How to boost revenue in the food service industry
Whether you manage a restaurant, own it, want to start a new one or you simply have a food stall attending street food festivals, your revenue is what makes this business profitable. Things work better for some places though and here are some secrets to boost your revenue without even trying too hard – here is how professionals do it.
Optimize the menu
Optimizing your menu goes in more directions. If you only have a few dishes, you can keep everything altogether – suitable for street food stalls. If you run a restaurant, you need to organize things properly. Avoid a mishmash of everything.
Keep things organized in categories, but to a point. Too many categories will confuse customers and they may miss out on good stuff. Generally speaking, you need your high margin items among the first choices – they need to meet the customers’ eyes before anything else.
Get on social media
This is a no brainer, but the truth is social media is more than just running a Facebook page or an Instagram profile. You need to actually work on it. You need a good follower database and you need people to interact, meaning you also have to be active. Restaurants with a social media presence tend to blow their competition in no time. You can use it for insights, recipes, ideas, daily specials and so on.
Social media is not the only aspect that you should focus on. You can take it to the next level and implement a digital marketing that will make your business stand out from all the rest. Whether you are looking for new clients or restaurant sales leads, a clever digital marketing campaign will help you achieve it.
Work on the speed
The speed is critical. Your restaurant will get a bad reputation if people have to wait for an hour for their food. When it comes to street food, a little queue means you are doing well, but a long one will chase people away – no one wants to wait forever in a queue, especially when they are hungry.,
You need to work on efficiency then. For example, a mobile POS would let waiters send orders to the kitchen automatically. Some restaurants allow customers to order themselves while at the table. The pay goes upfront. If you have to, hire an extra person.
Keep in mind that the more tables or customers you flip per hour, the more money you will make. Sometimes, an extra body makes the difference. Just because you need to pay an extra wage, it does not mean that you will not be profitable.
Partner up with delivery services
If you run a restaurant, it might pay off getting a small car – low insurance and fuel consumption – and hire a driver for deliveries. If it seems out of your budget for now, consider partnering up with delivery services. Stick to popular services, such as Uber Eats or Grub Hub.
There are different services pretty much everywhere, regardless of where your business is. You can attract new customers and despite having to pay for the actual shipping, more and more customers turn to such services. They are more comfortable and keep people safe in today’s pandemic society.
Learn to upsell
Obviously, upselling is a critical idea in boosting the revenue of your business, but you also need to do it right. In order to succeed, you may need to make an investment. You might have seen this in different restaurants – especially fast-food restaurants.
If someone orders a Caesar salad, ask them if they would like to add some chicken. If someone asks for a burger, ask them if they would like some mozzarella melting on top of the meat. Whether you train your staff to upsell or you use the mobile POS technology, such simple questions do work.
The expense is insignificant, but people will already imagine their burgers with extra mozzarella or perhaps some extra mushrooms on a pizza. Another few coins will not make a difference to their expense, but getting a bit more from each customer will add up to your income.
Conclusion
Bottom line, these ideas may make sense to some, but very few people actually apply them. Some of them imply small investments, while others ask for extra training for your staff. Ideally, you should go in all directions and expand your possibilities from multiple ways, but try to take one thing at a time and positive results will come to you in no time.