3 Ways To Drive Your Sales At Your Restaurant

Posted on: 25 February 2020

No matter the type of restaurant you are running, from a diner to a sports bar, make sure you are making enough sales during the day to keep your restaurant afloat. Besides making great food and hiring excellent servers, there are numerous steps you can take to increase your sales.

Way #1: Train Your Staff to Upsell

First, train your staff to upsell. Upselling is the art of steering customers towards more expensive items on the menu, or towards adding additional items to their order to increase their bill total.

Upselling is a complicated skill that requires you to invest in staff training. For your staff to effectively upsell, they have to know your menu well. Invest in training your staff to memorize the menu and hold tasting so that your staff understands and can explain dishes from personal experience. Understanding the menu can help your staff suggest add-ons and more expensive menu dishes to customers.

Way #2: Offer a Happy Hour

Happy hours are not just for bars. Happy hours have become common across the restaurant industry and are great for bringing in business during the typically slow period between the lunch and dinner rush. Your happy hour offers do not have to be extensive.

For example, you can offer a small happy hour menu that offers 3-5 dishes at a discount, as well as a discount on a few drinks. Running a happy hour special from 2 pm to 5 pm every weekday, for example, can be a great way to ensure your restaurant always has customers.

Way #3: Start Using Online Ordering

Online ordering and delivery used to be reserved for restaurants that could afford to hire their own delivery drivers. With the advent of delivery apps, though, you no longer need to have your own delivery drivers, you just have to connect your restaurant to the apps online ordering system and fulfill the orders.

Then, a driver from the app will come in and pick up the order. If you don't already have an online ordering system in place, sign up for one of the delivery apps. Even if you get five orders a day, that is more than 35 extra orders a week, which can really help to increase your sales.

If you want to increase sales, make sure you train your servers so that they really understand your menu. This can help your servers more affectively upsell items. Start offering a happy hour to bring in customers during your slow period. And sign up for online delivery to generate more orders.

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