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5 Unique Ways to Draw in New Guests this Summer

Jun 02, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic cost millions of restaurant workers their jobs, thousands of restaurant owners their businesses, and an estimated six years of growth for the entire industry. But now that things are slowly returning to normal, restaurant owners are eager to have customers back in their dining rooms.

There’s only one question: how can we draw customers back in after a year of eating at home? Here are five tips to help you get back your diners.

Upgrade Your Website

A beautiful website was important for restaurants before the pandemic. But in the post-COVID world, a great website is absolutely a necessity! Statistics show that 90% of customers check out a restaurant online before eating there. After a year of ordering GrubHub and DoorDash, diners have come to expect restaurant websites to offer similar technology and ease of use.

So take the time to upgrade your website with beautiful photos, an easy-to-read menu, and even a few reviews from diners. Refreshing your website won’t take long, and it’s relatively easy, thanks to free website builders.  It will make a world of difference for your business.

Sponsor a Local Sports Team

Another casualty to COVID-19 was the typical summer activities kids love: summer camps, theme parks, sports teams, etc. As the lockdown restrictions wane, families will be itching to get back to soccer, baseball, and other activities.

And where do they go after an afternoon of playing sports? To your restaurant!

Sponsoring a sports team boosts your reputation with the public – leading to more customers coming through your door. This is an excellent opportunity for local community involvement and shows your support for the kids in your area.

Host a Special Event

After a year of quarantine, most people are looking forward to having a night out with their friends again. However, they aren’t just looking for any night out; this first gathering should be a special occasion.

 

Consider hosting a special event at your restaurant

 

Host an open mic night so musicians can show off what they worked on during quarantine. Host a cooking class so everyone who started learning to cook this past year can have a new recipe in their arsenal. These special events are sure to attract diners looking for fun ways to celebrate the end of lockdowns.

Get Active Online

Social media platforms grew 13.2% in the past year – a gain of 490 million users. This points to an significant new development for business owners: your customers are likely accessing social media daily.

An active social media account is a great way to promote your business FOR FREE. Show photos of your gorgeous food on Instagram. Engage with customers over Twitter. Use your company Facebook page to alert people about new specials. Make a viral video for TikTok with your kitchen staff! Your online presence can help drive traffic to your website AND your front door.

Provide a Safe Dining Experience

 

 

After the year we’ve had, there will always be a small group of people who are hesitant to return to restaurants. So how can you reassure these customers that your establishment is safe? Most importantly, demonstrate that you take proper safety precautions.

Studies show that 85% of customers want six feet of space between tables in restaurants. In addition, 61.9% of customers want servers to wear masks and gloves. Taking the time and effort to show you care about diners’ health and safety can help them feel better about dining with you – and that confidence can lead to excellent word of mouth. Provide adequate training for your staff so they know top-to-bottom the sanitation and safety procedures.

No doubt, 2020 was a year like no other for restaurants. So tap into these ideas to help you build up your business and have a bustling restaurant again!

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Evergreen Advice from Synergy’s Partners

Oct 29, 2020

After more than 30 years in the restaurant consulting business, we’ve helped thousands of clients launch new concepts, revive old ones, and set the bar for menu innovation. Though every client and project are different, certain pieces of advice never grow old. Below are a few of our partners’ timeless recommendations, redefined for today’s foodservice operators.

 

You make money with your hands, not your feet

The next time you’re in your restaurant kitchen, stop and watch the team go about their work. Do they rush from the walk-in to their station to grab ingredients? Do they have to walk down the cook’s line to drop off their finished plates at the expo station? Are they running around the kitchen to access the equipment they need to make specific menu items? If you add up the amount of time that your kitchen team is moving around the kitchen and multiply that total by the average amount you pay for labor each minute, you’ll be shocked at how much you’re paying for people to walk around the kitchen.

labor efficiency in the restaurant

Efficient kitchen, cook’s line, and station design reduces roving to a minimum and keeps team members at their stations so they can prep, cook, and assemble plates as quickly as possible. Once cooks set up their station, they should have all of the ingredients, tools, and equipment they need at their fingertips, or at most in a few steps with minimal cross-over. While labor efficiency is an evergreen goal, it’s more important now with fewer bodies in the kitchen.

 

Lunch is about speed, value, and convenience

With so many restaurants today looking to expand sales, it’s critical to have a lunch strategy build on these three tenets. In today’s environment, we highly recommend that operators adopt this strategy to all day parts.

 

Many diners are eager to get out and enjoy a sit-down meal at their favorite restaurant, while a significant portion of the dining population still feels apprehensive. As infection rates rise in a majority of states, dining room closures could crop up again in the coming weeks. All of this uncertainty points to a continued commitment to speed, value, and convenience across the board. These are not just sales-boosting strategies — in the eyes of your customer, they have risen to critical needs. Foodservice establishments that can flex with changing constraints and deliver on guests’ evolving needs are poised for greater success in this challenging business environment.

