How To Boost Your Revenue In The Hospitality Sector

If you manage a restaurant you will be aware how important it is to stay up to date with modern trends and not get left behind. If you aren’t up to the industry standard set every year, you could be left in the dark ages by your competitors. For restaurants in particular, there’s lots to compete with. Takeaways, chain restaurants, pubs, even people staying at home and cooking on their own. Currently it’s very competitive within the catering industry and not just between restaurants. There is no magical formula for success in 2018, but there are a few tips below, which might just help you bring in extra revenue.

Event Nights

Bring customers in with events nights throughout the course of the year. There are plenty of opportunities to get more people coming in through the door, without breaking the bank. All celebrated holidays are the perfect opportunity to get people in.

Throughout the course of a regular week, you could also offer ‘special deals’ to help you bring in customers through the quiet patches of a day. Some chain pubs offer themed food nights such as Curry Night on Tuesdays, Fish nights another evening. ‘Happy hour’, ‘early bird deals’ or ‘lunchtime discounts’ are a great way of getting in extra customers, during what would normally be slow parts of the day. Depending on your type of establishment, why not put on an entertainment night? Ask an appropriate band to play, or even bring a comedian in.

Big Influencers

Word of mouth is perhaps the best possible marketing tool available to a restaurant. Unfortunately, there is no way for restaurants to control this, apart from delivering fantastic service. Some people’s word of mouth can be more valuables than others. By tapping in with food bloggers, critics or members of the local press and delivering them a great evening, they can effectively tell a lot more people about your restaurant than one person can.

Loyalty Scheme

One of the best ways for any business to survive, is repeat custom and more importantly loyal customers. As well as a great service, why not incentivise your customers into coming again? Offer them a loyalty card so that when they come 5 times, they can be rewarded with a discount, or a free drink.

Delivery Operations

We all know that fast food restaurants offer lots of potential when it comes to delivery. But over the past few years, there has been plenty of room for restaurants to move into delivery too. With apps like Uber Eats, Grubhub and Deliveroo, traditional restaurants have been able to tap into the delivery market. However, this is of course dependant on what kitchen capabilities you have. The most important thig is keeping your customers happy within the restaurant!

Communication

Social Media

With social media so readily available, it’s one of the most efficient ways of communicating with customers. You can encourage people to talk about you online when they come to visit and share their views with all of their followers online. Importantly you need to treat social media like the great marketing platform it is. Create profiles on the platforms which are going to be most relevant to you. What social media does better than anything, is give you the chance to actively engage with customers, which can in turn offer you the information to feed into your business development. Social Media can also give you a great opportunity to offer last minute deals to customers. You can post out to all the followers you have picked up on social media and show all of your weekly or daily offers. 

Emails and Texts

Emails and texts can be a constant way of getting in touch with your customers. If you can offer them a small bonus or reward for signing up to your mailing lists, you can regularly send them out promotions and news regarding the business. It’s important not to send too much to your customers, but you want to send out reminders that you are here.

A great way of getting your business out there and communicating with people, is handing out flyers to local businesses and households. But instead of simply printing out a bog-standard flyer advertising the restaurant, include a miniature menu and give people an idea of the sort of food you produce. This way people can have a quick look at what you’re producing and decide if it’s for them. 

Reviews

TripAdvisor has been a brilliant advocate for pulling in customers, but it can work just as well against you if you’re not careful. Sometimes you might not do much wrong and simply get the wrong kind of customer who leaves a negative review. The important thing is to respond in a professional manner and address the problem, no matter 

You don’t have to try all these techniques together to boost your revenue and some of them might not work for your business. However, it’s worth giving some of them a go to see which work best for you. Most restaurant owners know their clientele well and with these tips can be the judge of what will work best.