Covid-19 has caused a huge blow to restaurants and they are battling with a sharp decline in footfalls. Restaurants all over the world are trying out several techniques for boosting sales. The most effective method for increasing sales at your restaurant would be to introduce attractive combo offers.
As per POS Sector, 53% of customers in the fast-food restaurants considered combo meals “very attractive”. To add on, 77% of guests at full-service restaurants find combo meals “extremely attractive”.
Methods for creating attractive combo offers
Let’s explore the various options to design combo meals that entice your diners.
Club the slow-moving and fast-moving items
Slow-moving dishes in your menu causes a major dent to your profits. It leads to wastage of raw materials and labour. The best way to tackle this problem is by launching a combo offer with a slow-moving and fast-moving item. Now you would think how to identify the high-performing and low-performing dishes. It’s quite easy now with the help of modern day, cloud based restaurant management systems such as inresto POS that offers you with valuable insights.
An example of the information provided by the platform is that Schezwan fried rice is a favourite among diners and was ordered by 250 customers in a day. On the other hand, caramel custard was the least preferred and chosen by only 10 diners. Include both these dishes as part of the same combo meal so that the slow-moving caramel custard also gets sold out quickly.
Pricing to make all the difference
Assume a scenario where you have priced both pizza and dessert each at 200 bucks. Come up with a combo offer where you sell half a pizza with a small portion of dessert for Rs.220. It will actually cost you only 200 bucks and you stand to gain 20 bucks profit. Thus come up with different combo meals at attractive price points.
Include drinks in your combo meals
Most the customers at quick service restaurants prefer to order a drink after the main course. Include favourite drinks preferred by many as part of the combo meal.
Change your combo according to seasons
Assume that you are offering a veg burger and cold coffee as part of a combo meal. It’s of no doubt that the combo work out well in the summer season. During the rainy season, replace the cold coffee with hot coffee. Thus, it’s an imperative to make changes to your combo as per the variation in seasons.
Launch limited period offers
To entice customers during Christmas season, you can come up with a combo offer of Pasta and chocolate cake. Mention clearly in the menu that it’s a limited period offer that ends in December. The time limit will definitely lure customers to make repeated visits at your restaurant.
Train your staff to promote combo offers
The waiters should be knowledgeable about the various combo meals on offer. Assume that the customer is ordering a Chicken biryani for 100 bucks. The waiter can suggest that it’s more beneficial to order a combo meal of Chicken biryani and chocolate ice cream that will cost him 125 bucks. With the smart information provided by restaurant management platform, waiters can cross sell the favourite dishes of their choice.
Categorise your combo offers
Come up with separate combo offers for various times of the day. An example would be a set of breakfast combos, lunch combos and dinner combos. Such categorisation makes it easy for the customers to choose from. The introduction of new combos can be highlighted in the menu so that it grabs the attention of diners. Waiters can also brief the customers about the new launches.
Parting Words
Restaurateurs can no longer survive with the conventional marketing techniques. Competition is heating up and profits have become wafer-thin. To make matters worse, customers have cut down on their restaurant visits. In this scenario, the best strategy would be to come up with lucrative combo offers. A price conscious customer would definitely weigh in the benefits of combo offers and choose them over ordering separately. The techniques discussed above will help you immensely in launching combo offers that are hard to resist.
