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In this article, we delve into five key ways that you should be using your POS data to forecast holiday demand for your restaurant. Improve Seasonal Menu Offerings When it comes to the holidays, consumers love to tuck into festive favorites.
You can have a crowd-pleasing menu, loyal regulars, and a packed dining roomand still watch your margins disappear. Too many restaurant menus are built on intuition and aesthetics, not real numbers. What Is Menu Engineering and Why Should You Care? Because not every dish thats popular is profitable.
Seamless restaurant operations, where the crew anticipates customers’ and coworkers’ needs and easily course-corrects, require more than technical know-how and vetted organizational systems. In this article, I’ll share those tips so you can hire people who will excel in the role and not only fill it.
This is the foundation of menu psychology, and for restaurant owners using online ordering platforms, it’s a powerful opportunity to influence how customers engage with their menu items. And while it’s been used for years in print menus, these same techniques can be applied to digital menus, too.
When youre updating your online menu or online ordering system, its tempting to just copy over the dish names from your restaurant menu and call it a day. Well-written menu descriptions dont just tell guests whats in a dish; they entice customers, set the tone for your brand, and can increase sales.
Many restaurant operators have misconceptions about average order volume (AOV) and how it works, making statements like: I need more customers to make more money. In fact, boosting AOV is one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase revenue while improving the customerexperience for your guests.
Menu pricing isnt just about covering costsits about finding that sweet spot where profitability, customer perception, and operational reality meet. Too high, and youll drive customers away. Most operators aim for food costs to be around 28-35% of the menu price, though this can change from restaurant to restaurant.
Make the tomato an experience. Youre a chef, dont take the easy route of buying pre-cooked cold cuts for your meat roast, smoke or braise your own; make it your signature and let the customer see the product being sliced in front of them. Leave your customers speechless and your employees beaming with pride.
Running a restaurant isn’t just about crafting the perfect plate or creating an unforgettable experience for your guests, it’s about making money. Sysco, US Foods, and similar distributors have multiple revenue streams, but in this article, we’ll focus on one of their biggest sources of income: margins.
Instead of constantly playing defence with menu updates, imagine a centralized system that allows you to make menu changes instantly across every delivery app and direct ordering platform. What is Menu Management Software? Think of menu management software as the control center for all your restaurants menus.
Even your most reliable menu items can lose their shine over time. Dining habits change, food costs fluctuate, and customer preferences can shift depending on what’s trending. All of these things are ok, so long as you’re menu is evolving with the changes. But together they add up. A shift in dining trends.
These are indeed the table stakes when it comes to delivering premium experiences. But what if your menu was telling your guests something about luxury? The article goes on to suggest that “restaurant menus can be surprisingly revealing. Fewer choices communicates exclusivity, which drives up customer value.
The real wins come from small, smart shifts; things like improving your online ordering system, highlighting your most profitable dishes, and giving existing customers more reasons to come back. Create Limited-Time Offers That Drive Action Limited-time offers (LTOs) give potential customers a reason to order now, not later.
Fast-casual Condado Tacos—which prefers calling itself “next-gen casual”—has long had a bar program with a selection of conventional margaritas and beers to go with its Mexican-style menu and vibe. But those same margaritas had been on the menu since 2014 when the bar, so to speak, was set a bit lower. By Patricia Cobe on Jul.
Youre not just serving foodyoure managing impressions, experiences, and expectations, all in the digital world. Thats why its important to get proactive and make it super easy for your happy customers to speak up about their experience. This ensures that the information potential customers find is accurate and up-to-date.
From improving your Google listing to leveraging customer reviews, these tips will show you how to boost your visibility and drive more traffic to your restaurant. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, you could be losing out on potential customers. This way, you won’t need to code your site from scratch.
Photo: Shutterstock Delivery and a take-home meal deal drove a lot more customers to Olive Garden this spring. The offer allowed customers to buy an in-store meal starting at $14.99 It plans to keep prices down while also adding more lower-priced items to the menu. “If By Joe Guszkowski on Jun.
Regular customers make up the backbone of any restaurants sales , but if you put a group of restaurant owners around a table, the conversation inevitably focuses on growth through new customer acquisition. But first, why is customer retention such a big deal? Sales: 80% of sales typically come from 20% of clients. Thats huge!
These metrics give you a clear picture of your delivery performancefrom order volume and customer retention to delivery speed and profitability. This might seem like a small detail, but it plays a big role in the overall delivery experience and significantly impacts customerexperience.
Youre delivering a great dining experience, yet foot traffic remains inconsistent, online engagement is low, and new customers arent coming in as often as youd like. The problem isnt your food or serviceits visibility and customer engagementand were going to help you fix that. Optimize your Google Business Profile.
Understanding your target market is the foundation of making smart decisions for your menu, pricing, and overall guest experience. Without a well-defined target market, restaurants risk wasting resources on strategies that dont connect and menu offerings that dont selltrying to appeal to everyone, but standing out to no one.
Restaurants collect a ton of customer data. Think about it: What if you could automatically send a special offer to a customer who hasnt ordered in a while? When used strategically, customer data can help you personalize marketing, streamline operations, and create a better dining experience for your guests.
