Success in the restaurant business doesn’t come easily. You have to work hard to sustain in the competitive restaurant industry. How to run a restaurant successfully is a question that constantly troubles every restauranteur.
The USA’s restaurant industry is ever-changing and challenging. There are almost three hundred fifty-two thousand eight hundred fifteen independent restaurants in the US alone!
You can image the fierce competition and the growing need of running your restaurant successfully for prolonged prosperity.
Here is a list of the most important things you should consider for running your restaurant successfully.
How To Run A Restaurant Successfully Simplified!
How to run a restaurant successfully? Is a question that crosses every restaurant owners mind! These tips will certainly help you achieve that and will assist you in running your restaurant business profitably.
1. Serving Great Food At The Right Price
Big or small, food is a major factor that determines the success of any restaurant. If your food is not great or is not priced appropriately, you will hardly see any footfall.
The food that you serve should mimic your restaurant’s theme and should be in accordance with the concept.
It should be freshly prepared and should taste good. Along with this, you should also be focusing on the presentation of the food. People these days judge a dish on its appearance even before they have a bite.
Food presentation is all about timing. There is no point in offering your guests a fancy dish if it is served cold when it was supposed to be served hot.
In fact, the diners in the US are willing to spend three times more for the food that looks florid!
That is not all, to run a successful restaurant, you need to determine the food cost accurately. Therefore, not being able to cover the costs can ultimately result in the closing down of the restaurant.
Calculating the food cost helps you determine the correct value for your menu items. The food cost formula helps you in determining the correct food cost by showing the percentage of the expense of preparing a dish.
Food Cost = Total Cost Of Ingredients / Sale Price
Serving good quality food that is priced fairly will earn your restaurant all the success. After all, restaurants are all about delivering exceptional food and top-notch service, which brings us to our next point!
2. Delivering Top-Notch Service
There is no quick fix when it comes to improving the restaurant service; It takes a lot of effort and research to do so.
It’s not just the responsibility of the restaurant owner or the manager, but everyone plays a very vital role when it comes to delivering the high-grade experience to your patrons.
Use technology to elevate the restaurant service. Invest in an efficient POS system that would let you manage the daily operations seamlessly.
The guests hate waiting and expect the operations like billing to be quicker and a POS system would help you do so swiftly. Fast service makes the overall experience memorable for the guests and keeps them coming back.
POS system helps you manage daily operations like:
- Quickly process the payments
- More accurate payment processing
- Preventing errors in orders
- Integrating offers and discounts
Along with this, encourage your staff to interact with the customers. You can encourage the staff to help seat a female customer or suggest specials or dishes appropriate for kids if you do not have a separate menu for kids.
Value your customers and listen to what they have to say this would keep your customers coming back for the food, people and the excellent service.
3. Owner’s Involvement
An owner’s involvement is very crucial to ensure the restaurant is running systematically. But, at times, it can be physically challenging for the restaurant owner to look after various functions throughout the day and may require assistance.
You can appoint a manager to look after a few things but is that enough? As a restaurant owner, you should have every small detail regarding your restaurant which a manager can at times fail to deliver, but a restaurant POS won’t! Because a POS system will give you an accurate and timely analysis of the daily activities.
It lets you take care of all the backend and frontend operations seamlessly, giving the restaurant owners complete control over their business.
The restaurant POS provides you with the real-time analytical reports which make it easier for the restaurant owners to manage the daily operations.
Some of the daily reports an owner should proactively be checking are:
- Restaurant Sales Reports: A restaurant POS system gives you detailed sales reports and lets you analyze the trends. A restaurant’s persistence solely depends on the sales; therefore restaurant owners need to keep a close check on it.
- Billing Reports: Analyzing the billing reports is an excellent way for the restaurant owners to supervise the money that’s coming in. You can keep track of the total number of bills generated at your restaurant. It is a great feature if you own multiple outlets as it will give you real-time reports for all your restaurants at one place.
