Restaurant owners want to earn high income from their business. The difficulty lies in the fact that all revenue depends only on the client.
How to increase sales in a restaurant? What tricks will help increase restaurant traffic and average bill? Read about it right now!
Increasing restaurant revenue: quantity or quality?
To increase the profit of a restaurant you will have to make a lot of effort. There is no need to wait for your guests to come to you and order dinner for a large sum. Constant work on business development is required.
How to increase restaurant profits? The first way is increase attendance. This method is used in economy class establishments where the cost of food and drinks is low. To keep prices the same but increase sales, you need to attract as many guests as possible.
Second option - increasing the average check in a restaurant. A whole range of measures is used for this. You need to push the visitor to buy either more or more expensive.
How to increase restaurant revenue using traffic
Do you want the number of guests to grow every day? Get ready for a fight. There are thousands of restaurants in Moscow and fierce competition. To attract new customers, your business must be competitive.
To achieve competitiveness and attract new visitors, expand the menu range, engage in an advertising campaign, improve the quality and speed of service, and develop a unified concept. The main thing is to offer guests something original. This way you can attract more new visitors.
It's easier to work with regular guests. We need them to come more often. Only high-quality service will help, treating the visitor not as a client, but as a good friend.
How to increase the average check in a restaurant: effective sales techniques
Average check- this is common the amount of restaurant revenue divided by the number of customers. You can calculate the average bill for any period of time. This is not difficult to do, especially if you use systems for automatically accounting for catering turnover.
An increase in the average bill in a restaurant is only possible if the total cost of the order per person increases. The simplest, but not the most effective way to increase profits is raise prices on key menu items. It is rarely used, because the risk of losing visitors is very high. The only case when it is possible and necessary to raise the markup is when the target audience changes. For example, when an economy class restaurant is rebranded. The interior is changing, service is improving, and better products are being purchased. The establishment is outgrowing the “economy” category and can qualify for wealthier visitors.
Other ways to increase restaurant revenue don't require a large investment. The main thing is management skills and knowledge in the field of sales.
Menu that sells
Menu design is as important as the quality of the food. Due to errors in the text or unattractive design, visitors may refuse to visit the establishment. A well-designed menu takes into account the psychological characteristics of a person:
- When creating a menu, remember laws of attention. The upper right part of the page is the point of concentration of a person’s gaze. Place the most profitable positions there.
- Please indicate prices under names and descriptions of dishes, use the same font size.
- Use decorative elements(frames, underlines, pictures), but do not overload the menu with them. Focus your guests' attention on the positions that are most beneficial to you.
- The description of the ingredients will tell the visitor little. If desired, he can find out the composition from the waiter. Better describe the taste of the dish or give a brief history of the recipe.
Increasing sales in a restaurant: basic techniques
There are two sales methods that are actively used in public catering. One of them is upselling. It is aimed at increasing the cost of dishes. The other is crossselling - at increasing items on the menu.
Upselling(upselling) is an offer of a more expensive option. For example, a larger diameter pizza or a double portion of a dish is offered. You can add an original recipe from the chef or specialty coffee to the menu at a price higher than its analogues.
Methodology crosselling(cross selling) helps to increase positions in the check. This is the sale of additional ingredients, sauces, syrups. If the main course ordered will take a long time, offer guests light snacks. In Europe, it is common to serve drinks before guests have chosen their dishes.
How to increase turnover in a restaurant: secrets of profitable service
Are your employees pleasant to talk to and courteous, but don’t know how to sell? This needs to be fixed. Waiters and bartenders are your main source of sales.
How to improve the level of service in a restaurant? Use these tips:
- Develop service standards. Literally write down how your employees should greet visitors, when to offer dessert, and how often to approach the table.
- To sell, you need to know your product. Knowledge of the menu, ingredients, and cooking methods is mandatory for every waiter. Create an expanded menu, fully describe the composition, nuances of preparation, and taste characteristics. If necessary, arrange a tasting for employees. They must know what they are offering.
- Learn the principles of active selling. Create scripts, indicate which phrases are best to offer additional products to the client, and what cannot be said. In particular, it is not recommended to use negatives or interrogative sentences.
