Your restaurant was doing great but lately, there has been a dip in the sales. Diners are no longer stepping into your restaurant, and takeaways have dropped. You have tried all possible ideas to bring the restaurant back to its original glory. But sales are not growing.
Does this situation sound familiar? Have you been wondering how to promote your restaurant? Are you looking for ideas to push your business and bring maximum diners? If that’s the case, you are on the right page.
Here, we talk about 5 popular restaurant promotion ideas to give a push to your restaurant business.
1. Passing References & Offering Discounts
We all love to receive a freebie. And when the freebie is in the form of a restaurant referral discount, we jump at the offer. As a diner, we use the referral code to savour the meal while the restaurant gets new diners. We use the referral offer to take away orders with an extra item for every reference or get an off on the total bill amount.
Offering discounts to the existing diners is yet another idea you could try. The perpetual favorite of all diners is the discount offers. You can use discount coupons in various ways. While a percentage discount could offer 10%, or 20% discount on the food bill, a time discount could be for a specific number of hours from 4-6 pm or 11 am to 4 pm. Considering the wide reach of social media, you must leverage the platform to advertise the discounts and lure maximum diners.
In both cases, your restaurant gets new diners.
2. Use inresto Loyalty to Introduce Different Programs
Past restaurant trends are an indication of the success of loyalty programs. Once you enrol your diners in the loyalty program, they form a relationship with the restaurant. For every visit to your restaurant, they earn some loyalty points. The logic behind the loyalty points or reward points is simple. The diners try to accumulate maximum reward points by visiting your restaurant frequently and redeem them later to earn some gift or discount, while you get to build a loyal list of diners.
You can also introduce guest chefs to those part of the loyalty program to make them feel special. Guest chefs, if well-known, can catch the attention of patrons. Further, those who know and admire the chef are sure to turn up and taste the delicacies cooked by the chef. Choose holidays or the weekends to have a guest chef over. Inviting one every month will be sure to increase your customer base even more.
3. Celebrations or Theme Based Events
Chef special or theme-based celebrations are quite popular among diners. You can highlight the chef’s speciality, celebrate a festival by offering popular dishes, or run exclusive offers on your restaurant anniversary. As a restaurant promotion idea, these events are successful in attracting a large number of diners, and you benefit from a huge boost in the footfall. Diners throng these events for the tantalizing cuisine available on-demand giving a much-needed push to sales.
Holidays are also what gets people out of their homes to dine out with friends and family. Harp on these by celebrating these major festivals that the crowd around you looks forward to. A little festive decor and switching up the menu a bit to add a fancy dinner deal will attract customers in droves.
You can also host dress-up Wednesdays or have people dress up on holidays such as Holloween for a little freebie or a huge discount if you own a small establishment! Certainly a restaurant promotion idea you should consider.
4. Happy Hours and Community Events
Happy hour is a term we have seen too often across restaurants. Restaurants use certain hours of the day to offer special discounts to their diners. This offer could buy one get one free, complimentary dish on the purchase of a specific item, a percentage discount on the bill amount, etc.
Data collected in the past has revealed restaurants to receive a 50% hike in their sales during the happy hours. The simple logic of playing with people’s psychology helps them get more business.
Further, you can merge happy hours by hosting community events where the attendees can indulge and dine at leisure. Local communities are almost always scouting for a place to host their events.
If you know of one that is, perhaps, looking to host a poetry session every week, interested in carrying out an open mic session or wishes to host a charity event to help out an organisation, you can play host by inviting them over. Customers are always up for unusual events such as these. Add in a discount for these community events and you have loyal customers for life.
5. Establish a Social Media Presence
Every restaurant today needs a strong online presence. Customers are likely to check out a restaurant’s reviews and social media pages than word of mouth promotions.
Upload pictures of your restaurant’s decor and the drool-worthy food served at the establishment on your social media to garner the right attention. Help people know the kind of ambience they can expect to get them intrigued.
While these may seem like simple ideas, the answer to how to promote your restaurant is truly simple. And it is often the simplest ones that work like a charm. Taking these initiatives are sure to double the footfall at your restaurant, without costing you a fortune. In fact, the right restaurant promotion ideas can help you see a difference from the very beginning.
So, give these ideas a try and come up with your own promotion ideas! After all, there is always room for more.
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