How Restaurants Can Increase Repeat Customers
As a restaurant owner, you want to increase your sales. To Increase your sales, you need to sell more. A great way to sell more is to have repeat customers. A=B=C. According to Food Service Warehouse, frequent guests only account for about 15% of your customer base, but that 15% provides about one-third of your revenue. Getting those frequent customers can be a challenge, but if you follow these time-tested ideas, it won’t be as hard as you think.
Our Town, a program developed by Inventriks is a prime example of finding a target niche to start with: newcomers. Try this twist on a traditional, ‘welcome to the community’ gesture: send them a promotion through the mail, they’ll appreciate that you took the time to seek them out, and that is a great foundation for a relationship.
A simple way to create repeat customers is to make it convenient for them. Granbury Restaurant Services suggests expanding your service types by adding carry-out, curbside, or delivery. Add channels for customers to order by creating an online store. Food Service Warehouse also advises offering bouncebacks to get first time customers to come back. These can be used in various forms: BOGO (Buy One Get One), product specific discounts, or ‘free with a purchase’ coupons. This encourages customers to come back in a timely manner.
Once you’ve gotten a customer to come back a second or third time, then you can offer a loyalty program. Loyalty programs can be as simple or as complicated as you want. A great simple ‘loyalty program’ is simply remembering their name and what they usually order to drink. Show that you remember them, and make them feel special. You could also offer punch cards that can be redeemed after coming so many times, or purchasing so much. Loyalty cards that could be swiped can also be used for customers to build points to redeem. This rewards your customers for coming back, time and time again.
Lastly, guests generally judge a restaurant by more than just the food they ate. Often, bad service can make a delicious meal intolerable. On the other hand, people are often drawn back to a restaurant because of a great service staff. Deanna Irvin says that a great thing to remember as a manager or owner is that an employee is an investment. These investments take a lot of time and money to train, and can be an endless pool of knowledge about the inner workings of your restaurant. This knowledge comes with experience. Keep in mind that losing any staff member is a loss to your business in more ways than one. Build a great sales staff by valuing each of your employees, talk to them individually if there is a problem, maintain a hands-on approach to training, and remember that there is never an end to training.
By applying all of these approaches, you should be able to increase not only your customer base as a whole, but bring in repeat customers. What you’ve got to offer along with the service you provide can go a long with if you manage it right. Inventriks Develope Restaurant Menu Order System for all Restaurant.
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