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Onlineordering has transformed the restaurant industry, turning what was once a convenience into an absolute necessity. In 2025, the US online food delivery market is expected to reach $424.9 Customers expect to browse menus, place orders, and pay for their meals with just a few taps of their phones.
While there was a brief dip in consumer awareness of menuprice increases in late 2024, the spring of 2025 has seen a moderate rise, affecting dining habits and consumer perceptions of value. “With rising prices tied to eggs and imported goods, restaurants will need to think creatively about their menus,” Fink said.
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.
And no, increasing restaurant sales doesn’t mean turning your restaurant staff into pushy upsellers trying to squeeze a few extra dollars out of every order. Create Limited-Time Offers That Drive Action Limited-time offers (LTOs) give potential customers a reason to order now, not later.
This edition of Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine's Research Roundup features news on summer restaurant employment, indecisiveness ordering, onlineordering trends, and the world's best cities for food. percent of diners noting that recent price increases have altered their spending habits, and 58.5
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.
Every onlineorder, email sign up, and reward program interaction generates valuable insightsbut if that data just sits there, youre missing a major opportunity. Think about it: What if you could automatically send a special offer to a customer who hasnt ordered in a while? Restaurants collect a ton of customer data.
Foot traffic or heat mapping, menu item engagement, or consumer demographics by time of day. Restaurants are already experimenting with using AI to handle drive through orders to allow human employees to focus on customer interactions in the restaurant.
If youre one of the thousands of restaurants that added online food delivery in recent years, you might be wondering: is it actually helping my business grow? These metrics give you a clear picture of your delivery performancefrom order volume and customer retention to delivery speed and profitability.
Keeping menus updated across various onlineordering systems and third-party delivery apps can feel like a never-ending game of catch-up. Manually updating menus across multiple onlineordering channels is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to mistakes. What is Menu Management Software?
Knowing the true cost per serving means you’re not guessing where to set menuprices. When done correctly, dish costing helps you control food costs, reduce food waste, and price items in a way that supports your restaurant’s financial health without alienating guests. Every smart pricing move starts here.
The tool from the East Coast vegan chain — a digital take on a split-flap mechanical display that appears on its website and in the chain’s ordering app — estimates the amounts of water, land, CO2, and oil saved by eating vegan burgers. The “ PLNT Impact Tracker ” on PLNT Burger’s website wants you to think about what you’re eating.
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. Optimize Your Restaurants Online Presence Your restaurants online presence is often the first touch point for potential guests, so make it count.
Understanding what customers order, when they order, and how often is an untapped goldmine of information for restaurant operators. Using that data can help you answer questions like: Are we pricing our bestsellers too low or overpricing items customers arent buying? What do repeat orders say about our customer preferences?
77% of diners look at a restaurants website before going out to eat or ordering takeout or delivery. If you dont have a website, that means over three-quarters of the people near your restaurantyour potential customerswill never come in or place an order because they have no way to find you when theyre looking for a place to eat.
When you decided to open a restaurant, you probably didnt picture yourself glued to spreadsheets or tracking the price of eggs, but keeping an eye on the numbers is how you stay open year after year. A spike in food costs, a drop in sales volume, or one slow season can wipe out months of hard work.
Is onlineordering inefficient? Experiencing over-ordering or last-minute shortages? Are you aiming to speed up service, cut labor costs, or increase online sales? A higher-priced system that saves time and reduces errors might be more valuable than a cheaper, less effective alternative. Are labor costs too high?
It just goes to show how important drink pricing and cost management are to maximizing profits. Bar profit margin and pour cost Some high-performing bars can reach higher margins by optimizing their costs and pricing strategies. Keep in mind that certain drinks can be priced higher due to their popularity or unique ingredients.
Those who don’t are effectively lowering their prices. Understand if your prices are keeping pace with inflation and maintain a markup that matches the costs associated with paying suppliers and staff. How is inflation affecting food prices? Business owners should routinely track increased costs and adapt.
They’re demanding increased levels of immediacy, having grown accustomed to ordering and paying — even ordering ahead — with a few taps of a smartphone. Meanwhile, diners can scan a QR code to easily view and order from your menu, as well as alter and route items to the correct kitchen location in real time.
While these platforms do bring in orders, they also come with the price of high commission fees, loss of customer data, and a weaker connection between you and your guests. Its up to you to educate them on the impact and show them why ordering direct makes a difference. can be an eye-opener for customers.
It gives people everything they need to make a decision about where to eat, including business hours, phone number, location, menu, photos, reviews, and links to onlineordering, all in one place. A blurry menu photo from 2018 isn’t a good look. Even minor differences (like “St.”
Restaurants will also explore delivery options beyond costly third-party partnerships, and hike delivery menuprices to make the channel more lucrative as off-premise demand holds steady. Simplified Menus. Menu variety plays a substantial role in every dining experience. Health-Conscious Food Will Dominate Menus.