 

Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves

Monitoring your business expenses has never been more crucial than now. Profit margins in foodservice are notoriously slim, and with lower sales and higher commodity prices taking their toll, operators must focus on watching every penny that goes out the door.

 

Shoring up expenses on cleaning supplies, paper goods, and utilities certainly help, but your most significant savings opportunities lie in managing prime costs — namely, labor, food, and beverage expenses. Take a look at your P&L and calculate what percentage of gross sales is being offset by the costs. Ideally, prime costs should fall around 65% of sales. If they’re much higher, you have an opportunity to reorient your costs against the reality of today’s volume as a starting point.

 

Where restaurants often miss the mark is calculating their food and beverage costs. Most operators subtract purchases from sales and call it a day. While this method is quick and easy, it only reveals substantial shifts in the expense numbers, not everyday trends that over time add up to significant added food cost, like over-portioning, excessive waste, and petty theft. By determining accurate per-recipe and per-plate costs, managers and owners can gain greater visibility into their highest variable costs and identify opportunities to fine-tune their operations for greater savings.

 

However…

 

You can’t save your way to prosperity

Cutting costs is essential operating procedure these days, but penny-pinching alone won’t get you to continued profitability. There comes a point when further cost reductions begin to negatively impact food and service quality, a consequence that no one can afford.

 

Generating more sales is always the answer, and one of the most impactful ways of doing so is through upselling. Increase your check average by bundling value-added items together and promoting family-focused meal solutions. Offer special deals and discounts to your loyalty program members to increase purchase frequency. Most importantly, educate your front-of-house staff on encouraging guests to try new items or add on to their order in a helpful and not a sales-y manner.

 

If you’re not talking, you’re not training

A quality training program for every restaurant position is an absolute requirement for success, but many establishments rely on shadowing or simple checklists. Over and over again, the best training involves thoughtful and detailed communication between trainer and trainee. Some of the most impactful lessons happen on the spot when managers can observe and correct in the moment. This “walking around” training is much more likely to affect real change.

restaurant training tips

Good training corrects mistakes, but great training involves catching team members doing something right. By pointing out a team member’s success in front of their co-workers, you elevate their attitude along with those of the staff around them.

 

The devil is in the details

Getting the details right not only increases guest satisfaction, it also elevates your brand in the eyes of your customers who are watching even more closely. These days, keeping the promises you make to your guests is critical. If you’ve committed to sanitizing tables after every use, it must be done without fail. If you’ve designated specific trays for silverware and others for bussing dirty dishes, you cannot mix them up. If you’ve developed a specific policy for solving guest issues, execute it the same way every time.

 

With all of the added stress, anxiety, and health concerns swirling around, every guest touchpoint must be executed flawlessly. No detail is too small for a guest to notice.

 

What do you want to be known for?

This is (sometimes literally) the $600,000 question. Though the pandemic has caused many restaurants to shut their doors for good, there’s still plenty of competition for stomach share. It’s just not enough to sell good food and offer good service — being exceptional at something is essential. Are you known for that over-the-top signature item that everyone Instagrams? Do you offer a take-out meal for two that delivers a creative dining experience? Have you elevated a common item to new and craveable heights?

 

Distinctive and memorable restaurant brands who continue to innovate while responding to guests’ needs, wants, and expectations will win the day, regardless of market conditions or the amount of local competition.

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How to be a Restaurant that Caters

Jan 25, 2020

For a very long time, there existed a clear divide between running a Catering business and running a Restaurant. Fulfilling large, off-premise food orders was its own niche in the food industry, kept entirely separate from in-house food service. Yet as the restaurant industry evolves, there has been a spike the wonderful idea that is “a restaurant that caters”. If you’ve got your unique brand and the food to show for it, why not cater? It is a bold business move, but with the right systems in place, catering can grow your internal revenue quite exponentially. If you’re a restaurant owner looking to dive head-first into Catering, here are a few things you’ll want to know before you take the leap.

The Consumer will determine your success

Current data shows that $23 billion goes to consumer catering. In 2015 alone, catering sales made a whopping $52.3 billion, a 20% skyrocket from 2012. In developing a strategic plan for your catering service, you want to remember to brand yourself in a way that generates consumer interest. Start a conversation with your consumers; excite them. Make yourself their initial thought when in need of a catering service.

Here are a couple of ways to go about doing this:

Branding

One of the main attractions in selling anything is creating and maintaining a brand. Your brand is the way customers will differentiate you from your competitors, so it’s in your best interest to make your brand aesthetically pleasing, strategic, and effective. A catering business provides an exceptional opportunity to spread your brand into your community. If your catering service is trusted and admired by those in your community, the consumers will choose you over your competition based solely off the image your brand provides. So once your strategic catering plan is in place, perfect your brand. Give consumers a visual representation of your amazing service, and the service will advertise itself.

