In the age of Groupon, it can be difficult to keep people coming into a restaurant with a pricey nametag. You shouldn’t have to lower your prices or the quality of your food to compete. With a little creativity, you’ll be able to show customers your value without changing your values. Follow these tips to your customers coming without having money come out of your pocket.
Offer Better Food
The generation of today wants good, quality food. They often delight in locally-sourced, responsible food. If you offer this, make sure to promote it. If you don’t offer any locally-sourced items, take advantage of your local farmers market. Start small and try a few ingredients.
Your better food doesn’t necessarily have to be local, organic or gluten-free to compete with the cheap restaurants, but it is important that your food is better.
Offer a Surprise
The big chains are collecting email addresses, and if you aren’t, you most definitely should be. This is a great way to offer special deals for birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, etc. You should be doing anything you can to make your customers feel special.
Offer Something for Everyone
There are more vegans and vegetarians now than ever, and it’s important that you cater to everybody, even if this is not your practice. The more inclusive you are, the more customers you’ll have coming back. It can be frustrating for a group of people to try and pick a restaurant when everyone has different dietary restrictions, so make sure you include lots of gluten free, vegetarian, and vegan options.
Offer Better Service
Simply put, experience is everything. One experience of bad service can be so off-putting that you could potentially lose that customer forever. Make sure that you’re a hiring confident, capable waitstaff that you can trust in any situation to take care of your customers.
Feel free to use one or all of these tips, and let us know how it goes!
