As a restaurant manager or operator, you want to increase your venue’s sales and revenues, while keeping guests happy. Many restaurants rely on their waiters and hosts to upsell dishes or get guests to order a side dish or beverage.
That’s not to say hosts upselling dishes and cross-selling side dishes aren’t effective. They absolutely are. But guests can tire of having to say ‘no’ to extras they don’t really want.
Not to mention, guests instantly feel the ‘salesy’ side of upselling and cross-selling.
So, how can you drive restaurant sales without being salesy or pushy? Here are 16 ideas to help you increase restaurant sales and revenues.
You can carry out many of the methods below on your own. But if you have a restaurant reservation system like SerVme, it’ll be easier and faster to grow your sales.
Here are several common and not-so-common ways to boost restaurant revenues.
1. Create week-day special offers
Creating weekday special offers is a great strategy to drive restaurant sales and increase footfall on weekdays or less-busy days.
Here are some ideas for weekday promotions that could help you entice more guests:
Buy one, get one free deal on selected menu items
Get 25% off on your second dish
Create a special offer for birthday celebrations, where guests can celebrate in a group
Have a ‘Happy Hour’ event on weekdays or even weekends where guests can get a free or discounted beverage.
2. Create seasonal menus
Another great way to get more guests and increase repeat business is using digital menus. It’s no surprise guests like to try new foods and beverages every now and then.
Seasonal menus offer limited-time dishes and drinks, prompting guests to make the trip to see what’s on the menu. This can also keep guests excited year-round and year-after-year, where they’re curious about what you’ll have for them each season.
Your seasonal menu doesn’t have to be a full-course menu–although it can be if you want to.
You can vary your offer with
Seasonal desserts
Special beverages
Special main course dishes
Seasonal hot or cold beverages
Many restaurants create menus for special events like
Valentine’s Day
Halloween
Mother’s Day
Christmas & New Year’s
If you’re using SerVme, you can create mouth-watering digital menus from the dashboard and generate menu QR codes for your venues. You can also do this from the Android and iOS mobile and iPad apps.
Further reading: How to Prepare Your Restaurant for Mother’s Day
3. Boost sales with partnerships
One way to get more guests and increase restaurant reservations and sales is to collaborate with corporates and business groups.
You can offer special discounts to companies with 200+ or 500+ employees. You can also offer to host their special events like New Year’s celebrations, corporate lunches, among others.
This is common practice among telecom companies, who usually hire hundreds and thousands of employees. It’s also common among businesses under the same corporate umbrella. They offer cards to their employees as a perk so these individuals can get special discounts at restaurants, coffee shops, entertainment venues,…etc.
4. Increase restaurant sales with email marketing
Email marketing is a powerful and cost-effective tool for restaurants looking to boost their sales.
With email, you can make special announcements like upcoming dining events, new dishes, digital menus, or unveil special partnerships, new branches or venues, and more via your restaurant newsletter.
You can also create email campaigns for your restaurant to drive foot traffic, reservations, and grow your revenue.
If you’re using SerVme, you can segment guests with auto-tags and create the newsletter and campaigns directly from within SerVme. Track results of your email campaigns and uncover your loyal fans.
Further reading: The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Restaurants
5. Create special dining events
One of the best ways to increase restaurant sales is to create special dining events.
You will need to create some buzz about your upcoming dining event(s). Use social media and your email newsletter or SMS marketing to announce the upcoming events.
Use reservation software like SerVme, along with the SerVme widget to collect online bookings, charge reservation fees or full in-advance payments, to avoid lost revenues and reduce no-show guests.
6. Entice guests with tantalizing dishes via social media
Building a social media presence is a must for restaurants today. Many F&B concepts rely on Instagram because it’s easier to share images and reels to engage current and potential customers.
One way to boost restaurant sales is to tempt guests with mouth-watering dishes. When they see what they’re missing, they’re bound to make plans to visit your restaurant with friends, family, or colleagues.
Be sure to include reservation links with your social media posts.
If you’re using SerVme, our booking channel integrations let you take bookings through platforms like Facebook and Instagram, commission-free. You can also use our UTM links and booking sources features to track the top channels bringing your customers.
- Get more restaurant sales with UGC
You can generate more restaurant sales with user-generated content (UGC). Customers love sharing their dining experiences, whether to mimic food bloggers or to engage their followers.
Let guests tag you on social media if they enjoy their dining experience and reshare their posts to your social media. This is live, free promotion for your restaurant.
If you’re a new restaurant, you can offer a 5% or 10% discount on the final check for guests who share a picture or video of their dishes on social media. Make sure they tag you and show the waiter or host their post so they’re eligible for the discount.
You can also limit this to weekdays to avoid overloading your servers on busy days like weekends.
7. Optimize your Google My Business Listing
Add your restaurant on Google Maps and then claim your Google My Business Profile. If you own or manage multiple venues, you’ll have to do this separately for each venue.
This will ensure you appear in results for people searching for restaurants on Google Maps. Use keywords and add images of your restaurant interior, along with beverages and dishes to entice guests to come.
You can also add links to your digital menus and reservation links, including Reserve with Google.
