There’s a good reason why many restaurants fail. Owners see a lot of successful franchises, try to copy their style, and end up closing after just a few months. To avoid this poor result yourself, you should do your best in implementing the following six tips.  

1. Follow Popular Food Trends

In order to be competitive, you have to tend to a lot of different wishes from various customers. Nowadays, it’s not enough to simply provide a list of meals. For example, healthy, gluten-free, and sugar-free food is something that many people ask for when they enter a restaurant.

A good idea is to create a menu that contains different categories of the previously mentioned foods, along with all of their ingredients. This way, you won’t have to explain to every person individually what’s vegan and what’s not, for example. Also, make sure to stay informed, since new food groups become popular fairly frequently.

2. Plan Events

You need to give people a reason to choose your restaurant from a vast number of others. One of the best ways to do this is through parties, themed evenings, and other similar events. For instance, you could make a TV themed night based on a certain show or a movie. There are also the usual trivia and karaoke nights, but the point is to try to be creative. Attach promotions to certain drinks and foods that are relevant to the overall theme if your budget can afford it.

Try to vary the themes of these events in order to attract different groups of people every time. This will help you accumulate a satisfied, recurring customer group.

3. Online Ordering/Payment Methods

As technology advances, fewer and fewer people tend to make reservations in person or pay with cash. You need to keep up with the times, which means implementing modern solutions to these problems. For ordering, you can take advantage of restaurant reservation software that simplifies the whole process. One of these is EatApp, a platform that helps its users make a reservation in just three simple clicks. With the built-in capacity management feature, restaurant owners can easily keep track of how many seats they have left.

For contactless payment, you can try implementing IPS QR code scanning. By using their phone’s camera, visitors can simply scan the code to pay the bill.

4. Improve Your Restaurant’s Image

A good website will amplify your restaurant’s success significantly. People should be able to find your menu, the prices, locations, contact info, etc. easily and accessibly. Keep the layout simple and attractive without any unnecessary clutter. The faster it loads, the better. You can also take some inspiration from your competitors’ websites – after you find them, that is.

One of the best ways to do this is through Spokeo, a reverse phone lookup tool. You need to find the phone number of your competitor restaurant first. This is easy to do through certain review websites such as Yelp, OpenTable, Zagat, etc. Once you do that, all that’s left is to visit Spokeo’s website and run an analysis on it. The tool could return all the relevant information such as the owner’s phone number, their full name, social media profiles, and most importantly, the website associated with that number.

5. Conduct a Survey

There’s no better way to see what you should improve on than through customer feedback. However, keeping each person after they’re done to leave helpful information can be very time-consuming and difficult. Because of that, the best approach is to plan group restaurant surveys. Ideally, you’d want to do this online, on your own website or platform. Add both opened and closed questions, depending on what you’re looking to learn from them. What were they pleasantly surprised with, and what could be improved?

Take every feedback with a grain of salt. People’s opinions are different, and you’ll never be able to satisfy everyone. Implement changes, experiment, and monitor your progress.

6. Take Advantage of Social Media

Words can only describe what you have to offer, while images prove your capabilities to potential visitors. Although you can also add pictures to your website, social media platforms such as Instagram are much more likely to attract people’s attention. Get a close-up of your best menu items, use a good camera, and you’ll certainly start to see the results. You can also add a creative description to your post that outlines some of the main ingredients of that particular meal.

Keep all of the uploaded pictures true-to-life. There’s no point in enhancing them, as customers will have high expectations only to be disappointed when it looks different in person. Be honest, listen to feedback, and try to improve constantly.

Maguire Haigh is a marketing manager for Spokeo. He is interested in the latest technology trends, marketing strategies and business development. He also prefers traveling, exploring the world and meeting new people. Maguire has great experience in creating and editing articles on different topics.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here