Tips on maximising your restaurant’s food sales
We spend a lot of time talking to caterers, listening to their needs and issues. And during these conversations we’ve asked them about their top tips on running a good restaurant. So today we’ve pulled the recurring points together about maximising food sales and sent these to you in the hope you’ll find them useful.
Price starters so they appeal to your customers even if the
margins are below what you may want to achieve. But importantly it persuades customers to have a starter even though the intention was not to do so.
Make sure you offer what your customers are looking to eat as
opposed to what you think you’d like. Time and time again it is the case that restaurateurs will have a menu of dishes they like as opposed to thinking about what their customers want to eat. For example, you may not be keen on fish but so many of your customers are and they!
Have an appealing dessert / pudding menu which customers see
while they are choosing their main course – it makes customers decide there and then, before they are full, that they are having a pudding.
Make sure your staff ask at the table if anybody wants a starter
before the main course order is taken. The staff need to talk-up positively the starters on the specials board (more about maximizing profits from this another time).
Always take the dessert / pudding menu to the table after they
have finished the main course despite the fact they may of said no to a dessert when they first gave you their order.
If you have the space do have a dessert counter to display the
pudding options – nothing sells them better than the visual appeal.
On the theme of the senses, position your coffee machine so the
smell of fresh coffee wafts through the restaurant; because again, that smell will impact on your customers’ decision – they’ll be buying coffee when maybe they wouldn’t of bothered.
One last point on tea and coffee – try and offer different
options (eg: specialty teas and different types of coffee), good extra income can be made here with limited effort and cost.
If at any time we can be of further help please do let us know.