- Create "order expansion tables". In it, indicate which products can be recommended for which dishes. For example, with soups - branded bread, with pizza - double cheese, beer, juices.
Traditionally, waiters' salaries are wages and tea. It is beneficial for them to please the guest. If you add to the bet also percentage of sales, your employees will make efforts to increase the average check.
One form of employee motivation is competitions. Announce the dish of the day, let the person who sells the most portions receive a small bonus.
Restaurant sales: increasing profits with proven methods
The restaurant business in Moscow is at the stage of active development. New establishments are constantly opening, new “tricks” are being invented. To keep up with trends, study your competitors.
Pay attention to all the details of the service, because they are what bring profit. How the waiter greets the guest, what the menu consists of and how it is designed, what is offered in addition to the dishes. Don't copy other establishments, but consider their practices.
Think about increasing sales in your restaurant when preparing for the opening. If you decide to buy a restaurant, conduct a detailed analysis of the work of the previous owner. In order not to lose regular visitors to the establishment, introduce innovations gradually.
You opened your restaurant or cafe, people found out about it, started coming to you, the first profit appeared, now you have justified all the invested costs. It would seem that everything is fine, if not for a small but.
You noticed that the income, and therefore the profit from your business, stopped at some point and stopped growing. If this does not suit you and you, as the owner of a restaurant business, want to develop, improve the status of your cafe or restaurant, increase income, increase profits, then this article is for you.
Let's look at several key indicators of any business today, the increase of which will help increase profits with minimal investment of time and money.
As you know, increasing profits directly depends on the margin, the number of clients, the average check that a client leaves for you, and the number of returning visitors.
Usually, when sales stop, many try to resume them by increasing traffic (the number of new customers). But attracting new customers is the most expensive way. Statistics say (and you probably see this in your business): attracting a new client costs seven times more than working with existing ones. Therefore, we will talk about attracting traffic in one of the following articles, and today we will pay attention to margin, average check and increasing the loyalty of your visitors, that is, repeat sales.
Margin
Margin is the percentage of your profit from the cost of the product. As for the advantages, this is the least expensive method, so it’s worth starting with. The downside is that the margin cannot be increased indefinitely.
1. The easiest way to increase this figure is to raise the price. If you increase menu prices by 2-5%, then most likely your visitors will not even notice it. For example, in your menu the salad cost 320 rubles. You raised the price by 3% (which was about 10 rubles, and for the client this is not significant). With a margin of 30%, your profit will increase by 10%.
2. Another method (good for cafes and restaurants) is to reduce the portions of served dishes. As a rule, customers don’t notice this either, but you will thereby reduce the cost of producing a particular dish, and the margin will accordingly increase, and your profit will increase.
Increase in average check
The average check, roughly speaking, is how much your client leaves in your cash register, that is, the total sales volume divided by the number of visitors. The work of the staff, the location of dishes on the menu, promotions and bonuses play a big role in increasing the average bill.
3. What does it mean to correctly arrange dishes on the menu? First, divide them into categories so that it is clear where there are salads and where the hot dishes are, where the dishes are meat, and where are fish or vegetarian. Secondly, design it visually. Visual design increases appetite, and your customer will want to order more. Third, focus on high-margin items.
Be sure to focus on new items in the menu. People love to try new things. It will be great if you regularly have new dishes. This will stimulate the interest of your customers, which will make them come to you more often.
4. Upselling. You can upsell directly on the menu, recommending adding a particular dish or snack to the one already chosen.
5. Teach your waiters to upsell. If your client has not ordered dessert, then the waiter should definitely emphasize this. If you chose rolls or sushi, then recommend trying your signature sauce instead of the classic one that is on every table.
6. You can increase the average bill by offering more expensive dishes or drinks. For example, a client ordered the classic “Chicken Caesar” - invite him to try “Shrimp Caesar”, which has a more delicate, refined taste.
7. Another way to increase the average bill is to offer some kind of snack while the client is waiting for his dishes to be served. For example, you can offer a live oyster with a glass of dry wine. This will whet the client's appetite and push him to new orders.
