Amidst the Coronavirus scare that’s engulfing the world, the global restaurant industry is facing more than just a temporary slump. It’s a tormenting time period for restaurateurs. Their doors have shut down and their business’ entire future is at stake. However, food delivery has become the main revenue stream for most restaurateurs. Even so, sales have plummeted with people preferring to stay indoors as much as possible. Relooking at your menu and ensuring that you sell only your best sellers is a logical strategy to keep afloat. In this blog article, we shall discuss the different techniques you can adopt to have the right menu for your customers.
Moving Towards The Right Restaurant Menu During Corona Outbreak
The sudden outbreak leads to an unplanned series of events in the restaurant industry. You should build an action plan for the next few weeks. Restaurateurs have realized that the hardest part of this outbreak is to restore people’s confidence in restaurants. The major aspect of restaurant operations that needs your attention at the moment is your menu. Since restaurateurs are pinning their hopes on online deliveries to facilitate revenue generation in such harsh times, having a strong online presence is one of the major prerequisites. Here are the steps you need to follow to move towards profits even in such harsh times.
1. Analyze Your Restaurant Menu
It’s essential to know and understand the response your menu has received in the past. Historical sales data will help you make crucial decisions about your menu during such an emergency. Look at the data from your POS system and see where the majority of the money is coming from. Once you identify the consumption pattern, you could either add a few dishes or use your existing dishes in a creative way.
For instance, you could add immunity boosting dishes to your comfort dishes. Studies suggest that stocking up on Vitamin C and sticking to the greens helps boost immunity.
Having such dishes in your menu can help to give out a strong message to your customers, that you care about them. Such a campaign could also help you boost sales when the situation normalizes.
2. Limit Your Restaurant Menu
The next thing you should be doing with your menu is to rationalize it as much as possible. Selling everything in your menu means uncertainty in terms of returns. Since people are more cautious of what they are consuming now more than ever, you need to ensure that the precautions recommended by WHO are implemented .
Rationalizing your menu is to select dishes that work best for you, don’t take too much time or resources to prepare and are easy to deliver. These factors determine how well your brand is able to sustain itself in such emergent times.
The fact is that people are stuck in their homes and are definitely not looking for a gastronomic experience. Restaurants that always have been innovating with their food need to focus more on their delivery operations than innovate their dishes further. It’d be more convenient for the customers if they have a sturdy box for delivery rather than standard packaging that can cause the food contained in it to go bad. Therefore, diverting your existing resources to delivery operations instead of innovating operations seems like a good idea.
3. Keep Your Delivery Radius Reasonable
One crucial aspect of focusing on your deliveries is to keep within a reasonable radius from your outlet. This would ensure two things. One, it would help you reach your customers in time and serve the food at the right temperature and condition. Two, it would help you focus on a particular category of people that like a particular cuisine. This way, you are able to cater to the audience better.
4. Use Technology To Develop A Creative Restaurant Menu
It’s a tough time for the world, so making the most of your existing data to identify customer preferences can work wonders for you. You can use this time to analyze your data and make modifications in your menu, or adapt to the new trends. Here are some things you can do with the help of your restaurant POS.
a. Easy Menu Modification: Modifying your menu includes everything from creatively designing it to scheduling marketing campaigns in a timely manner. Consider automating the entire process of making modifications in the menu based on customer trends or the area your outlet is at.
Offer attractive combos and ensure that the sales of low selling items are improved through a variety of measures.
b. Watch Out For Trends: Watching out for trends can be pretty hard, considering all the customers are now in lockdown. Now that you are solely focusing on deliveries, you can try incorporating discounts and gifts cards in your online menu.
All in all, leveraging your online menu in a strategic way is going to determine your restaurant’s sustainability. You can use the steps mentioned above to ensure you’re able to sail through these harsh times.
For tips and strategies on how to automate your restaurant processes, feel free to contact us.
This is the time when we have to come together to fight with the Epidemic. Nice to red your post.. very helpful for restaurant owners to increase the sales by keeping in mind about the Epidemic. Thank you for the post.