Best ways to increase profit in your restaurant business
Running and managing a restaurant is a great challenge and experience to be involved in. This is especially true if you are passionate about food, drink, and hospitality. However, the challenge is the prime word in that sentence. There are so many factors that contribute to a restaurant’s ability to succeed or fail. Running out of basic equipment like food containers to go or failing to make a profit can equally send a business to close its doors if the restaurant is not managed correctly. You can be one of the busiest restaurants in town but if you cannot turn a profit then you are at risk of financial hardship. If you are looking for a little bit of advice on what you can do to increase the profit of your business and ensure your restaurant is a success.
Offering takeout or delivery
This is an obvious and easy way to boost sales as long as your business has the capability to deliver this service. The pandemic opened the doors to many businesses experimenting with their business model and forced them to adapt to a takeaway service. Many restaurants have now incorporated this into their business model. Services like Uber Eats and Deliveroo have also opened the doors to many restaurants that were unable to offer takeout food to now give the customer’s restaurant quality food in the comfort of their own home.
The best thing about this service is that as a restaurant, you already have everything you need to offer this service. Your menu is already established, and you will likely already have a customer base to rely on. If you are concerned about the busyness of offering a delivery service, then you could even think about limiting and restricting the menu that you offer. You should maybe think about enforcing a restricted radius of where you will accept takeout food being delivered. This not only keeps any delivery driver free to do more deliveries but also means your customers will receive their food when it is at its best and still hot.
Keeping your employees
One of the biggest costs that restaurants face is that of turnover in staff. This is likely to do with the lack of requirements for a hospitality job and the idea that many people use hospitality jobs as steppingstones for other careers. The average tenure of a restaurant worker is less than 2 months. This means you need to hire a new member of staff and invest time in training them. This is without accounting for the additional losses such as uniforms and equipment that new staff require.
Retaining staff is a great way to fight this but it is not easy. You should try and offer as much as you can to keep your staff happy and to keep morale high. Morale being high will also filter down to the experience of customers in your restaurant. Everyone can pick up on positive and negative atmospheres and so by ensuring your team is happy, can make sure that everyone enjoys their evening. Try and be flexible with your staff. Always remember that even if you cannot offer them lots of money, granting favors like time off and flexible schedules will foster a feeling of gratefulness which will come back to you eventually through their loyalty especially when you are in a bind.
Cutting down waste and becoming efficient
Another large cost that many restaurants face comes in the form of food and product waste. Things like paper products offer no reusability and so are thrown away along with any savings. Spend time investigating what employees and customers are throwing away and use this to influence changes. For example, if no one is eating the additional sides, then maybe it is time to get rid of them. Small changes can make a big difference.
You could also look at the procedures you have in place. These are there to help ensure that you remain consistent regardless of whoever is in the building. However, this does not mean that every procedure is good and works. Use an analytics tool to evaluate your processes and see what works. If there is an area that is always having a problem, then you have an area that you can focus on. Once you manage your employee’s and businesses’ time more efficiently, you will be surprised at how much money you can save.
Keep your menu fresh and appeal to your target market
Even if you have found a menu that you think works, you will not attract new customers if you do not change it. You cannot improve if you keep everything the same. Do not let things go stagnant. You need to be able to attract new clientele and the best way to do that is to offer a range of dishes throughout the year. This does not mean that you need to get rid of any favorites. Create an entire section of your menu solely for the most popular aspects of your food choices.
Spend time studying your customer’s likes and dislikes. A great way to ensure that people come back and that you keep the cost of your menu down is to rotate your menu according to the seasons. See what is coming into the season, this product is often cheaper, and create dishes highlighting those ingredients. This is a very trendy way to encourage more customers and can lower your costs without too much expense. If something becomes popular, then maybe you can add it to your staples and favorites.
Making your restaurant a success
Few jobs around the world are as rewarding as working in hospitality when you are passionate about food and drink. However, there are huge challenges that you will face when running a restaurant. Just make sure that you tackle them one at a time and don’t rush into anything. If you are motivated by your passion for the business, then success will find you no matter what.
