discount on buying such items on the menu as appetizers or desserts. But you should keep the balance between the loyalty to the client and the profit you get not to run at a loss.
Encourage Employee Growth
The restaurant business depends largely on your employees. They will endorse any initiative aimed at increasing your revenue only if they have good working conditions and promotion perspectives. Work out the income boost strategy together with the team of the employees, let each of them feel like a valuable team member. And do not forget about incentives for the best creative idea.
The above-stated list of ways to increase restaurant sales is not everything. It is only a hint of how to push the envelope. Be creative, generate your own ideas and your restaurant is sure to become the most visited one in NY!