How To Make Your Restaurant Stand Out
If there is one thing you’ll want to do when you run a restaurant, it’s to make it stand out. You’ll have plenty of competition around you, so you’ll need to ensure you’re doing at least one thing (and perhaps many more things) differently compared to your competitors. If you can do this, you’ll make more money, gain a better reputation, and find a loyal customer base. Since all of these things are crucial in business and when you run a restaurant, it’s worth considering what you might do to stand out. Read on for some helpful ideas.
Take Advantage Of Pop Up Opportunities
Pop-up stores are an exciting new way for businesses to showcase their products in a place with plenty of footfall. The idea is that this can be a sort of preview of what the rest of the business offers, and those happy customers will be more likely to go to the main store and buy there as well.
If it works for products like clothing and household goods, could it work for a restaurant? The answer is yes. If you can find an opportunity to sell your food in a pop-up version of your restaurant, you should do so. In this way, you can find new customers who might not have been aware of you before. Make sure there are samples for people to try as well as full meals to capture as many people’s interest as possible.
Use Technology
People like to use technology where it makes sense to do so, and there are a number of ways that you might be able to implement this idea in your restaurant to help you stand out. One thing that can work well is to employ pay-at-table technology. Take a look at how pay at the table works, and you’ll see that it offers customers a much more efficient way to pay for their meal - when they’re done, they can pay right away rather than having to wait for a member of staff to help them.
Other technology to use in your restaurant could be a booking system on your website so that it’s easy to book a table for a time of the customer’s choosing, for example. Or perhaps you could use something as simple as wifi and make sure each guest has the password and is free to use it when they’re with you.
Offer Cooking Lessons
Something that will make you stand out and bring in additional revenue (which is always a bonus that should never be overlooked if possible) is to offer cooking lessons. In many cases, a chef will try to keep their signature dishes a secret, and that can be what draws people to the restaurant. But what if your chef gave lessons on how to make that signature dish at home? What if guests could pay to learn how to cook their own specific favourite item from the menu?
This would be a unique offering, and if the food is good and people enjoy eating it, they will be intrigued to learn how to do it themselves. You might think this would make you less money because once someone knows how to make a dish, they won’t come and pay for it in your restaurant, but remember, you have many other dishes they might want to try at your establishment, especially if they already love what you do, and even if they can cook it themselves, it’s always a treat to have it cooked by a professional.
Change The Menu
Sticking to the same tried and true menu can be comforting, and certainly, some patrons are going to enjoy seeing the same dishes every time they visit, but it’s not going to help you stand out.
If there are some dishes that are very popular, they can stay on the menu at all times, but why not change everything else on a regular basis? You could do this once a month, although that’s a lot of hard work, and not enough customers will have been able to sample the dishes. It’s usually better to change your menu once a quarter and change it with the seasons. In that way, you can always have seasonal produce on your menu, which keeps it fresh and interesting.
This is an important point for a number of reasons. For example, if you are using local produce, you can show you are an eco-friendly business that works with local producers, and that’s something else that will help you stand out.
*contributed post*
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