3. GOOD MARKETING SUPPORT
Having established your USP, you’ll need strong marketing support to promote your unique offering and help fill your tables. From your restaurant sign and window display to posters, emails, promotions and more, marketing is an essential facet of your business that must not be ignored. Importantly the latest tech trends can allow you to capture customer information and build up clear customer profiles. Integrated loyalty/order ahead apps, online booking platforms and guest wi-fi data capture, all allow you to identify your customer base and market more successfully to them. If you don’t have the experience in-house, employ an agency to help you get the word out there and shout about how great you are.
4. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Geographical location is everything in the restaurant trade, and you’ll need to choose this with care if your restaurant is to be a success. You’ll need a site with enough footfall to attract passing custom, but without sky high rents or overwhelming competition.
5. KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER BASE
Who’s buying your meals, and how can you cater to them? Whether it’s the last word in fine dining or a fast food drive through, a successful restaurant understands its customer profiles and ensures that pricing, décor and menu choices are tailored to their wants and needs. Depending on your audience, extras like balloons and crayons for kids or luxurious moisturiser in the powder rooms will help make your restaurant a place they want to return to.
6. TAKING STOCK
A successfully run restaurant doesn’t run out of popular drinks or essential ingredients, and nor does it create waste and lose money by over-ordering perishable items. That’s because canny restauranteurs use information from their POS systems to monitor stock levels against the demand for their products. The reality is that most successful restaurants having a tight control of GP (gross profit) margins. A couple of % difference can be the difference between success and failure!
7. HEALTH AND HYGIENE
It’s not the most glamorous side of running a restaurant, but having health and safety policies in place and enforced, together with a decent hygiene rating, is the mark of a successful establishment. Customers want to know they are eating somewhere clean and safe.