Its the number one way customers discover new restaurants and if your business isnt showing up in the search results, youre losing diners to competitors who are. Local restaurant SEO is the best way to attract new customers, and its easier than you thinkyou dont need to be a technical expert to start seeing real results.
For a long time, third-party delivery apps seemed like the easiest way to get your restaurant online and in front of new customers. This means customers place orders through your own website or appnot a third-party platform. This means customers place orders through your own website or appnot a third-party platform.
And operators who don’t have one at all are missing out on a huge opportunity to tell their restaurant’s story, connect with new customers, and distinguish themselves from other restaurants in their area. Think of it as a handshake with potential new customers, a moment to say, “Here’s who we are, what we serve, and why it matters to us.”
Your customer email list is your most valuable marketing asset, giving you an incredible ROI of $42 for every $1 you spend. You own it, it costs very little to maintain, and its a direct link to your customers any time youd like to reach themno complicated algorithms or third-party platforms getting in the way.
Youll learn how to: Make your website easier to use Improve your restaurants online visibility so more customers find you Offer rewards to create more repeat customers Leverage third-party apps to drive more customers to your direct ordering system And so much more. Next, take a look at your menu. Lets get started.
When customers are looking for a new place to eat, one of the first steps in that journey is checking reviews. After reading this article, you will realize that reviews are your most valuable online asset, and leaving them unattended is unthinkable. Make sure its prominently placed so customers dont have to hunt for it.
Valentine’s Day is often a busy time for restaurants, but many are now dealing with various challenges amid the pandemic, like no indoor dining or limited capacity as well as more customers opting for carry out. Make Your Menu the Main Course. Leverage CRM Tools That Will Make Your Customers Swoon.
By the time you finish this article, youll know how to approach restaurant marketing the right way and not waste time doing guesswork, crossing your fingers, and then hoping you see new customers walking through the door. Customers have more choices, higher expectations, and countless ways to discover (or overlook) your restaurant.
Continue to Site >>> Menu C-stores are stealing fast-food tactics. Not quite yet An easy way to bring bold Korean flavors to modern menus From BBQ to beverages, menus are seeing a lot of action Food C-stores are stealing fast-food tactics. And the tactics are quickly stealing customers from restaurants.
Restaurant review sites aren’t just for diners—they’re also savvy tools for restaurant operators to gather customer feedback and help control the narrative around their dining experience. Below that, you’ll see a “what’s the vibe” section where customers can post images of inside, outside, food, and anything else they find interesting.
Operators who ignore this opportunity risk losing significant revenue to their competitors while missing out on the chance to build a stronger connection with their customers. Many restaurants struggle with high third-party app fees, low website traffic, and clunky ordering experiences that drive customers away.
Its going to get dropped, splashed with sauce, and maybe knocked off the bar by a customers pursethats just part of the deal. Bonus points if the interface is also customer-friendly, especially if you plan to use tablets for self-ordering or digital menus. For staff, it means faster table turns and fewer logjams around the POS.
Customers expect to browse menus, place orders, and pay for their meals with just a few taps of their phones. For restaurant operators, this presents both an opportunity and a challenge: how to implement an online ordering system that maximizes revenue while maintaining control over their customer relationships.
It’s the first impression most customers will have of your restaurant. Restaurant operators who neglect their Google Business Profile are missing out on the 62% of customers who turn to Google when looking for a place to eat. This is ChowNow customer, Maple Block Barbecue’s Google Business Profile.
They play a big role in overseeing your inventory and attending to customer complaints. They also bring creative ideas to the table, such as improving the drink menu and coming up with new events and promotions to drive sales. In this article: How do you handle inventory management to keep the bar always adequately stocked?
The answer to why your restaurant needs a website is simple: if you dont have a website, you are 100%, without a doubt, missing out on hundreds, if not thousands of customers. In this article, you will learn: Why a website makes your restaurant more trustworthy and professional. Frustrating, right?
Knowing the true cost per serving means you’re not guessing where to set menu prices. Understanding Food Cost Percentage Now that you know the actual food cost of each menu item, you can use that number to calculate one of the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) in your business: food cost percentage. The remaining 71.7%
The ‘New Normal’ Before we delve into how AI can drive growth, let’s first focus on the basics: Improving customerexperience. Preventing customer indecision. Telling the customer what to do next. Another downfall of these apps – they own all of your customer data. This includes restaurants.
What was once a gradual process turned into a rapid transformation, permanently reshaping how restaurants operate and interact with customers. Customers have now fully embraced the benefits of using restaurant technology, and to keep up with guests evolving expectations, the tech industry is growing at an incredible rate.
Every restaurant faces operational challengeseven with a great menu and a talented team, bottlenecks can slow service, frustrate customers, and cut into profits. Staff scramble, customers grow impatient, and suddenly, a busy night turns into chaos. Overworked employees and impatient customers. The result?
In this guide, youll learn how to use ChowNow tools along with a handful of other effective strategies to increase order volume, boost your current customer traffic, and grow your overall sales. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to stay top-of-mind with customers and remind them its time to order again from your restaurant.
You can't scroll news sites without seeing more articles about inflation, but was does it mean for restaurants? What are some best practices for restaurant owners to raise menu prices the right way? Although, if a restaurant owner is really looking for a creative way to adapt, periodically changing the menu may help.
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