Just for the record, there are only two ways to increase your restaurant sales: 1) get more traffic into your bar/restaurant (butts in seats we call it), and 2) increase your check averages. That’s it. Any bar and restaurant promotion you can conceive in your pretty little brains to increase your sales falls under one of those two categories.
Today I’m going to deliver some practical, yet powerful strategies to increase your revenue and profits. Things that you can implement right away that will have an immediate impact on your bottom line of your bar and restaurant, because nobody wants to hear about strategies that take as long as compound interest to see results.
Now, you are probably already aware of some of these tactics and strategies that we’re going to cover. I’m not inventing the wheel here, but the question is, are you implementing them skillfully? Are you executing them? Do you have a plan to put these smart strategies in place? Or are you delivering a half-ass effort when it comes to systemizing your restaurant marketing and staff training?
Are You a Restaurant Manager or a Restaurant Mouse?
Not long ago, I was chatting with a bar owner in San Francisco, and he asked me if I had any strategies to increase sales, and I said, “Yeah. I got plenty,” and then I proceeded to share with him some of the strategies I’m about to share with you now.
After hearing me out he said, “Oh yeah, of course. I know about all of those strategies.”
“Ok,” I said, “so do you have any of them in place right now? Do you execute them on a daily basis.”
And he said, “Yeah, sort of.”
Let me tell you something right now: “Sort of” doesn’t feed the queen bee. If you’re “sort of” going through the motions of a promotion or hiring or training your staff, any part of running your business, then you are only going to “sort of” be successful, which is to say you aren’t going to be successful at all. “Sort of” is for those who are too scared to enforce what they know needs to be done.
In other words, are you a restaurant manager or are you a mouse? When it comes to restaurant management leadership, the buck stops with you. Everyone is looking to you to lead them into battle.
My point being, I’m going to give you some compelling strategies right now that are super successful, but only if you put a plan into place and then execute that plan. Execution is the engine that drives the success train. Without execution, all of your ideas and intentions turn that engine into a hamster wheel.
It is your job as a bar and restaurant owner or manager to fuel that train with as much power as possible, and the way to do that is to execute your strategies day in and day out.
Make sense? I hope so. I know it sounds like I’m preaching, but this is important. I don’t want you to look for a magic pill. I want you to execute the fundamentals 100%. Fundamentals always outperform flash.
Ok, so let’s dive in. Three ways to increase your restaurant sales and revenue instantly.
STRATEGY #1: UPSELLING
Yes, I’m fully aware how seemingly obvious this first one is. And I can hear you groaning through your screen right now. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Dave…I know all about upselling. What else you got?”
Yes, in the restaurant industry upselling has been around since blacksmiths and dragons. Of course you know about upselling. But let me ask you this: does your staff actually do it? I would bet my cat that they do not. I mean, I don’t really like my cat, but that’s not the point. The point is, you can know all about upselling, but I can only imagine that the way you execute upselling in your restaurant is feebly calling out from your office, “Don’t forget to upsell, and to do that whole adding bacon and avocado thing, or whatever.”
The truth is, until you understand the power of upselling when it comes to your restaurant finances, you aren’t really going to execute it. Let’s take a look:
Upselling falls under the 2nd category I mentioned above, which is to increase check averages. So let’s do and example to demonstrate:
Let’s say that your average dish on your menu costs $15. And let’s also say that the average beverage is $5. Could be a soda for $2 or a glass of wine for $15, but let’s just say $5 on average, so now we’re talking $20 per person, on average. Easy math.
Then let’s say that your average covers per table are three, which means that each table that sits down results in an $60 tab. With me so far? Good.
By the way, this is something you should already know, which is “how many covers do you need to break even?” In case you are a newbie, a cover is a guest. One guest = one cover.
Moving on. Now let’s say that throughout the week you serve 350 tables. 50 tables per day. Multiply 50 tables by $60 and that equals $21,000 per week, which comes out to approximately $85,000 – $90,000/month, which in turn comes out to around $1 million per year. Ballpark. It’s just hypothetical. Could be more or less.
Now, this amount of money is what people would have spent no matter what, just by your servers showing up and taking their order. But through the magic of upselling, the numbers increase exponentially. For instance, let’s say that your staff upsells a well vodka soda to a Grey Goose and soda which means instead of spending $6 on their cocktail, they are spending $9. Then they upsell bacon for $2 on a burger. They upsell a glass of wine to a bottle of wine. You get the picture. There are multiple techniques they can use here.
Now, when doing an example, let’s be completely conservative here. Cellar dwellers, I like to call it. An impossibly easy number to achieve. The bare minimum. Let’s say that your staff—using upselling—is able to increase check averages just $1.50 per cover. That’s almost impossible NOT to accomplish. That means with just three covers per table, that the check average will increase $4.50. Let’s see what that does to the numbers and your bottom line.
350 tables per week x $4.50 = $1,575 per week
$6,750 per month,
$82,000 per year
Just from just $1.50 increase per person. Which is ridiculously achievable. Imagine if you increased each cover by $3 You’re now looking at $164,000 per year more in additional revenue.
You get the point, yes? Yeah, now who loves upselling? But again, this takes making it a priority and put it into your daily training strategy for your staff. Execution. Preach it until it is emblazoned in their thick skulls.
STRATEGY #2: DRIVE MORE BUSINESS ON SLOW NIGHTS
This one of course this falls under category #1, which is to get more butts in the seats. As we all know, there are dozens of ways to try and entice people to come into your bar on slower nights: promotions, specials and theme nights being the most popular.
You might already have some great ideas, or you might already be doing some sort of promotions, so the trick is to do it better. Remember: execute, execute, execute. Don’t do a half-ass promotion. You need to ask yourself questions like, “How can I make our trivia night or karaoke night the best Tuesday night in town?” and “Should I run a happy hour?”
If you need some fresh ideas, you can download my BIG Black Book of Bar Promotions for Free. It has 51 awesome bar promotions to pack your bar. Just click on the image to get your for free.
But no matter what promotion you choose, make it something you can get behind and be passionate about so it’s an unforgettable experience for your guests so they want to come back again and again. Remember, everything you do is for the purpose of creating an amazing experience for your guests.
And then finally…
STRATEGY #3: MENU ENGINEERING
I’m not going to go into great depth about menu engineering here, But I do have a free training video for you if you’d like. You can check it out here:
In that video I also go over upselling, because that’s how much I love it, but menu engineering involves highlighting and drawing attention to your most profitable menu items so that your guests will be more likely to order them.
If you’re just throwing items on your menu with no sense of order, you are losing out on a lot of profit. There is a science to this that you and your chef or kitchen manager need to take time to learn.
It’s a few simple things you can do when you put your next menu together that will make a huge difference in increasing your check averages, and we’ve seen what an increase in check averages can do to your bottom line.
In addition to menu engineering, I love the idea of putting premium or “luxury” items on your menu. Something outrageously expensive simply because there are people out there who love to boast their status to those around them, and they will order it just to show off, so why not put an extremely high-end food and liquor item (like Louis XIII for $1,200 per shot) on the menu for those who are happy to give you their money?
Now, of course these three methods aren’t the only ways to increase your revenue and sales, but I wanted to give you three strategies that you can implement right away, so you can start seeing results immediately, get those sales up.
But remember, these three basic, yet powerful strategies are worthless if you do them half-ass, or worse yet, you don’t do them at all and just hope people will come through your door and hope they will just have a hankerin’ to spend more money by buying more premium products and add-ons. You have to make it happen. You have to execute the fundamentals.
See you next time. Go execute.
Dave