5 Ways to Increase Dining Revenue

WITHOUT DECREASING THE DINING EXPERIENCE SO YOU CAN BUILD A PROFITABLE BRAND.

Every day I talk to business owners who ask what else I see in their space; What’s so-and-so doing? Who’s killing it and what are they doing to kill it?

Maybe I’m the only one who gets those questions?

But either, way here are some things that I see foodservice businesses do that clearly moves the needle.

#1.) Tap to Pay- Yes, tap to pay. Almost all chip card systems are also a near field communication or (NFC) enabled terminals

This allows enabled cards as well as smartphones and watches to pay simply by being within proximity. In the past, a chip reader was slow; painfully slow. It was heavily criticized and revolted by businesses.

Uggghhh so annoying.

Now the good news. 1 human year is like 10 technology years. So, 6 years ago when you thought it was slow it is like talking to 1960.

Todays customers want current technology.

#2.) Gift Cards- Gift cards get your customers to return for the money they already spent, or are giving to someone else in the way of marketing your business for you.

A great example in the Portland area of a successfully used gift card system is at the Burgerville chain. They give $25 gift cards fro $20. Smart regulars buy them for their own meals . Genius.

There are many simple ways to implement a gift card system without buying a fancy program or service. This of course assumes that you have a POS that allows for the input of customer data.

#3.) Loyalty Programs- Loyalty and the next 2 all come down to how well you develop internal systems, processes, and train your staff.

Above all the loyalty needs to be simple. No fine print or excessive rules.

Your loyalty system can be something as simple as these words printed on the receipt; “return within 10 days for $X off your next meal”. Or “Buy X get Y” system on a punch card.

Most people prefer a digital version but the pricing on them sucks. So if you don’t want to add another card to the wallet of your customers the digital program fees aren’t in your budget and you aren’t keen on paying to give away customer data; then get creative.

Watch our next insights for ways to excite this or give me a call.

#4.) Server Up-Sells- A server can simply be an order taker or a profit-pivot-machine.

Use storytelling techniques to help such as their own favorite dish and WHY. That’s the secret sauce, why THIS is YOUR servers favorite dish.

Your restaurant will need to have a well thought out menu that helps your team with these pivots in order to increase the average ticket.

While this may sound harsh or sales’ey, your guests will appreciate the more tour guide like approach.

#5.)Table Turns- The more food you sell the more you make. So either get more tables and staff or become more efficient in your process.

The largest gap to reduce table times we see is to address inefficient workflow. From order to input to getting the check to payment.

Hone your systems or leverage technology with things like order input at the table, pay at the table, order first then be seated system to help table turn times.

As the last anecdote, I’ll leave you this statistic I recently read:

“All. 100%. This is the amount of Georgies friends who check a restraint’s Instagram profile to see what they want to eat when they go out for a meal.”

Of course, we were completely unable to verify the actual number of friends Georgie has making this statistic useless and about 5x funnier at the same time.