With the growing number of restaurants every day and a variety of choices available for customers, the restaurant industry has experienced a boom and is trending nowadays. To keep the sales rising and the customers increasing, some essential strategies for the restaurant business are to be kept in mind.

Important tips to increase your restaurant sales:

1. Setting up a customer base: A happy customer would always return to your restaurant and would publicize by word of mouth. Treat them well, ask for their valuable feedback, recognize them when they re-visit and work on their reviews to retain them.
2. Improving the table turnover rate: To avoid long queues outside your restaurant, it is essential to have a staff who instantly clean and reset the table once it is free. The billing procedure should be quick and the orders placed by the customers should be prepared immediately. Quick and efficient service creates a good impact on the minds of the customers and they return happily to your restaurant.
3. Social media Marketing: Various platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, etc. help in increasing your restaurant sales. Being the most upcoming medium of promoting your sales, you need to be up to date in handling them. Regularly updating the pages, uploading new pictures, and informing the customers about the new and upcoming events or any new offers or launches would invite more customers to your joint.
4. Online ordering: Many people nowadays prefer to sit at home and order food. Offering online food delivery would help you increase your customer base and increase your restaurant sales even if you have a limited seating capacity.
5. Having your website: This is an important marketing strategy as it contains all the latest updates on the events you are planning to host and any other information regarding your restaurant. To make your presence felt and to stay in the market, you need to create a fabulous restaurant website.
6. Off-line marketing: Both online and offline marketing are essential in the promotion of the restaurant. For not so tech-savvy people, especially the elderly and others who prefer to follow hoardings and newspaper ads, should not be ignored. Distribution of flyers and pamphlets is an important way of marketing thereby focusing on all kinds of customers.
7. Happy hours and the BOGO offers: This feature invites many customers to your restaurant and helps in your sales, especially on holidays and festivals when you offer complimentary dishes along with the main course. The happy hours are generally valid at a particular time during the day when the sales are low. This is done to increase the customer footfall by providing 1+1 offer on beer or cocktails, catching the eye of the customer. Many customers nowadays are opting for mini meals. These variations can also be included in the menu as they provide a good option to choose from.
8. Hosting events: Inviting a guest to your restaurant, organizing a comedy night, a karaoke night, a solo performance or inviting a band will not only bring the old customers but create an opening for you to invite new customers as well. Special care needs to be taken in the marketing of these events so that they reach potential customers.
9. Menu pricing: Another essential feature in increasing your restaurant sales is the prices offered by you. Keeping in mind the kind of audience targeted, the area and the location, all should be taken into consideration before determining the cost of the dishes.
10. Establishing a rapport with the employees: It is essential to take the employee’s opinions regarding the sales of the restaurant as they are the ones who are dealing with the customers. Having a direct conversation with them over a meal enhances your relationship with them and they shall serve you better by providing better customer service. They should be encouraged to use techniques like upselling to increase the restaurant sales.
11. Featuring on Google: Getting associated with Google will help your customers to easily search for you so that they can call you directly or locate you easily. More so, you can request the customers to leave positive feedback on your business page which in turn would attract more customers.
12. Email marketing: This is another way to interact with your customers, thereby increasing your sales. Sending regular emails to your customers and updating them on all the new happenings keeps them associated with you. Sending periodicals and newsletters to your customers helps them stay in touch with your restaurant.
13. Analysis of reports: The owner needs to know in detail about the sales from all the outlets. Real-time information regarding the number of bills generated from all the outlets, the total sales and the discounts offered are all available on a single screen when you use a POS software to run your restaurant.
14. Creating loyalty programs for customers: To build up the customer base and retain loyal customers, you can create a program that helps the customers to earn points on every visit which can be redeemed later.

Certain features like online ordering, upselling, implementation of loyalty programmes, and promotion on social media are all ways to reach out to new customers and influence the old ones to come back for a revisit to boost restaurant sales. A combination of these strategies will help you to pick up sales and to run a successful restaurant.