8. If we talk about how to increase the check with the help of promotions, then you can offer the client a gift when purchasing a certain amount. The gift does not have to be expensive; the main thing is that it has high value in the eyes of the client. For example, in a beer bar, when ordering over 5,000 rubles, you get a beer mug as a gift. If you order a batch of these mugs in China, they will cost you mere pennies, and for visitors this is a good motivation to buy something up to the required amount and receive a gift.
9. If your establishment (it doesn’t matter whether it’s a bar or a restaurant) has its own concept, its own brand (and for development they must have), then you can upsell your branded items: if it’s a beer bar, then you can offer mugs or T-shirts with your logo; if you have a fish restaurant, you may have oyster knives or branded plates on sale.
Repeat sales
Another way is to have customers come back to you again and again over a certain period of time. Of course, this indicator is primarily influenced by service, maintenance, cleanliness, and how the dishes are prepared. There are a few more tricks that will bring people back to you.
10. Promotions that make customers return to you, for example: “Buy 9 cups of coffee and get the tenth as a gift” or “Order 9 set meals and get 1 as a gift.” This promotion will work even better if you limit it in time - a week, a month, two.
Well, I just can’t fit into the format of our “Top 10” article and not give you a couple more tips.
11. Attract visitors through children. The more interesting a child is in your establishment, the more relaxed their parents can relax, which means they will bring you more profit. This could include small gifts for children at the entrance, the presence of a nanny, various drawing competitions, and interestingly designed dishes from the children's menu.
When we were on vacation in Thailand with our daughter, we had breakfast not in the cafe of our hotel, but in the cafe that our daughter chose. She literally dragged us there every morning, because every day she was given gifts in the form of several small toys, of which she made up a whole collection during her vacation.
12. You can also increase customer loyalty through compliments from the establishment. While your client is reading the menu, bring him a cup of green tea.
When you bring a gift to a person, then, firstly, it will be inconvenient for him to get up and leave, and secondly, he is more likely to leave you more money. Besides, the next time he plans where to go, he will remember you first.
Your signature jam, which you serve with tea, or freshly baked bread, or your signature seafood sauce can also serve as a complement.
Here are just a few simple ways that can help develop your restaurant business, although the list can go on for a long time.
Of course, each establishment has its own concept, its own status, its own pricing policy, and its own clients. What may work well in a grill bar will not work in a seafood restaurant, and vice versa.
You need to understand your client, his desires, his needs, his financial capabilities, then it will be much easier for you to come up with features for your establishment that will attract the target audience, bring clients to you, and increase their loyalty.
Think about how you differ from your competitors, what unique feature you have, how you can stand out from the crowd of similar cafes, restaurants and bars... After answering these questions, write down a few things that you can implement today. But do not immediately implement all the ways to increase profitability that you consider suitable for yourself. Change everything gradually, so you will see what worked well for you and what didn’t.
Delight your regular customers with small but tasty treats, and they will definitely tell more than a dozen people about your establishment. And you will get new clients completely free of charge.
Vasily Bogdanov, Yana Yakupova,
business consultants
Alexander Musatov
I continue the series of articles on the development and implementation of standards in the work of a restaurant, and today we will talk about sales tools.
So many articles, books and manuals have already been written about how to increase sales in a restaurant that it would seem inappropriate to raise this topic again.
However, as part of a series of articles on restaurant standardization, we cannot help but touch on it.
In addition to the popular tools available for servers and bartenders, every restaurateur has his own “secret” knowledge of how to increase restaurant sales. I will also share with you our tricks and tricks that may be useful to you in your work.
Let's start from the beginning and list the most common methods that both waiters and bartenders (contact counter) should use:
“Guide” the Guest through the menu, based on the Platinum Rule of Guest Service.
Use the Sullivan nod.
Use “Chains” when offering food and drinks.
Ask questions to find out about the Guest’s preferences (“Herringbone”).
Suggest in a positive way, without using the particle “NOT”.
