New restaurants are popping up with every new shopping mall and suburban ‘trendy’ hangout spots and are all contending for the same customers. How do you then ensure that the customers are walking into your dining establishment and not the competitors? We have all seen empty restaurants while another one on the same street is gleaming with long queues, with the workers appearing overpowered. To make sure your restaurant continues to attract all new customers while preserving the existing ones, do the following:
- Signature Dish: Create a signature dish that is the best in town. Have a specialty dish that everyone else is talking about it. No client will return if their meal did not meet their desires. If the clients like your dish, they will tell it to their friends, loved ones, and associates about your restaurant. The majority of your target customers may be millennial or discerning professionals who will readily move from one restaurant to a different until they find what they regard as a “dish to not only die for, but to return for”.
- Ambiance: Make sure that your internal decor is suitable for your patrons. If you are targeting the high-end market, don’t play around too much with colours and music aimed at youngsters. Use comfortable but fashionable seating, if possible have nifty external seating. Hang big professional pictures of your dishes on the wall. Guarantee to have WiFi in the area for patrons. Don’t forget they are not there to simply to eat; they are catching up, taking photos with their companions and publishing them on social media which is also an added no charge advertisement for you. Make it a nice pleasant venue that a customer may want to spend many hours there.
- Client Care: Make certain that your staff serves customers with the utmost respect; do not talk back to rude clients. They should be polite and friendly, offering services with a smile. Have an effective channel of handling problems from patrons. Communicate if there are delays in servicing the orders.
- Social Media: Social media is king when it pertains to the restaurant business. Use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to publicise your restaurant. Post professionally taken pics of your top dishes. Make customers crave your dishes by just by staring at the pictures; encourage conversations about your restaurant. Run social media surveys like which are your favourite dishes. In the social media incorporate particulars of your area and the contacts, and how to order online and if you have delivery options.
- Promotions: Run promos, such as buy 1 get on free. Make it understood to the customer that on a particular day of the week you have special offers. You can also establish adaptable costs so that between 11 am and 3 pm there are special prices on given dishes and you will have clients converging to your restaurant over lunch. Use social media to run special promotions as well. Get your friends to share your posts, and the one with the most followers wins a voucher that they can use during their next visit.
- Advertise: Publicise on the newspapers, food magazines, radio, and television. Pass out fliers on the streets to draw individuals to the restaurant. Have billboards, signs, branded apparel for workers. Publicise continuously, even when you feel the profits are great. Pay social media and bloggers to review your restaurant positively.
- Website: Have a professionally created website, and like the atmosphere, at the restaurant, the site should also be visually enticing. Use breathtaking pictures; let the customers have a visual image of what they are ordering. Feature the contacts, opening hours, locations, and links to social media.
- Availability: Ensure that your restaurant is open for extended hours; patrons like to eat out late. Open branches near your target market, so they don’t have to travel across the city. Offer assorted dish combos, tasting platters, mini-dishes, dish and drink pairings, etc. to cater for everybody including the lone eater.
- Participate in Events: Participate in trade events. For instance, restaurant week, join various restaurants in providing deals that run the whole week. Maybe buy 1 get one on chosen offers or a discount rate on a second dish. Participate in food fests, music carnivals, and any event that draws a crows … your target market … together in one place all at the same time.
- Food Combos: Present food combos to cater for the varied patrons visiting your restaurant. Present dish combinations for groups. Thinks of the most cost-effective ways to boost sales for your restaurant in spite of it’s size.
