Promotions are a great way to get people interested in your restaurant and show off everything it has to offer. We’ve come up with a list of 15 ways to promote your restaurant that can increase sales, boost profits, and give you a plan for running your own highly successful marketing campaigns.
In what ways do restaurants run promotions?
In a nutshell, the key to increasing sales is to devise promotions that attract new customers and encourage repeat business from existing ones. Coupons, QR codes, and discounts sent through email or on the customer’s receipt are just some of the ways that restaurants promote everything from their signature meals to their happy hour specials.
1. Familiarize yourself with your clientele
Without knowing who your current customers are and who you want them to become, your promotion will fail.
Pose the questions: Do you have close proximity to commercial establishments? A big stadium? What age range do you find most of your clients to be? Are there many families visiting? Consumers are driven by a desire for what you offer, be it novelty, adventure, or value. In order to come up with restaurant promotion ideas that encourage repeat visits, you should first answer these questions.
2. Consider Your Organization’s Obstacles
Restaurant promotions can be a great tool for helping establishments of all types and sizes deal with problems that are specific to their industry; however, the root causes of these problems are best uncovered by digging into the data and analytics provided by your restaurant’s POS system.
Is there something on the menu that isn’t getting much attention, or maybe a time of day when your employees aren’t doing much? Reduce the prices of slow-moving items and introduce a happy hour during slow periods.
3. Income or publicity?
Many profitable campaigns try to boost brand awareness and ultimately sales. PR-driven marketing campaigns can have a greater impact than sales-driven ones in some cases. Their value is directly proportional to the amount of attention they attract to your brand.
Theorize on this: A limited-time offer of discounted menu items is only effective during the promotion’s actual duration. However, publicity from the media can last for much longer and may even boost pageviews months after the article was published.
If you want to give your business a boost every few months, you could try reaching out to a local reporter and setting up a few press opportunities during the quarter.
4. Profit Margin Awareness
Finding out the profit margins of each menu item is crucial. In general, it’s wise to use high-margin items as a hook to get customers interested in the rest of your menu. You could, for instance, provide free fries to everyone who purchases a milkshake for a limited period, but this may not generate as much business as offering free fries whenever a consumer makes any other kind of purchase.
Having a firm grasp of your profit margins can equip you to more effectively manage your inventory by guiding your discounting, purchasing, and other allocation decisions.
Also Read: Restaurant Business Tips
Best Food and Beverage Restaurant Promotion Ideas
1. Capitalize on a Major Community Event
Plan a promotion around a big event that will be happening nearby, like a sports game, concert, or festival. This brings in customers and lets a lot of people know about your restaurant. You’ll be able to use the marketing for that event to help you.
For example, give people who have tickets to a nearby hockey game 5% off or $5 off any purchase before a concert down the street.
2. Celebrities and charitable organisations
It can be quite costly to hire a celebrity, even a local one. However, you may be able to sway them if you offer to give a portion of the day’s earnings to a cause they care about. Involvement with a well-known entity will boost publicity for your eatery and demonstrate your commitment to helping the local community.
For instance, a famous person could bartend from 4 to 8 p.m., and the money made from pizza sales could be donated to a local food bank.
3. Holidays
What plans do you have to celebrate the holidays with your clients? Why should they include you and your brand in the social media posts they make about the event? Make it so they can’t help but tweet about it and invite all their friends to join them next time.
Examples include Halloween costume contests with prizes, gifts for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and a Mother’s Day trivia night.
4. Providing Value for Your Loyalty
The trick is to set a bar for a free dinner or discount that’s high enough that it’s actually worth it to you. The usage of restaurant loyalty technology facilitates guests’ ease of opting in.
You can get a free coffee after purchasing eight, or you can save 10% on beer for an entire year if you buy all of the beers on the list.
5. Community Events
By opening your doors to community groups, you gain access to their member base and, as an added bonus, they will spread the word about your business. To help those in need without having to host an event, you could split the proceeds with them. Give a percentage of (or all of) your earnings for a certain time period.
Take the local sports team as an example: each week, donate half of the money made from your Thursday happy hour to help them out financially.
6. Buy in bulk and sell for more
Like loyalty programs, the key is to know how much customers usually spend on a certain item and then give them a small discount if they spend a little bit more.
For example, take $5 off an appetiser when you buy a gift card for $50 or more, or give a free beer with every two orders of wings.
.Also Read: Restaurant Promotion Ideas
