Optimise Finances and Investments for Long-Term Growth
The restaurant industry – and even fast food – is known to be fast-paced and challenging at the best of times. It takes a lot to start one-off, but it takes even more to grow your restaurant and turn it into a success. This wouldn’t be an overnight process.
Instead, it’s something that could take a while, and you’ll need to do it sustainably. As challenging as the industry can be, growing your restaurant shouldn’t be overwhelming. With ten particular tips, you could achieve more success than you would’ve thought possible.
Because of this impact, they could be worth implementing into your restaurant.
Grow Your Restaurant: 10 Sustainable Tips
1. Reward Loyal Customers
You’ll have quite a few customers walk through your doors over the years, and you’ll want to encourage them to keep coming back. It lets you make more money per customer over time than you’d think, generating more and more profit. The trick to this is rewarding loyal customers.
Implementing some form of rewards program can be more than enough for this. They encourage your customers to come back repeatedly so they can end up getting discounted or free meals. While that could mean making a loss on one specific sale, you’ll generate more overall sales because of it.
2. Build Community Ties
Restaurants inherently rely on local residents to succeed. They’ll make up the bulk – if not all – of your customer base. You’ll have to tap into the community to start generating brand awareness and make people want to eat at your restaurant. The best way of doing this is to build community ties.
Partnering with local organizations and other companies could be enough to do this. You could even sponsor a few events to boost your brand visibility. While this costs money, it improves your brand awareness, getting your brand more attention and generating more business.
3. Schedule Properly
One of the core factors in your restaurant’s success and growth is whether it’s run properly. Part of that involves making sure you’ve everything scheduled out properly. From opening times to employee shifts, and even when you have supplies delivered, everything needs to run smoothly.
You should create a restaurant schedule that actually benefits your business long-term. By putting the time and effort into this, you could see more success than you would’ve thought. While this might take a bit of experimentation and a few adjustments, you’ll end up nailing it and making sure everything runs smoothly.
4. Host Events
When you’re building community ties, as mentioned above, you’ll use quite a few strategies. One of the more notable of these is hosting more events. It’s a great marketing initiative and could boost your brand awareness much more than you might’ve thought.
Even letting charities and nonprofits host events in your restaurant for free or at a discounted price, you’ll end up boosting your visibility. The people who attend the event could even end up coming back again and again as customers in the future. When done right, you’ll see more of a return on investment than you might’ve thought.
5. Tighten Finances
Finances are an integral part of running a restaurant, and it’s just as important to growing it. Make sure you’re spending money in the right areas and getting a return on investment because of that. That doesn’t mean spending money on anything and everything you come across, however.
Sometimes, it could be worth tightening your finances, especially when going through a slow period. Cut back on non-essentials, and you’ll see your profit margins increase somewhat. At a minimum, you’ll be closer to breaking even, and you can reinvest any savings in the right areas.
6. Reinvent Marketing Strategies
You’ll already have advertised your restaurant extensively before, but you mightn’t be getting the same results as you used to. When that happens, it’s a sign you need to reinvent your marketing strategies to keep them relevant and encourage customers to keep coming back.
Take the time to see what is and isn’t working. Start making adjustments and testing various new strategies and approaches. By making changes based on these results, you’ll see more and more success with your marketing efforts than you used to.
While this takes some time and effort, the results you should end up seeing make it more than worth it.
7. Build The Best Team
The team you have working for you has a significant impact on how well it’ll run. They’ll make or break your success. If you want to grow your restaurant and make sure you actually see success, make sure you have the best team possible.
The better your team is, the happier your customers will be. From front-of-house to the kitchen, make sure they’re the best you can afford. With top-quality chefs, you can serve amazing food. Great hosts ensure your customer service is amazing.
By putting the effort into this, you’ll have more customers coming to your restaurant, fueling your growth.
8. Upgrade Your Equipment
You’ll already know your restaurant’s equipment costs an arm and a leg. Because of that, you’ll want to get as much use out of them as possible. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it could end up becoming detrimental in time.
Your equipment gets worn down over time, making them less and less functional. At a certain point, they mightn’t be fit for purpose anymore. Despite that, you might still try to extend your equipment’s lifespan.
That isn’t worth it, as you’ll compromise the quality of your food and overall service. Upgrade your equipment when you need to, and it’ll give you a return on investment.
9. Offer Great Happy Hours
Happy hours have long been a staple in bars and restaurants for quite some time. There’s a reason they’re popular, however. They help generate more sales and revenue for your restaurant. While you’ll be making slightly less of a profit on each order, you should see more overall sales because of it.
In time, that leads to more and more revenue for you, impacting your overall profit. You don’t even need to offer too much of a discount for this to be successful. See it as a marketing opportunity that impacts your sales and boosts your overall brand awareness. It could be more than worth it.
10. Take Advantage Of Apps
Technology has made waves in the restaurant world, and that doesn’t just focus on how you cook and serve your food. You can use various apps to take in orders for deliveries. You wouldn’t even need to worry about actually delivering it, as the apps themselves sort out delivery drivers for you.
The sales and revenue this can generate are more than worth putting the effort into it. In most cases, it’s as simple as setting up and verifying your profile with these apps, and you’re good to go. Outside of pure sales, you could even see an increase in brand awareness. In turn, that could lead to more in-house orders and customers.
Grow Your Restaurant: Wrapping Up
If you want to grow your restaurant, you could think it’ll be a challenging experience, especially considering how much time and work everything else takes. You don’t have to struggle, though. All you’d need are the right tips and tricks.
Building a great team, scheduling things out properly, upgrading your equipment, and even tightening your finances can all help with this. While you’ll still have a decent bit to do, you’ll end up growing your restaurant more sustainably than you’d think.