When offering food and drinks, use the Guest’s characteristic words - tools for “adjusting” to the Guest. This will help you establish contact/rapport with him. Observe the Guest: the speed of his speech, the number of gestures, posture, establish eye contact.
There is no need to list the entire menu. Offer a choice of two specific foods or drinks.
Use the “Stirlitz Principle” - the principle of “first and last”.
Never forget about an alternative offer.
Respect the Guest's feelings and opinions. If the Guest refuses any dish, do not insist. Do not challenge the Guest's opinion. The Guest has the right to have his own tastes and preferences.
Describe the dishes colorfully.
Use diminutive suffixes carefully.
Use available tools.
Compliment the guest's choice.
Feel like you're on the guest's side.
Before we disassemble each tool, let's remember once again that the employee, first of all, must know the menu with which he works 100%.
In addition to the “technical characteristics” of dishes and drinks (composition, preparation technology, serving, volume of the drink and yield of the dish, a list of “critical” ingredients (honey, nuts, etc.), he must be able to describe the taste. After all, when choosing, for example, yogurt in the store, first of all, you don’t read its composition and don’t make a decision based on the fact that it contains your “favorite” trisodium citrate.
You are initially interested in the taste of yogurt. Also with food and drinks. Train employees to talk about taste, aftertaste, shades of aromas, serving size, consistency.
In order for our guys (at True Burger Bar and Hendrick’s bar) to remember dishes better, they have a permanent 25% discount on the entire bar and kitchen menu. During the introduction of new drink items (within 2 weeks), we are setting a 50% discount on these items. Firstly, this is a good motivational tool, and secondly, what the guys didn’t have time to try during training, they will be able to try on their own at a table or bar counter as guests (outside of working hours, of course).
Now briefly about each sales method (this is how a standardization project traditionally looks like):
Guide the guest through the menu
The menu in our cafe is divided into sections. This is done for the convenience of our Guests, to make it easier for them to navigate, and ultimately easier to choose food and drinks. So take advantage of this and, becoming a guide for the Guest, armed with the “platinum rule”, help him make a choice.
When escorting the Guest to the table, we always offer the menu in expanded form on the drinks page.
An open menu means your openness to Guests. By doing this you show your hospitality. Plus, having an open menu is a good promotional gimmick to sell our signature cocktails.
Try it and you will see how easy it will be to start a conversation with the Guest about his order.
FOR EXAMPLE:
“LET'S START WITH DRINKS? PAY ATTENTION TO THE COCKTAIL CLASSICS WHICH ARE WIDELY PRESENTED ON OUR MENU...”
"Sullivan's Nod"
This psychological technique is as follows:
When you nod, you are influencing the Guest on a subconscious level, making him think about wanting to try this particular drink or dish.
"Chains"
Taking an order from the Guest, the waiter offers a dish or drink, “clinging” to the Guest’s previous choice. For example:
TAKE OUR AMAZING CHEESE PACKS!
THANKS, WITH PLEASURE!
AND SOUR CREAM OR CONDENSED MILK WILL GO PERFECTLY WITH CHEESE CAKES.
GREAT! I TAKE WITH CONDENSED MILK!
NOTE, CHEESE CAKES WILL BE MORE TASTY WITH A LARGE CAPPUCCINO. BY THE WAY, WE CAN ADD VANILLA OR CHOCOLATE SYRUP TO THE COFFEE!
In addition to the classic “chain” option, we can recommend alcoholic drinks to guests in connection with certain groups of dishes (food pairing):
Fish - white wine
Meat - red wine
Hot snacks - vodka.
Herringbone reception
This is a model of accepting an order from the Guest, one of the varieties of the “chain”, when the waiter, asking questions, “leads” the Guest through the menu, determining the Guest’s taste, his preferences in dishes/drinks.
Eliminate the particle "not"
The particle "not" is a particle of negation. Using this particle, a person, as a rule, refuses something. And in our subconscious it is associated with something negative. Now let’s imagine this particle in the question. Think about your first reaction to the question:
DON'T YOU WANT...?
NO I DO NOT WANT TO!