In 2024, restaurants across the country saw an average five percent increase in transactions and an average eight percent increase in profits with only four percent caused by price hikes. This has led to many perks for consumers, such as reduced wait times, contactless ordering, and more personalized offers and rewards.
These are tools that can help you streamline operations, easily schedule staff, and make sure you never run out of ingredients for your best-selling menu items. It allows AI to understand and respond to human language, which is how virtual assistants can answer customer questions or take onlineorders.
Winter can be a tough season for restaurant and bar owners. Here are a few ideas for restaurant and bar owners to consider in an effort to continue to serve up good eats and top-tier service during the winter season. Offer Specials and Competitive Pricing. Consider Adding Festive Menu Items.
The Alternative: Understand spending fully, build a realistic financial plan, monitor expenses closely, and plan for seasonal changes. They open without fully understanding their target market, pricing structure, or what makes their restaurants concept stand out in the local market. Who are your customers ?
Restaurant operations management is the art and science of keeping a restaurant running smoothly, creating order in a naturally chaotic environment. Successful restaurant operators use data-driven ordering, reliable supplier relationships, and waste-reduction strategies to keep inventory lean without sacrificing quality.
The primary response was menuprice increases, with nearly 61 percent of respondents adjusting prices to cope with the new reality. However, the industry has renewed optimism, driven by the adoption of digital and mobile ordering, menu creativity and heightened expectations around AI.
Since the pandemic, restaurants have endured a plethora of issues ranging from fluctuating dining restrictions to supply chain issues to rising food prices. Taking Orders with Artificial Intelligence. One place where AI has been making an impact as these challenges persist is with phone ordering.
Are your regulars ordering the same drink and entree every time they come in? Pick your event idea by looking at your: Venue size and layout Customer demographic Available resources Time of year (season) Community Write out each of these factors, and a picture will emerge of which restaurant event idea will best fit your location.
In the restaurant business, operating costs are the day-to-day expenses required to keep your doors open and your kitchen firingeverything from rent to payroll to the packaging your to-go orders go out in. If youre pushing out more orders, getting more ingredients, and staffing more servers, these costs will reflect that.
These challenges are impacting menu availability, raising the prices of menu items, leading to short staffs, increasing wait times for diners, and changing operating hours and offerings. As we head into the holiday season, we expect consumers to return to in-restaurant dining with enthusiasm.
Early in the pandemic, 72 percent of operators invested in delivery and mobile/onlineordering to boost revenue during mandated stay-at-home orders according to TD's 2020 survey, and it appears the popularity of these offerings is here to stay. Investment in delivery and mobile ordering pays off.
Why it matters Restaurant Food Cost Percentages Calculate Food Cost Percentage Food costs vs Prime costs Menu Changes and Seasonality Strategies to Reduce Your Food Costs Food Cost Management Tools FAQ What is food cost? It is affected by seasonality, market prices, and even pop culture. Table of Contents What is it?
While there are clear benefits to an all-digital menu system, to get the most out them, you must first take a step back to re-examine what your menu means to you. Your menu: Part love letter, part manifesto, instructions for use and a bill of goods, all rolled into one. Should your menu move to the cloud?
The research found that businesses worldwide – particularly restaurants – intend to experiment more in 2025, especially with customer retention programs like loyalty, as they face the triple challenge of sustained high inflation, shrinking consumer wallets and the need to raise prices across the board.
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. How would you improve or refine our current drink menu? Strong relationships with vendors help you land the best pricing and priority delivery, especially for high-demand items.
Compare different policies and choose one that offers good coverage at a reasonable price. Train your staff to use ingredients efficiently and plan your menu to minimize waste. Customers sit down, order from a menu, and are served by waitstaff. At the same time, they can charge premium prices for customized services.
“The Discerning Diner report provides our members with the information they need to make choices around everything from menu selections and customer service options, to marketing initiatives and possible new revenue streams that today’s consumer is interested in. 8 percent say they plan to order more once the pandemic subsides.
Among full service operators, about half reported automating everyday business operations, with onlineordering (57 percent) being the most common automation, followed by invoicing (54 percent) and email marketing (53 percent). One strategy for reducing costs has been the increased use of technology.
By tracking metrics like customer retention and employee turnover rate, contribution margin, and menu item profitability, restaurant managers can identify each area’s strengths and what areas need improvement. This number is essential because it helps you determine the price of your food and beverages.
in-restaurant dining and onlineordering for pickup or delivery), which can be leveraged to drive highly customized campaigns using a built-in marketing solution. “I wanted to make sure the whole menu, flavors, and even the packaging was on point,” said Tyga. ” Tyga Bites Launches.
Food prices continue rising at grocery stores and through suppliers, while staffing gaps and shifting guest preferences add extra pressure to already thin margins. Smart investments in ordering systems and guest retention tools pay off through better operations and increased repeat business.
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