- Inventory Reports: Managing the inventory is one of the biggest challenges for any restaurant owner. A restaurant POS inventory reporting feature can help you with that. Inventory reports are vital as it helps you ensure the costs are being maintained. It avoids any internal theft and prevents you from running out of necessary raw materials.
- Employee Reports: POS system’s employee reports make the task of observing the employees performance seamless. It lets you manage the entire staff by keeping a check on their performance. It also allows you to view the total number of table served, bills generated and the hours served by each employee.
- CRM Reports: If your restaurant POS system allows you to capture your customer’s details like phone number, email address, etc. you can make use of the CRM reports in order to determine customer behavior. CRM reports let you determine the customers who spend more or visit your restaurant often, which makes the task of sending promotional emails and SMS easier.
- Multiple Outlet Reports: The multi-outlet report feature in the restaurant POS will let you monitor all your branches without any hassle. Get billing, sales, inventory, etc. reports for all your restaurants in one preferred device.
Some restaurant POS systems available in the US let you keep track of the reports through a mobile phone application which comes handy if you are not physically available at the restaurant.
4. Hiring The Right Staff
It is essential to hire the best staff; this will help in running your restaurant business seamlessly. Hire goal-oriented people as they work hard and ensure that the restaurant operations are carried out systematically.
Restaurant employees are the face of your restaurant, hiring people who don’t care will inevitably lead to poor service, a lack of attention and, eventually, decreased sales.
Invest time and resources in hiring the right people. You need to invest time in training your staff, as this will help polish their skills and will make them feel valued.
Factors to consider when hiring the right people
- Determine the requirement– Before you start posting vacancy ads, you need to determine the staff requirement. There is no point in hiring more people than required.
- Check compatibility– When interviewing a person, you need to see if his/her thoughts are compatible with the goals of the restaurant. Because your staff will help your business grow.
Your restaurant’s staff is responsible for running your restaurant successfully and rationally.
5. Keeping Up With The Trends
With the gradual change in consumer habits and eating out trends, the restaurant industry in the USA is also undergoing significant changes as restaurants strive hard to keep up to the customer demands.
It is imperative for the restaurant owners to keep up with the trends and adapt to the market demands.
According to Forbes, consumers want healthy food and are ready to pay more for it; therefore you need to change your menu accordingly. Add more healthy options in your menu and give the customers what they want.
Consider subscribing to various restaurant blogs or magazines to keep yourself updated about any upcoming trends.
This will give you a head-start and will help you in keeping up with the industry trends.
6. Social Media Marketing
Social media has completely taken over all our lives, and the restaurant business doesn’t fail to acknowledge that!
Restaurants are increasingly striving to serve food that is Instagram-worthy so that it would be posted and shared by customers on social media.
Food bloggers and micro-influencers on social media have also become a dominant part of the restaurant marketing trends. Aesthetic presentation of food has become a prerequisite for the restaurants; therefore you need to focus on the visual appeal of the food now more than ever to run your restaurant successfully.
Run social media campaigns to spread awareness about any upcoming events or special discounts that the customers can avail.
Regularly posting enticing content on your social media account will help you lure in more customers.
7. Customer engagement
Despite the rise of delivery, the restaurants still value the physical experience. Make use of the latest technology to engage your customers and provide great customer experience.
You need to analyze your restaurant’s potential. Determine how you will encourage customers to engage, and how these techniques will boost profits.
Ask yourself, what makes your restaurant unique and how will you showcase it? Once you’ve answered those questions and create a plan.
To drive customer engagement, restaurants must provide an excellent experience; an experience that doesn’t just start and stop with a good meal. Personalize your patrons’ experience and determine what keeps them coming back. If you have repeats address them with their name.
Understanding who your customers are and how they behave from the regularity to lifetime value is critical in being able to engage them personally.
Running a restaurant business in the US requires a lot of effort. Restauranteurs have to constantly look after what is happening at their restaurant for prolonged success. These points along with some hard-work will certainly help you manage and run your restaurant business successfully.