So why set up the Guest in advance to deny and refuse your offer. Question:
COULD THERE BE AN AMAZINGLY TASTY “BLACK TRUFFLE”? YES, ADDITED WITH A “SULLIVAN NOD,” AND YOU WILL SEE - THE GUEST CANNOT RESIST.
Customization for the guest
Tools for customizing the Guest:
Speak the Guest's language
Use a speech rate that is acceptable to the Guest
Use the words that the Guest himself uses
“Adjust” to the volume level that is comfortable for the Guest
“Reflect” the Guest’s behavior
Be careful! These adjustment tools allow you to establish closer contact with the Guest without violating his personal space.
Don't list the entire menu
There is no need to list the entire menu. Offer a choice of several specific dishes or drinks. Even if you really want to show the Guest all the abundance of your offer, or quote a brilliant memory, listing the entire menu in a patter, I assure you - this is unnecessary. You will achieve nothing but “execution” of the Guest. Just waste your time. It is much more effective, and perhaps more impressive, to offer the Guest a choice of several dishes, naturally having previously studied his tastes.
"Stirlitz principle"
Remember the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring”, the moment when SS Standartenführer Stirlitz discusses the topic of human memory. He claims that a person most often remembers the first and last things from a conversation. And remember the long and uninteresting lecture. What do you remember about it, how they greeted you and introduced themselves, and the moment the lecture ended and the teacher said goodbye.
It’s the same with a Guest in a restaurant, he will highlight the first and last of everything you say. Therefore, if you need to sell a specific dish or drink, start listing and describing it with it, this way you will place the right emphasis for the Guest.
WE HAVE A LOT OF DESSERTS: CHEESE PUDDING, BLACK TRUFFLE, POPPY ROLL. AN AMAZING “CHEESE PUDDING” WILL LEAVE AN UNFORGETTABLE FEELING OF LIGHTNESS....
In most cases, after describing Cheese Pudding, no further effort on your part will be required. The guest will be happy to taste this dessert.
Alternative offer
There are times in a cafe when a dish is missing from the kitchen - this is called a stop list. And besides, Guests, as luck would have it, strive to order exactly this, the missing dish. I have to say that, unfortunately, this dish is not available.
Now try to imagine yourself in the Guest’s place. You came for coffee. All the way to the cafe, we imagined a plate with a huge piece of amazing cake, drizzled with chocolate sauce. Swallowing saliva, in fantasies we already enjoyed the magnificent taste. So you enter a cafe, eagerly take a table, the waiter comes up, you eagerly order a wonderfully delicious, wonderfully chocolate-smelling cake - and suddenly “BAM”:
“Unfortunately, I have to disappoint you, “Black Truffle” is already over” (the apologetic face of the waiter and your slumped face). And in most cases: “NO Truffle” (the waiter’s impenetrable sour face and the glowing letters of the word “NO” in your eyes).
The evening is ruined. But you can do it completely differently. Instead of refusing the Guest a dish, offer an alternative option:
Never challenge a guest's opinion
A guest is a person who brings money to your establishment. And this alone makes his opinion law.
Too intrusive offering of any dish gives rise to doubt and mistrust.
If the Guest is discussing some topic, and it seems to you that such statements are complete nonsense or the reasoning of an amateur, under no circumstances show your dissatisfaction and do not prove to the Guest that he is wrong. Maybe your knowledge is incorrect or outdated. And even if the Guest is really talking about a subject that he doesn’t understand, and you can’t wait to show your knowledge and competence, then quietly, without attracting the attention of others, in a nutshell, point out to him the inaccuracies, and then with the proviso that you have other data on the topic of discussion. In any case, remember:
Every person values his own opinion. And a restaurant is not a place for re-education and not an institute for advanced training.
Colorful description
People perceive information differently, so you need to describe dishes differently for different people using descriptive adjectives. To distinguish between people who perceive information differently, the following classification is used: visual, auditory, kinesthetic.
DIFFERENCES IN THE PERCEPTION OF DESCRIPTIVE ADJECTIVES:
The visual is focused on the visual perception of information, so he needs to visually imagine the dish, which means you need to use such descriptive adjectives that will help him with this.
