It is that time of the year again when you make certain New Year resolutions. Although resolutions are bound to make a positive change in your restaurant business, eighty per cent of resolutions fail by February! However, if you plan right from the start, and execute your resolves efficiently, you can certainly expect a positive impact on your restaurant business.
With this in mind, we have boiled down a few New Year’s resolutions you should be making for the coming year to run a profitable restaurant business.
New Year Resolutions That You Should Be Making For Your Restaurant Business In 2019
You’ve probably started making New Year’s resolutions for yourself but what about your restaurant business? Here are some actionable resolutions you can follow in 2019 to run your restaurant business more profitably.
Resolution #1: Increase And Improve Your Online Presence
You might have a Facebook and Instagram account, but the real question here is how often do you update it?
The phrase “content is the king” rightly stands for marketing any restaurant business. Having an online presence isn’t just about creating accounts on Facebook, Google Ads, etc. but instead how often you upload your content.
Make sure you keep posting periodically on online channels to increase your brand’s presence. Post quality content and always upload high-quality pictures. You can hire a food photographer or click pictures yourself.
Start the year off by putting your food first, and giving your customers a delightful sight of your food.
Also, if your restaurant is not listed on a leading food delivery app, it’s about time you make this happen! They are supportive from a growth perspective for the brick-and-mortar restaurants.
Apart from this, having a functional and updated restaurant website is also a critical aspect of your online presence. Not only would it help you increase your visibility online, but also help you get more orders as well if you have online ordering enabled.
Resolution #2: Increase Your Restaurant Sales
Increasing restaurant sales is everything a restaurant owner works towards. You come up with new techniques to increase sales, but how long do you abide by them? Whatever strategy you use, it will take time to show returns.
Here are some strategies that can help increase sales while driving up guest satisfaction:
- Train your team to upsell: Empower your servers to upsell most profitable items. Give them proper training and teach them the art of upselling without overdoing it. Instruct servers to vividly describe a dish to increase its sales.
- Give your team a helping hand: With this, we do not mean you start helping the chef in the kitchen. Instead, provide your chefs with the latest equipment that would help fasten up the cooking process. Also, give your servers a tablet to take orders and directly send them to the kitchen. This will cut down the extra effort of running back and forth and let you serve more people.
- Run smart Marketing Campaigns: As the world is increasingly progressing towards data and technology, it is time that you leveraged for your marketing campaigns as well. Instead of sending bulk SMS and emails to your entire database, create custom campaigns based on the ordering history and behaviour of your customers. Personalised campaigns have a better ROI and would surely help you increase the sales of your restaurant business in 2019.
Resolution #3: Improve Your Guest Loyalty
Every year restaurant owners concentrate on attracting new customers but only some focus on retaining the loyal ones. Restaurant goals that revolve around loyalty pay off very well. After all, they tend to spend sixty-seven per cent more as compared to new customers.
Get personal with your guests, ask them about their dining experience and make them feel important. If you have a few regulars, greet them with their name. Run loyalty programs for your customers to give them an incentive for coming back each time. People love earning and redeeming points for their loyalty.
Resolution #4: Stalk Yourself- Quite literally!
One of your New Year resolutions should be stalking yourself on the internet. You might be doing good but that one nasty review on Zomato isn’t going anywhere!
Focus your 2019 goals towards restaurant’s reputation management. Keep looking through your reviews as people these days decide where to dine after reading through the restaurant’s reviews.
Keep tab of what people have to say about you on the internet. This will enable you to address customer complaints.
Here’s how you can keep a track of your online reputation:
- Set up free Google Alerts for your business name.
- Activate “push notifications” to alert you when someone leaves a Facebook review or comment.
- Monitor your Zomato page regularly.
Once you know about negative reviews or comments, you can take action on them and improve your restaurant business’s reputation in 2019.
Resolution #5: Keep In Mind Your Customers’ Resolutions
Living a healthy lifestyle is the most common New Year’s resolution followed by dieting. Resolutions like these are good for healthy living but can hamper your restaurant’s sales.
Get the attention of health freaks by whipping up some new, healthy menu offerings. Highlight them and start advertising them. Build your restaurant’s marketing campaign around promoting a healthy lifestyle and eating fresh.
You can also take this idea a step ahead and partner with a local gym and ask them to promote your restaurant.
Resolution #6: Focus On Cutting Back Your Costs
With the rising food and labour costs and stiff competition, surviving in the business can be extremely challenging. While you’re doing all that you can to increase your sales, you need to focus on keeping your costs in check, which could otherwise bleed your restaurant dry. Monitoring your stock and inventory and ensuring minimal wastage helps in keeping your food costs under control. Try reducing your labour turnover and train your staff regularly to keep your labour costs in check.
There are several other things that you should keep in mind to control your restaurant food costs, which we have discussed in detail here.
Resolution #7: Expand Your Business!
Expanding your restaurant business could be one of the most exciting as well daunting one of your resolutions. But before you take a step towards fulfilling your resolution, take a step back and evaluate your current business model. Is your current business model sustainable enough to be replicated? You also need to do proper market research and financial planning to scale your restaurant business.
One of the best ways of scaling your business is through Franchising as it would help you expand in a short period of time. Here are the ten definitive steps to franchising your business.
The New Year is a great time to let go of the old and to begin something new. Are there any resolutions that you are making for your restaurant business for 2019? Let us know in the comments below!
Marketing takes a lot of time and money. My new year resolution is to save on both by making marketing automation. The article above is very comprehensive and efficient, as it comprises of a few important factors. Good Read, great work Restaurant Times.
excellent .