Is your restaurant doing well and you feel like you are ready to expand your business, but not sure how? They are a lot of ways that you can do it and here at MBB Management we can help you develop a surefire plan for success.

Check out this Need to Know Guide on Restaurant Expansion for Restaurants.

Make It a Part of Your Business Plan

First things first, any plans for expansion should be thought through and put into your business plan even before you open your restaurant. This might seem too early, but it really isn’t. You need to be prepared for growth before it catches you by surprise.

Here are some questions you should be asking yourself:

Is My Restaurant Scalable?

Even before you solidify all your plans to open your restaurant, you should already be asking if it is scalable. If you see a lot of growth potential for your restaurant, choose a restaurant name that can encompass other areas of interests you might want to expand in later. For example, you may want to expand into your online of frozen meals sold at the supermarket.

Can I Handle All the Growth?

Another thing you need to think about is how are you going to handle all the growth when it starts to happen? You need to be constantly looking at your processes and figuring out what can be streamlined, delegated, automated or outsourced so you can handle any influx of new customers or new work without any hiccups.

Do I Have Ways to Protect Intellectual Property

It might not seem like a big deal when you are first starting out, but protecting your restaurant name and intellectual property is paramount so that no one takes advantage of all your hard work. The earlier you do it, the better. Contact a patent law attorney to find out the process of applying for a patent or trademark.

Do I Have Strong Marketing & Recruitment Strategies?

In the beginning of any business, you need to devote a majority of your time to marketing and recruitment strategies, but once you get busy with a lot of customers, there is less and less time for it. Getting and keeping customers, however, will always be a priority so it is important that you really get to know your customer base, especially when it comes to running a restaurant.

Put together the statistics to describe your target customer from your customer database so who you should focus your marketing and recruitment strategies on. Also, distribute surveys to these customers so you can find out what you do well and what you might need to work on.

Other tips for staying connected to your customers include:

• Make a point to check in on your customers on a regular basis. Set up a schedule so you never forget.
• Create a plan for how to recruitment new target customers, whether through social media, email, direct mail or all strategies.

Do I Have an Online Component to My Services?

Everyone is online this days, especially in the restaurant world, so it is important that you not only have an online presence yourself through a website and social media, but that you also make it easy for your customers to buy your products and services online. Think food delivery and catering services. Your customers will love having flexible options to choose from and it frees up more time for you and your staff.

3 Common Ways to Expand Your Restaurant

Once your restaurant is doing really well, then it is time to actually take steps to expand your restaurant. Typically there are three common ways.

First, just by increasing the number of customers in your door. The more customers you serve, the more money you will bring into to continue to grow. That is why those recruitment and marketing strategies are so important. You can also create new revenue streams like food delivery, catering and merchandising.

Second, you can open a second location and build up a strong customer clientele there. If you go this route, it is best to wait until you have enough capital do it right. With renting a new location and hire more staff and all the other startup costs involved, you don’t want one location to affect the other location negatively.

Lastly, consider franchising your business. As a franchisor, you are letting an entrepreneur pay to use your brand and business plan and systems in their own location. This way there is less of an out-of-pocket cost for you, but on the flip side you also don’t have control over the daily running of any franchises.

Looking for a restaurant consulting company to help you expand your business? During your research look at their previous work and whether they deliver what they say they are. Also be sure to interview existing and past clients. Their track record is the most important thing.

We at MBB Management can help you with all of this. As a consulting company in Philadelphia, we specialize in bringing you the best tools and expert advisors to provide a solid path to success. We work primarily with restaurants looking to expand their business through becoming a franchisor. We are experts at franchising consulting and restaurant management.

For more information about how MBB Management can help you with your restaurant expansion, give us a call today.