Media  

Media plays a huge role in consumer influence. Luckily for us in the catering business, the idea of “healthy but quick” food is already constantly being showcased on media outlets such as the radio, television, billboards, and the internet. Still, it is important to take control and portray your brand amidst all this talk. A few ways you can take control of your brand’s presence in the media is to advertise, be consistent with updating social media, regularly update your website, and be aware of your customer reviews. The media is a powerful tool in generating consumer interest, so do not ignore its ability to bring in sales.

Delivery will seal the deal

There are many third-party delivery platforms being used in off-premise sales today. Think Uber, Door Dash, Postmates — all great services for smaller scale orders. But for larger catering orders, it may not be as simple as going third-party. You must consider things like packaging, transport, supplies, and execution. Remember that catering will be a great way to extend your brand, and the delivery will surely seal the current and future deals with that customer and their guests. Before settling for a permanent delivery method, try a few things that may work for your business in executing the order, generating maximum revenue, and maintaining your image.

Your consumers want your food outside of your 4 walls, and your catering service will give them that. The love for your food will definitely do you justice in generating sales, but it is your image, reputation, and uniqueness that will differentiate you from your competition and create real success for your business. Catering will not only boost your sales and generate revenue, but will spread the word of your business to your community, their community, and all communities surrounding. We at Synergy are here to help, so contact us if you’re looking to be a restaurant that caters.

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Top 10 Sales-building techniques for the New Economy

Jun 08, 2011

Amid some confusion about the restaurant economy—is there a recovery going on, or have consumers changed their dining-out habits for the duration?—it helps to have a strategy for building sales.

While the overall outlook is indeed improving and people are returning to restaurants, recent data from Harris indicates that they’re not spending any more and that in fact, average checks are decreasing slightly as guests continue to seek value-priced options.

What can operators do to help counter this, short of the tenuous path of raising prices? Here are a few ideas to consider.

  1. Offer cooking classes, wine tastings and other events during gaps in service. Not only can you charge for these events, but you can also partner with other local businesses, like wine distributors, to help defray costs. Classes also have become increasingly popular for participatory parties, such as bridal showers, which helps get the word out to other potential customers.
  2. Ramp up your social media efforts. Savvy chains and independents have enjoyed great success via internet-abetted vehicles like Facebook and Twitter, promoting everything from contests and sweepstakes to coupons, news of IPOs, and specials.
  3. There’s also a growing trend toward online ordering apps, with some 50% of consumers now using a mobile device for shopping, according to Arc Worldwide.
  4. Speaking of coupons, be cautious about services such as Groupon. Like discounting, it needs to be carefully managed so as not to cut into profits, annoy potential customers or watch the service otherwise backfire.
  5. Take advantage of texting. This efficient, relatively inexpensive tool can be used to manage waits, coordinate scheduling and other communications with employees, and reach out to regulars—for instance, to remind them to consider celebrating their upcoming anniversary with you (remember that database you’ve building?) or alert them when their favorite soup is about to offered.
  6. Invest all of your employees in the process of building sales. A good consumer experience is one of the surest routes to repeat business, positive word-of-mouth and overall good karma. Share your concerns, expectations and plans with key employees, and help them provide better service with tools such as training, empowerment, support.
  7. Engage in socially responsible business practices. Whether it’s buying locally produced or Fair Trade goods, recycling, extracting maximizing energy savings, contributing to relief or providing health insurance to employees, you want to get the word out about, since surveys repeatedly show that consumers are becoming increasingly supportive of such efforts. You don’t have to go all green to reap the benefits of “doing the right thing.
  8. Add a retail component to your business. No, we don’t mean price tags on your paintings—although promoting local artists can be a very good idea—but seeking out sales opportunities wherever you can. Moe’s Southwest Grill,  for instance, recently entered into a deal to sell branded products at BJ’s. A smaller restaurant can sell baked goods or homemade pizza dough.
  9. Need capital? Take a page from CSAs and sell “shares.” Community Supported Agriculture Groups raise upfront cash and promote their existence by preselling shares in future crops—for every $100 a customer gives them, for instance, $110 worth of produce is delivered. We’ve heard of independent restaurants getting money for efforts like remodeling and advertising by selling x-dollars’ worth of dining scrip for a discounted price up front.  Offering such a deal to a regular customer such as a local business that orders a lot of lunch takeout or does a lot of entertaining at your place can be a particularly smart idea.
  10. Repurpose your assets. Got a commissary truck that can be used for catering, a parking lot that can be “leased” to a crafts show or farmers’ market on an off-day? Exchange meals for services like local PR representation, in the age-old system known as bartering. Be creative.

Synergy can help you find ways to make your business more profitable. Call us today for a free consultation.