7 Tips to Make Your Restaurant More Successful

When it comes to running a restaurant or any small business, you need to be prepared to wear many hats. You need to stay up-to-date on the latest regulations and trends, inventory management, finances, staffing and scheduling, menus, customer service, and more. Unfortunately, despite many restaurateurs’ best efforts, 60% of restaurants close within their first year of business.

Aside from having great food and drinks, we’ve compiled a list of tips to delight your customers and keep them coming back for more.

1. Welcome your Guests

Always make sure that you acknowledge and welcome guests when they enter your establishment. Although it may seem obvious, not every restaurant makes this a priority. Greeting guests —even when your restaurant is busy — is an important part of the customer experience to ensure that your customers feel valued and appreciated. When surveyed, 68% of restaurant goers responded that they would not return to a restaurant if they perceived staff to be indifferent.

2. Encourage Loyalty

Cultivate and reward loyalty by using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool and sending out exclusive email promotional offers or invitations to customer appreciation events. For example, a simple birthday email with a reminder of a free birthday treat, is an effective way to show your customers that you care, while incentivizing them to return to your restaurant.

3. Create a Descriptive Menu

Did you know that vividly describing and naming menu items can increase sales up to 27%? You should also make sure to post your descriptive menu on your website. Customers want to compare menus and explore their options before deciding where to eat. In fact, 93% of customers view online menus before dining out.

4. Come Up With New Ways to Sell

Coming up with new ways to sell and upsell your restaurant items is a great way to increase revenue.

For example, you could find new revenue streams with updated menus, improve the layout of your menus to highlight items with the best profit margins, or even get creative with a complementary way of running your restaurant by turning part of your home into a kitchen to sell additional items by delivery under your restaurant's brand. 

And training your servers to effectively upsell (without being too pushy) increases average check size while showcasing your servers' knowledge and commitment to customer service. A few ways your servers can upsell are by recommending drink pairings, vividly describing dishes, and recommending main dishes and desserts.

5. Offer Samples

People love free stuff, food and drinks included. Studies have shown that giving your customers a free sample can boost sales of the item by up to 2000%. It’s one way to show your guests that you value them and build their trust and loyalty. But, make sure that you’re strategic with your sampling and have the product knowledge to point out distinct differences and flavours. For example, when your servers recommend a drink pairing for a meal, offer your customer a beverage sample. If the customer likes it, it’s an upsell opportunity. If they don’t love it, it’s still an inexpensive way to show customers that you care.

6. Gather and Implement Customer Feedback

Collecting customer feedback through surveys, comment cards, or social media, will help you to understand what your business is doing right and what your business can improve on. Being responsive to complaints or questions and implementing customer feedback shows that you put your customers first.

7. Offer Convenient Pay-at-the-Table Solutions

Using a fast and secure tableside payment system will improve your restaurant’s efficiency and productivity. Offering tableside payments reduces checkout time, leads to quicker table turns, and reduces customer wait times.

Our Pay-at-the-Table solution seamlessly integrates with your existing restaurant management software (RMS), eliminating the need for manual reconciling at the end of the day. You can also easily accept EMV/chip card, swipe card, mobile wallet, or contactless NFC (Apple Pay). Ultimately, this means that you can serve more customers, give them more ways to pay, and improve their overall satisfaction with their dining experience.

Interested in how to make your restaurant more efficient? Learn how London’s Dos Tacos streamlined their restaurant with our talech POS system.