155- Restaurant Yield Management examples to improve your Restaurant’s profitability

Restaurant Yield Management is a key tactic for profitable Restaurants.

We discuss real-life examples that are easy to implement in your Restaurant so that you can increase profitability for your Restaurant.

In our previous episode, we talked about the importance of marketing for your restaurant. We tapped into the right practices and other factors involved to make your food business more profitable.

For this episode, we’ll talk about Restaurant Yield Utilization and why it is a key tactic for your food business.

What is Restaurant Yield Utilization?

This technique is commonly used in the airline industry. Airlines sell tickets at different rates depending on which category the passenger falls under. Is it someone on a business trip? Then that person most likely is not price-sensitive, A booking for a family who’s going on a holiday? They’re probably a bit price-sensitive. Did someone purchase a ticket for a last-minute trip? Then that passenger probably has to pay more to secure that flight.

The goal is to get maximum revenue by giving the right price to the right customer at the right time. And this is something you can also practice for your restaurant.

You get more options for yield utilization when you have more demand than supply. There are 3 important components of yield utilization which are:

Strategy – Making your yield utilization plan work well with your business plan and marketing plan.

Availability – This mainly focuses on the number of hours you’re open, when you are open, how many dishes can you serve, and your overall kitchen workflow.

Pricing – Consider raising your prices if you’re getting high demand.

Managing Fixed Costs

Like any other business, your restaurant has fixed costs which you have to settle monthly or annually. This includes wages, food costs, capital, and so on. One way to know if your fixed costs are covered is to divide it by the number of hours you’re open. So for example, if you’re spending $10,000 monthly for your fixed costs, and you open an hour daily, divide 10k to 1 hour which states your gross profit should be at $10,000 to settle the fixed costs. 

Implementing RPASH

RPASH is your revenue per available seat per hour. Divide your number of seats by the number of hours you operate to see when there’s high demand and when there’s poor demand. It will help you move these demands by offering promos at times when it’s quieter to increase sales for those hours.

Segmentation

You have to understand when the demand pours in so you can strategize on what needs to be done throughout your operating hours. Try segmenting weeks into days, and days into hours. 

A good example is McDonald’s milkshake. It’s made extra thick so people who go to work can enjoy it the whole time they’re driving. Be savvy when you’re coming up with products, how you label them, what times are they available. 

Want to get more people for breakfast? Offer breakfast dishes to parents who just dropped their kids off at school and want to enjoy a meal and coffee. That could also be a start of a breakfast club at your place which means you’ll get more regulars. Setting up for dinner? Prepare dishes and drinks best for people who are out with families, partners, or just got off from work. Segmentation is a good way to bring in more traffic especially for more hours when there’s less demand for your business.

In our next episode, we’ll talk more about other hot tips that you can use for restaurant yield utilization.

Don’t forget to check out our free Restaurant Website Audits.  If you think you’re missing out on your fair share of customers, maybe your web developer has made some of the common mistakes.  Book a free 15 minute no-obligation chat with one of our team and get some ideas on how to find more customers.

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