What’s the key to increasing your restaurant’s revenue? For some restaurateurs, the best way to increase revenue is to increase the number of customers that visit their restaurant. For others, it’s to increase pricing while serving the same people.
For others, the best way to increase restaurant revenue is to focus on getting more – both in terms of revenue and total orders – from the customers that already dine in their restaurant or café.
Increasing your per-customer revenue is one of the best ways to increase the total amount your restaurant earns. It’s also possible without raising your prices, which can often reduce the amount of people that visit your restaurant.
There are several ways to increase your average per-customer spend, but one of the best ways it through table tents. Effective use of on-table marketing materials can be all that’s required to significantly increase your restaurant’s total earnings.
In this blog post, we’ll share three simple but effective ways that you can increase the amount of revenue your restaurant or café generates using on-table marketing materials and table tents.
List your top-performing dishes and drinks
What are your restaurant’s top-performing dishes? Most restaurants generate most of their orders from just a few dishes – the Pareto Principle of 20% of actions, which are in this case dishes or products, producing 80% of results, or in this case revenue.
Understanding your restaurant’s top-performing dishes can be the key to getting the most from your existing menu. By focusing on these dishes in your menus and other marketing materials, you can increase your per-customer spend.
This is because most customers will choose a “safe” option – food that they already know they like. Listing your most popular dishes, particularly at the beginning of a menu, makes them more visible for diners in your café or restaurant.
When you’re designing your menu, place your top-performing dishes near the top of the design so that customers always see them. This increases the chance of someone ordering several dishes from your most popular section.
The same logic can be applied to drinks, desserts and other items. List your popular items towards the beginning of the menu so that customers can quickly locate their “safest” choices and feel comfortable making an order.
Offer set menus for lunch and dinner diners
Set menus are renowned for offering good value, which is why they’re a great way to increase your restaurant’s sales. Customers that see a set menu will almost always look through it, with a large number ordering the set course as their meal.
Offering a set menu has several advantages for your restaurant. It makes preparing food easier, since multiple orders of the same set menu are far easier to prepare for your kitchen staff than several wildly different dishes.
It also has the potential to increase your average per-customer spend. This is due to the higher relative cost of set menus – which include drinks, and often desserts – in comparison to an order for a single dish.
Customers often rationalize the cost of a set menu as being great value, even though it’s more expensive than ordering a single dish alone. This allows your restaurant to passively sell optional extras such as drinks, desserts and salads.
Include upsells like desserts, drinks and more
Upsells can make or break a restaurant’s earnings. Since drinks, desserts and other popular upsells are inexpensive to prepare and easy to market, they’re an excellent way to increase your restaurant’s sales and generate more revenue.
How well does your menu emphasize upsells and optional extras? Many menus put desserts, drinks and other optional dishes towards the end of the menu, making it unlikely that most customers will spot them.
Instead of hiding your drinks and desserts towards the end of the menu, make them as visible as possible. A great idea is to create a separate menu for drinks or desserts so that customers can view them independently from other dishes.
This has two benefits. Firstly, it increases the amount of attention that people pay to desserts and drinks. Secondly, splitting dishes onto two menus can make the price of each individual dish seem relatively lower since they’re viewed separately.
How optimized is your restaurant’s menu?
Improving your menu and other on-table marketing materials is one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase your restaurant or café’s sales? How optimized is your restaurant’s menu?