8. Use Reserve with Google
Reserve with Google is a commission-free reservation platform offered by Google. However, restaurants can only use it through a Google-approved platform partner like SerVme.
When guests type ‘restaurants near me’ in Google, your restaurant will appear in search results (if it’s optimized through Google My Business).
Google Reserve is available in certain countries but Google keeps adding more countries every few months. It’s currently available in all 6 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, the US, the UK, and many countries in Europe.
9. Offer food delivery
Consider increasing your restaurant’s sales and revenues by offering food delivery. You can get more orders through food aggregators like Talabat, Careem, Noon, Deliveroo, DoorDash, UberEats, and others.
Collaborating with these food aggregators can boost your presence and reach beyond your neighborhood. This strategy can also appear to a wider customer base and attract customers who prefer to dine at home.
Some aggregators may offer marketing support by promoting new restaurants on their mobile apps or offering special first-time discount codes to entice foodies.
However, you need to be aware of the fees these aggregators charge to ensure the fees don’t eat into your revenues.
Collaborate with third-party aggregators
One way to improve restaurant sales is to partner with third-party aggregators like Tripadvisor, Zomato, and others.
However, note that these third-party sites charge cover fees.
If you’re using SerVme, you can easily integrate with third-party sites and track booking sources to see your top referring sites. Use the reports feature to see how many people are booking and how much the integration affects your revenues.
Make special birthday or anniversary offers
Use SerVme’s restaurant CRM to segment guests. Send them an email or SMS with a special offer for their birthday or upcoming anniversary.
This will act as a personalized invitation and help you build and boost guest retention.
Research shows that 70% of guests in the restaurant industry said recommendations based on previous orders made them feel like the restaurant “knows them.” Meanwhile, 59% said “seeing their name in an email” had the same effect.
Personalization, or personalized marketing, means tailoring your offering to meet your customers’ needs. For restaurants, this can take the form of recommended dishes and beverages based on previous orders, personalized email or SMS marketing, among other ideas.
Your hosts and waiters can personalize guests’ experiences by reviewing previous orders and top menu items through SerVme. This is applicable if your restaurant management system is integrated with a point-of-sale (POS) system.
Use cross-selling and upselling
Cross-selling and upselling are common tactics to increase a restaurant’s sales. However, it’s imperative your hosts and waiters don’t come off as pushy, when making recommendations.
Cross-selling involves adding more items to a guest’s order. For example, if they order a main course, cross-selling would be to offer them a soup or salad with their order.
Meanwhile, upselling involves offering customers a kind of upgrade to their ordered dish. For example, if someone orders a chicken fajita dish, the host can let them know there’s a chicken and shrimp fajita option.
Use influencer marketing
Whether you’re opening your first venue or you’ve been around for years, influencer marketing offers many opportunities for your restaurant.
Working with food bloggers can
Help you build brand awareness
Increase your visibility and following on social media
Increase foot traffic and sales
Help you launch venues in new markets or countries
Be sure to research influencers in your area and the types of food they usually share on social media.
Check out our list of the top food bloggers and influencers in Dubai and the Middle East.
Use a loyalty program
Consider offering a restaurant loyalty program to increase guest retention and grow your sales. Loyalty programs can offer personalization and analytics.
However, you should know they are a long-term strategy and should be part of your broader marketing strategy.
Create prix fixe menus for special occasions
Offering a prix-fixe menu is a great way to boost sales for your eatery or F&B concept.
A prix fixe menu is a menu that offers a full-course meal at a set rate. Often, a prix fixe menu will include soup, an appetizer, a main dish, and dessert, all for one set price. Restaurants will offer several options under each course, with the price staying the same regardless of the visitor’s choice.
Restaurants often offer a prix fixe menu during special events like Ramadan, Sushi night, or others.
Similarly, many restaurants that create special or limited-time menus, like menus for Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day will offer prix fixe menus.
16. Create buzz around grand openings for new venues
A grand opening for a new restaurant’s branch or venue can significantly increase sales. It can also set the tone for your F&B concept’s future success.
Make a big fuss about it. Build buzz, invite food influencers and bloggers in your area, and get your regular guests excited about it.
A grand opening for a restaurant can not only boost revenues but also build awareness for new guests who may not have heard about you or visited your other venues.
It can also offer an opportunity for curious walk-ins and those who want to try the dishes recommended by their favorite food bloggers.
If your grand opening leaves a positive impression on new guests, then you’ve also won potential repeat business.
As you can see there are many ways and ideas you can use to increase your restaurant’s sales.
It’s important you, the restaurant manager, and your waiters, hosts, and servers, don’t seem pushy in a bid to boost sales.
After all, the higher and more frequent sales come from your loyal and retained guests and customers. A simple 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by as much as 95%.
So, using the above tactics can bring in more sales but also offer new flavors and opportunities for repeat business.
Moreover, using restaurant and reservation management software can help you increase retention and sales through POS and other integrations.
Your restaurant CRM alone offers lots of opportunities to create tailored email marketing campaigns for your restaurant guests to keep them coming back.
Learn more about SerVme and how to retain guests and increase sales. Book your free, personalized 15-minute demo here!
Nada Sobhi
Marketing