An auditory learner, who perceives information better by ear, only needs to hear your description, so you need to use descriptive adjectives that will help an auditory learner imagine the dish by ear.
A kinesthetic person has perception based on taste sensations. Therefore, when describing a dish for a kinesthetic learner, try to use descriptive adjectives that will help him imagine the dish to taste.
But when communicating with a guest, we cannot clearly determine which category he belongs to, so we should use descriptive adjectives of different colors.
Diminutive suffixes
When accepting an order, describing dishes and drinks, repeating an order, do not overuse diminutive suffixes. Your words are very easily drawn in the Guest’s imagination, much easier than you think. If, when describing a large bowl of soup, you pronounce the word “soup”, the Guest will imagine a small plate and will not calculate his strength. A "piece of meat" is a small piece, not a huge piece of steak.
NEVER RESULT IN REDUCTION UNNEEDED FORGET THE WORDS: “SOUP”, “SALADIK”, “MUG”, “CUP”.
Available means
When describing dishes colorfully, it is very effective to use any available means that will help illustrate the dishes and drinks being described. It can be:
DISHES THAT WAITERS CARRY PAST
BAR DISPLAY DISPLAY PASTRY DISPLAY.
You can invite the Guest to go to the display case and tell about the desserts that are presented in it. Most likely, the Guest will not resist the sweet masterpiece of confectionery art.
Compliment the guest's choice
After the Guest has decided on a dish, be sure to praise his choice.
SO, YOU HAVE STOPED AT “BEEF SHASHLIK” - AN EXCELLENT CHOICE! THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR DISHES IN OUR RESTAURANT.
Such praise will convince the Guest of the correctness of his choice, and will also increase confidence in his abilities.
Feel like you're on the guest's side
You and the Guest are on the same “side of the barricades”. You are the “Host” in the restaurant, and he is your Guest. You should not offer the Guest many dishes if it seems to you that he will not be able to handle everything. Tell him directly about your insecurities.
If the Guest takes a lot of dishes and cannot eat them all, he will blame you for the mistake of choice - and he will be right. You have a much better understanding of the variety of dishes and portion sizes.
The same goes for strong alcoholic drinks. Warn Guests about the insidiousness of cocktails.
Management is often faced with the task of increasing the average check.
Especially for you, Vyacheslav Taranov, the most famous Moscow restaurateur, reveals the main ways:
1. Offering drinks to the guest immediately after serving the menu. Waiters who offer an aperitif make 5-7% more turnover due to it.
2. “No empty glasses on the table!” - this is the motto of a competent restaurant manager. There is no need to wait until the guest finishes his beer and spend several minutes looking for the waiter to place an order. It will still take some time for the waiter to take the order, write it down, repeat it, and punch the cash register. The bartender also doesn't always pour the beer in a few seconds. All this time the guest does not spend a penny - he does not drink anything! Offer your guest a drink while there is 20 percent of the contents left in his glass! This is your temporary head start, allowing you to make the process of spending money by the guest continuous. Follow this and you will get about 10% more turnover.
3. Dessert. Everyone knows that it should be offered after a hot meal. But how often is this done? “Would you like dessert?” - “No, I don’t want to!” As is the question, so is the answer. The waiter should approach the guest with the menu open on the desserts page and offer his recommendations. This, in turn, will add approximately another 5% to turnover.
4. Active offer of accompanying dishes (side dishes, sauces, branded bread, pies). In terms of price, these items are not at all ruinous for the guest, and an increase in the check by 2-3% due to these items in the monthly profit and loss report gives a very pleasant result, expressed in specific figures.
5. Positioning of dishes on the menu. By providing the most interesting dishes from the point of view of turnover with high-quality photographs, you are guaranteed to increase their sales. At the same time, amateur photographs on the menu evoke a feeling of pity and a feeling of an unprofessional approach to business. Here, as in everything: either do it well, or not do it at all.
6. Ongoing staff training. Just tell the waiters “Sell!” and not teaching them the basics of sales techniques is the same as giving the order to soldiers to “Fight!” and not give them weapons. But this, as they say, is a topic for another conversation.
