How To Get More Customers In Your Restaurant? 16 Steps To Consider
When managing, working, or owning a restaurant the most important thing is to get people in your restaurant to eat, and serving them well so they are satisfied when they leave. If your customers aren’t satisfied that would have catastrophic consequences in a long run.
Luckily we live in a world that offers basically limitless innovative ways that you can promote, improve, and eventually bring more customers to your establishments.
We have listed the absolute best ways to do so because we want to help you to get the ways into your attention and then you can take action to make it happen! There are tons of people in the restaurant business that aren’t doing so well because they aren’t taking enough action and trying new ways to improve their business because there are multiple ways that will work differently for different restaurants.
Enough said about that now let’s get into the part that you can actually include in your plan to get more customers!
Contents
- 16 Ways On How To Get More Customers In Your Restaurant
- 1. Run Contests
- 2. Regular Giveaways / Email Marketing
- 3. Birthday Gifts
- 4. Free WiFi For Customers
- 5. Host Sporting Events
- 6. Take Great Photos
- 7. Simple Website
- 8. Google+ Reviews
- 9. Online Ordering
- 10. Offer Gift Cards
- 11. Live Music
- 12. Wine / Beer Tasting Nights
- 13. Promote Holidays
- 14. Regular Customers
- 15. Promoting Through Local Influencer
- 16. Social Media
- Conclusion
16 Ways On How To Get More Customers In Your Restaurant
1. Run Contests
Running contests can bring extra customers like herds if the offer is enticing enough. For example ”#tag us in your Instagram picture about food and the best 3 pictures win a $50 gift cards’ or anything between.
There are literally hundreds of similar ideas to get behind and only the imagination is the limit. This will certainly bring more customers in and the new customers will bring their friends and family, therefore three $50 gift cards are nothing compared to the profits of a contest.
2. Regular Giveaways / Email Marketing
Giveaways are a great way to increase traffic to your restaurant, and even better digging your way into the customer’s minds so they will remember you and probably come back!
For example, you could place a tablet in the entrance and when customers come in or leave, they could participate to join the giveaway by giving you their email. Remember to make the offer interesting enough so people will actually do it.
Customers will now remember your restaurant better but there’s even a better perk to this! With that email that they just provided for you, you can run email campaigns and send them all the upcoming events, promotions, discounts, contests,s and everything else so they are up to date with your restaurant and will surely come to check them out! Imagine having thousands of names in your email list, that will give traffic that’s for sure.
We Recommend running giveaways through the year at least once a month, preferably twice.
3. Birthday Gifts
When your customer is opting in their email address you can ask for their birthday as well, and you should mention birthday gifts so the email providers will increase even more. When the time comes and it’s the customer’s birthday, you can offer them a free dessert, 50% off, or whatever comes to your mind that is exciting and appealing.
With that offer, the birthday hero will of course bring friends/family to celebrate and there is another increase in your customer base. The chances are after a good birthday celebration the family and friends will opt-in as well and the circle goes on and a snowball effect has been made.
4. Free WiFi For Customers
When living the modern day’s people work with laptops really much and the numbers are only increasing each year. Free wifi will surely attract people to enjoy a snack, coffee, or lunch while working so that is a great way to increase customer base as well.
5. Host Sporting Events
This can be an extremely powerful way to get tons of new customers and even regulars to choose your restaurant, and people in the middle of a heated sports game spend a lot of money as well which is like double benefits for you.
However, if your establishment is fitted for sports events, that is really up to your reputation and restaurant style.
6. Take Great Photos
As foodies when we are walking in a street and see really poor photos in front of a restaurant that should be exciting and appealing we are forced to think about how that is affecting their customer traffic and believe us, it is affecting in some way.
It’s really important to have attention-grabbing photos and promotions so that people are thinking ”Wow!! That looks amazing!” and the pictures practically force them to come and see your menu.
Keep in mind that with great photos the food must be great, preferably even better than in the pictures so the ”wow” effect will remain. If you over-flatter your meals and the customer is disappointed, that is like the plague when considering the restaurant business.
7. Simple Website
There are surprisingly many restaurants with really, really bad websites with ridiculous loading times because of all the useless special effects that nobody cares about. Let’s face it nobody has come to see your background music on your website and confusing slide effects that just will confuse people. Keep it simple and add nothing additional that is needed, which will result in fast loading times, satisfied, and even impressed customers!
8. Google+ Reviews
Every restaurant promotes itself as a good restaurant as they should of course, but as we all know the real answer lies in the reviews. When holding a good overall reputation and giving yourself out there, other people will choose your restaurant over others that don’t have reviews, or even worse the ones that have bad reviews.
9. Online Ordering
The food business has changed drastically in the past years and enabling online ordering such as Postmates can have the biggest impact on sales. Ordering over the phone is nowadays a lesser option because it wastes especially the staff’s time, and no one really wan’s to order by phone when the competitor is offering easy online ordering, takeaway, and delivery.
10. Offer Gift Cards
Really easy and simple, but will have a positive effect for sure! Gift cards are a major player in sales and I as well personally love to give gift cards as a present and everyone always loves gift cards!
11. Live Music
Live music is something that you can include in most restaurants and that will really lift the overall feeling about your restaurant and give an inviting feeling towards people.
Be sure to schedule the right kind of music that fits into your restaurant theme and once you do it and it’s a success, keep it coming because people now are expecting it in the future.
12. Wine / Beer Tasting Nights
You probably are serving wine, beer, and other alcoholic beverages in your restaurant and a lot of people are passionate about those things. Hosting a wine tasting every now and then will be exciting, inviting, and giving you an intriguing reputation! Give samples about different wines in the side of other businesses and people will be left thinking about the night you hosted in the long future, resulting in them coming back for more.
13. Promote Holidays
Holidays are important to nearly everyone and locals are always looking for an exciting place to be on the big day. Promoting and advertising your interesting events that are taking place will have a huge impact on holidays in terms of customers and sales.
You could for example host a costume contest, dress codes, and other holiday-themed ”rules” and enticements. After great holiday celebrations, people will find their way back to your restaurant in the future as well.
14. Regular Customers
Don’t focus only on new customers but Charise and appreciate the regulars that are coming in every day. It’s a great idea to actually speak with them and be interested in their matters and cases are that you will make a loyal customer for years to come! That’s truly special in the restaurant business and will make you feel extremely great when someone is choosing your place to be THE place to be.
15. Promoting Through Local Influencer
If you are not super familiar with influencers you should know that they have an unreal effect on their followers and if you can get an influencer to your restaurant and him/her posting all about it on their Instagram page or where ever, that will be insanely beneficial.
You can simply email influencers or send them a direct message and offer them free meals, merch, gift cards, or simply paying them to come and enjoy in your establishment.
16. Social Media
The last idea on our list but definitely not the least. Social media is nowadays a powerful tool in matters of traffic and getting people to know your restaurant. You can run even paid ads that are literally your purchasing views and if you can do it right that will be a huge benefit and can result in way more customers than expected.
There are a ton of free ways to promote your business such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and many more that you can benefit from. You should check our Social Media Promotion Post and learn more about it.
Conclusion
We sincerely hope that this post has been beneficial to you and you had at least a couple of new ideas to elevate your restaurant and business to the next level. Feel free to leave a comment if something new you tried has been helpful and how are your restaurant business doing after taking some of these new steps into action.
Remember action will get you there so start immediately at least with one of the ways and you will get new customers for that, we are certain.