If you own a restaurant in Singapore you know how difficult can it be to maintain a steady cash flow. With increasing competition and rapidly changing trends, it can be tough to keep your restaurant’s sales steady. There was a growth of 7.1% in the sales of the fast-food outlets in the year 2017, whereas the sales of the fully operated restaurants decreased by 5.8%. Restaurant sales are rarely constant, and there are several factors apart from competitors like seasonality, economy, etc. that can affect the sales. Therefore the restaurant owners are always on the lookout for new restaurant sales building ideas that will help increase the profits. We have shared some techniques in this article that you can use to attract new customers, keep regulars coming back, and, once you have a great customer base, maintain a steady cash flow.
Restaurant Sales Building Ideas To Increase Your Profits
Whether you have a brand new restaurant business or you’ve been around for years, increasing restaurant sales is a priority for every restaurateur.
Restaurants are no longer only competing with other restaurants. They now have supermarkets and convenience stores selling meals, cloud kitchens, food trucks, etc. to deal with.
You have to think of new restaurant sales building ideas to increase revenue in your restaurant. Here are a few suggestions.
1. Emphasize On Upselling
Upselling is an excellent way of increasing sales and shedding light on your most profitable food items.
Getting your customers to order your most beneficial food item or encouraging them to order a dessert/side dish can add value to your average ticket amount.
Urge your staff to offer assistance to your guests without overdoing it, you can suggest a particular dish to your guests but don’t force them to order it. If they are your regular customers take their choices into consideration, give preference to what they would like to have and then upsell the high profit making items.
Upselling is one of the best restaurant sales building ideas that can make a difference in your restaurant’s sales.
2. Online Delivery Is The Way To Go!
If you think it is hard to get people to dine at your restaurant, you can take the food to them! Team up with an already established online food ordering website or a food delivery app in Singapore like Ubereats, Foodpanda, Deliveroo, etc. or enable online ordering through your website.
Online ordering expands your horizon and helps you reach out to more people who may or may not have access to your restaurant’s dining facility. The online food delivery revenue is expected to show annual growth of 17.4%, by 2023. It is very beneficial for restaurant owners to understand the necessity of enabling online food delivery to increase their sales. More and more people in Singapore are looking out for restaurants that deliver, as it will give your customers the convenience of not having to leave their homes to enjoy your food.
3. Increase Your Sales Through Online Marketing
In Singapore, the number of internet users is expected to grow by 2022; therefore as a restaurant owner, you cannot neglect the importance of online marketing for increasing the sales of your restaurant. Restaurants have incredible opportunities available online like social media marketing, Google My Business listing, etc. to reach out to their potential customers.
People constantly keep searching online for a restaurant to eat at. Online marketing would help you reach out to those people effectively and help you stand out amongst thousands of other restaurants.
Social media marketing is also great for any restaurant owner, it is free and is less time consuming as compared to the traditional marketing strategy.
It helps you connect with the customers at an individual level and serve them better. You can curate audience specific campaigns, for example, if you are introducing a new “kids-friendly” menu, you can target families with kids.
Online marketing gives you the freedom to target a specific demographic which lets you cater the patrons based on their interest. It gives you the opportunity to respond to your customer’s comments or reviews. This makes them feel acknowledged and creates goodwill.
This increases your restaurant’s awareness amongst the potential customers, which will help improve your restaurant sales.
4. Use Customer Retention Strategies To Increase Customer Loyalty
Retaining your customers is a great way of increasing sales. Loyal customers tend to spend sixty-seven percent more on an average as compared to a new customer.
It is imperative to run loyalty programs to keep your regular customers intact and to prevent them from choosing your competitors over you. Keeping your guests pinned to your restaurant is an excellent technique to beat the competition.
Running loyalty programs is another great way of keeping your customers coming back to your restaurant since it’s hard for people to say no to a great offer. Use a POS system to easily integrate your loyalty program and run it smoothly through all your outlets.
You can run point or visit based loyalty programs depending upon your restaurant’s average sales and footfall. You can also open your restaurant’s door for hosting community events, like company parties, will help in building a relationship with the people. Also hosting weekly events like; Taco Tuesdays encourages customers to come out to your restaurant every week.
5. Improving Table Turnover Using Restaurant Technology
From the dishwasher in the kitchen to the POS system out front, if you are using the best technology you will see it impact your sales in a good way. Restaurant technology helps in reducing the table turnover time by providing your staff with a helping hand. It makes the work easier and swifter for them.
Technology simplifies the process of taking orders, your servers can directly pass the orders to the kitchen POS. This eliminates the chances of any miscommunication and also speeds up the entire process.
Using dated technology at your restaurant will slow down the daily operations which can irritate the customers and hamper the guest experience. By not using the reliable technology you are limiting the sales you can make on an average in a day.
Using a POS system that lets you take care of various operations seamlessly will make the work quicker and your customers will surely acknowledge that.
Install a modern POS with a reporting feature so that you can streamline your operations and access all the reports like sales report, inventory reports, etc. you’ll require to increase the restaurant’s sales.
These restaurant sales building ideas are important for running a successful restaurant business and reassessing the way things are running. The real key for increasing the profits of your restaurant is by keeping an eye on the profit needle.
Whenever you see a hike in the sales, analyze why. What worked? Little things like these will help you maintain steady cash flow and make your restaurant successful.