7. Price increases. The simplest, but not always the correct way. We will not consider it in detail.
8. Offering the most expensive dishes and drinks. The method is, in fact, very questionable in terms of effectiveness. Yes, the guest will spend much more than planned. But will he return? Will he get the feeling that he is being scammed? I categorically do not advise offering a guest the most expensive items from the menu or wine list. If the most expensive item costs $25, offer the guest a $20 item and also give him a $15 alternative so that the guest does not feel awkward not choosing the expensive fish. In restaurants where waiters are trying to sell all the most expensive things on the menu, I immediately remember the saleswomen of half-wilted flowers who offered their goods at an unrealistically inflated price in establishments of the early 90s: “Young man, buy the lady some flowers!” Here you are a loser in any case: if you bought it, you paid twice as much; if you didn’t buy it, you showed yourself to be a miser in front of the girl.
- You can train waiters endlessly, but still not be able to increase sales in a restaurant if the menu design is made with errors. A good menu can sell itself: its layout takes into account all the psychological characteristics of the guest so that the average bill increases without any effort from the staff.
Read about the secrets of designing a selling menu in the article.
- A common mistake made by restaurateurs is a twenty-page menu overloaded with offers. Do you think that if you offer dishes for all tastes and occasions, the more satisfied guests you will have? In fact, the opposite is true: research data confirms that the problem of too much choice creates anxiety among guests.
And this is just one reason not to make your menu long. Read the article about why a short menu sells better than an overloaded one.
MAKE YOUR WAITS EFFECTIVE SEDUTERS
- There are sales techniques that require minimal staff training and have enormous returns. For example, the “By the way...” technique: with it, the waiter is perceived by the guest not as an intrusive salesman, but as a friend offering professional help.
Read the article about how a waiter can delicately push a guest to order an additional order.
- The waiter's lack of knowledge of the menu often becomes the reason for poor sales. To prevent this, create an extended menu for waiters. It will help you remember the menu from A to Z with all the details.
In such a menu, write down the composition of the dishes, the mode and features of their preparation, and the cooking time. Find out which utensils are recommended for each dish. If you can get information about the approximate calorie content of each dish, it will turn out perfect. Accompany each dish with a photo.
However, there are effective menu memorization techniques developed by specialists. Elena Pobedonostseva talks about them in her comprehensive guide to conducting training for waiters.
APPLY YOUR COLLEAGUES' LIFE HACKS
- To boost your bar's alcohol sales, bet on... snack sales. Because an attractive snack menu offers the majority of guests in the target group exactly what they want. The bar's snacks create an atmosphere of socializing, entertainment and experimentation. Visitors stay longer and spend more. Appetizers have a lower food cost than main courses. It is easier for kitchen staff to prepare and serve snacks in a timely manner.
To learn how to boost cocktail card sales using a not-so-obvious tool, read the article .
- “In our roadside cafe VZS with free-flo service, for several years we offered only standard 200 ml portions of cold drinks - fruit drinks, compotes and homemade jelly. We reasoned like this: the prices for our drinks are affordable even by the standards of roadside establishments (from 20 to 30 rubles per glass), so anyone who finds this volume insufficient can always take two drinks.
However, we noticed that placing two glasses on a tray is not very convenient, and we decided to purchase double-sized glasses. We also made the offer for buying a large drink more profitable: for example, dried fruit compote, which cost 20 rubles, now costs 25, and a double portion - 40.
Of course, we expected that guests would take double drinks more often than they previously took two single drinks. However, their popularity has exceeded our expectations: now guests prefer double volume to standard. Already from the first week after the introduction of new glasses, sales of home-produced drinks in VZS cafes increased by 40.89%.”
Read about other methods to quickly increase sales in the article by Andrey Kondrashin .
DON'T MAKE MISTAKES IN BUILDING YOUR SALES PLAN
- We remind you about such a mandatory tool as. The purpose of this analysis is to increase the profit margin. This is achieved by reducing the average food cost and increasing the overall margin. You will be able to remove from the menu those items that cannot be called profitable, and increase sales of those dishes that bring a good margin.
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