8 Ultimate Ways To Increase Restaurant Sales In UAE

UAE’s food and beverage industry is enormous and is expected to see a rise in the business in the next five years mainly due to an increase in the consumer base and growth in the disposable income. However, the UAE restaurant industry has a problem of plenty. Several restaurants are competing against each other, which makes it imperative for the restaurant owners to focus on luring in more customers and increase restaurant sales.

Restaurant sales are rarely constant, and there are several factors such as the competition, seasonal fluctuations, and the changing economy, that can affect the sales.

Here is a list of ideas that can help you increase restaurant sales and give you an upper hand in UAE’s food and beverage industry.

How To Increase Restaurant Sales In UAE

We understand how important it is for every restaurant owner to increase restaurant sales for prolonged success. Even the most successful restaurants have a scope for improving their sales.

If you wish to increase restaurant sales at your business, try investing your time and money in the below-mentioned ideas.

1. Emphasize On Upselling

Upselling is an excellent way of increasing sales and shedding light on your high-profit food items. Getting your customers to order your most profitable food item and also encouraging them to order a dessert or a side dish can add value to your average ticket amount.

Train your staff offer assistance to your guests without overdoing it. Your staff can suggest a particular dish to your guests, but must not force them to order it. For regular customers, your staff can take suggest items based on their preferences and ordering behavior. You can seek the help of your POS for upselling the popular and high-profit items. The Server’s App, allows waiters and servers to accept orders from a handheld restaurant ordering system that displays the entire menu, along with the most popular items. CRM integration allows your servers to view the customer ordering history and enables them to upsell items by viewing the customer preferences. 

2. Use Your Restaurant Menu Right

If you design it the right way, your restaurant menu has the potential to increase restaurant sales greatly. You need to emphasize your high-profit and popular items so that customers view them first and order them. Add mouth-watering menu descriptions that propel customers to order more, and this will automatically upsell items and increase restaurant sales.

You also need to regularly analyze and update your restaurant menu to identify the underperforming items and replace them. Introducing innovations in the menu is a great way to attract customers and also helps in increasing sales.

3. Introduce Online Ordering

Having an exquisite restaurant for people to dine at is good, but offering an online ordering facility is the need of the hour. In UAE, more people are looking out for restaurants that deliver as they find it more convenient to eat in the comfort of their own house! According to a report, 60% of UAE consumers use an app to order food.

It is imperative that you tie up with an already established online food ordering website or a food delivery app in UAE like Talabat, Zomato, etc. or enable online ordering through your website. Most smartphone users find online food delivery apps and websites a more convenient way of satisfying their taste buds.

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. 

4. Attract Customers Through Marketing

Marketing has become an indispensable part of restaurant operations and plays an integral role in increasing restaurant sales.

With more than seventy percent of people using the internet in UAE, you cannot neglect the importance of online marketing for increasing the sales of your restaurant. Most people, especially tourists search for restaurants online before choosing a place to dine at. Thus, it is essential that you focus on online marketing to increase the footfall at your restaurant. 

Restaurants have incredible opportunities available online like social media marketing, Google My Business listing, etc. to reach out to their potential customers.

You can also invest in paid ads on Google and Facebook and create audience-specific campaigns based on demography and behavior. Online marketing gives you the freedom to target a specific demographic which lets you cater the customers based on their interest. For instance, if you are introducing a ‘kid-friendly’ menu, you can target people above the age of 30.

5. Focus On Customer Retention

Loyal customers tend to spend sixty-seven percent more on an average as compared to a new customer! But, what fosters customer loyalty? Consistency in the quality of food and service are the first steps toward customer retention. Next comes great hospitality, and showing customers that you care. However, in the competitive market of UAE, these have become a prerequisite rather than a USP. 

Running loyalty programs and rewards memberships is a great way to incentivize customers to come back to your restaurant. You can offer reward points based on the amount spent at your restaurant that they can redeem on the total payable bill, or offer a complimentary item every 5th visit or so.

This is a great way of keeping your customers coming back to your restaurant since it’s hard for people to say no to a reasonable offer. Use a POS system to easily integrate your loyalty program and run it smoothly through all your outlets.

You can reach out to the people who have interacted with your restaurant before through email and SMS marketing. Send out promotional emails and SMS offering discounts, etc. on their birthday and anniversaries and encourage them to eat at your restaurant.

6. Improve 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. Simplify the order taking process at your restaurant by enabling Tablet Ordering. Your servers or waiters can take customer orders through a hand-held device such as mobile or tablet that displays the entire menu. The order is directly pushed into the POS and the same is reflected into the Kitchen Display System, thus making the order taking process quicker and more efficient. This reduces the order-taking time and eliminates the risk of orders getting missed.

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 also acknowledge the efficiency.

7. Host Events

In UAE, restaurant owners tend to host special events during significant holidays like Eid to increase the restaurant sales, but festivals are not the only time when you can host events.

You can come up with special events like “Curry Festival,” where you can cook different types of curries from all over the world and encourage people to come try them.

Such events are a great excuse to attract more people to your restaurant and increase sales. You can curate special events based on the kind of audience you target.

But most importantly, do not forget to inform people about the events. Send out emails, SMS, and post about the same on your social media profiles. This will increase the reach and make people aware of the event.

8. Offer Custom Discounts 

Offering discounts is one of the most tried and tested ways of increasing restaurant sales. However, even special offers and discounts may end up useless unless you strategize them the right way. Instead of offering a general discount to all your customers, you can generate custom offers to encourage repeat visits from customers. For instance, say a particular customer hasn’t visited your restaurant in a month. You can offer a 20% discount on his most ordered item. You can easily fetch this data from your POS and run custom offers and discounts promotions through a smart integrated Marketing Module.

With the problem of plenty on the rise in UAE, restaurants are finding it difficult to sustain their business. Employ these tips to increase your restaurant sales and watch how your profits soar!