Globally, the food and beverages industry is still reeling under the losses caused due to Covid-19. The customers have become more conscious about hygiene and safety measures and they prefer to stay away from restaurant visits. Let’s go through some novel techniques that help you increase sales at your restaurant in 2021.
3 techniques to increase restaurant sales in 2021
- Go for a menu redesign
- Upsell effectively
- Embrace technology
There are two aspects to increasing footfalls at restaurants .The first one is to attract new customers towards your restaurant. The second aspect would be to attract and prompt the first-time customers for repeated visits. In these pandemic times when competition is heating up, the below 3 techniques will no doubt attract more visitors to your restaurant.
Go for a menu redesign
Since many years, restaurateurs were under the wrong notion that customers first read the items that appear on the top right-hand corner of the menu. Hence the high-profit items used to be printed in this area. However, a new eye-tracker study challenges this conventional wisdom and finds that customers read a menu sequentially like a book. The items can be arranged in a logical and sequential order, starting with the appetizers on the top of the menu. This makes it easy for customers while searching for dishes. The other important elements are to replace photos of dishes with illustrations and use boxes for high-profit items and groups of items so that it grabs customer attention. Remove the currency sign on the menu as studies have revealed that customers tend to spend more when it is not appearing.
Upsell effectively
One of the tried and tested techniques of increasing sales at your restaurant is by upselling the dishes. The servers can suggest those items to the customers that have high profit margins. The staff is knowledgeable about the various dishes on the menu and the specials that are offered at your restaurant. If a customer is ordering a meal, offer them a variety of extras that could accompany the meal. For example, along with pasta the server can suggest a shrimp in the pasta or garlic bread on the side. The staff should be well trained to perform the function of upselling in a diplomatic manner without causing annoyance to the diners. One more important point is that a dull looking and uninterested staff can be a big let-down. If the servers are enthusiastic, it will evince interest in the customers and prompt them to order more items as per their suggestions.
Embrace technology
Post the outbreak of the pandemic, digital restaurant management platforms plays an integral role in the management of restaurants. As per the surveys, customers rated the feature to book a table at a restaurant as the number one priority in a mobile app (74%). The second most rated feature was the ability to pre-order food and drinks (62%). All this and more is possible with the help of inresto Point of Sale, the cloud based restaurant management platform. Multiple functions such as billing, accepting orders from different reservation sources, customer data capture and a lot more is possible within a single platform. It enables your restaurant to provide table-side service, upsell and cross-sell items and increase kitchen efficiency. It cuts down the serving time during rush hours, which makes it possible to deliver excellent customer service. A range of detailed reports helps you easily analyse the performance of the staff members and take corrective actions.
Parting Words
In the post Covid-19 world, customers have become more choosy while visiting restaurants. They are looking for options where they don’t have to wait in long queues or get the food delivered quickly on placing the order. The modern day, digital cloud based restaurant management offers the ideal solution for all these problems as it offers a seamless and hassle free experience. Hence, it’s high time to choose the right digital POS platform that fits your needs.
