Only a few things are as broadly challenging and multifaceted as establishing a restaurant. And keeping your eatery on top of its game for the long run is an even bigger pill to swallow. You ideally need a mix of creativity, strategy, and commitment that outshines your competitors.
The hospitality industry, especially the restaurant industry is highly competitive.According to the most recent studies, 6 out of 10 new restaurants close their doors in their first year of opening, and 8 out of 10 shut down in the following 5 years.
So, why exactly are such a massive majority of restaurants failing? And how can you save yourself from becoming one of them?
If you want to open a restaurant, use these 8 restaurant business growth strategies for your restaurant success.
Know Your Customers
It’s crucial to know your targeted audience and optimise your services to cater to their requirements if you want to succeed in the restaurant business. For example, it’s an unwise investment to run a hard-core meat-based menu in a vegan-majority community. It’s critical that you understand what your clientele wants and how you can deliver it better than the already-established restaurants in town.
To ensure the long-term success of your restaurant, it’s important to start with thorough market research, and only after knowing the exact expectations of your targeted customer can you lay a strong foundation on which you can build your restaurant.
Knowing your clients will also enable you to focus your marketing efforts in the right direction. If there’s a younger clientele, market your establishment on social media channels, and if you are targeting lower-income people, you may prefer pushing your restaurant’s message through online reviews.
Invest in Technology
The integration of technology in routine restaurant operations improves processes, increases efficiency, and ensures seamless interaction with customers. In this regard, key technology investments should include robust restaurant management systems and a EPOS systems such as 3S POS. Such tech will enable you to make quick decisions and achieve new levels of insights from sales data, thereby offering a full view of your restaurant's financial health.
Other than the 3S POS system, investing in a solid reservations and online ordering platform reduces the risk of mistakes in manual operation, provides an enhanced customer experience, and takes the pressure off the workers.
In addition, providing customers with digital menus makes it easy for diners to learn about the menu items and make their choices. Having a dedicated inventory management system is also extremely valuable so that you can easily keep track of stock and rotate accordingly.
With POS reports, you can easily track your restaurant's growth trends and gain valuable insights into your customer's spending habits. These insights can help you optimise your offerings to meet customer requirements, which is essential for driving sales and keeping customers satisfied.
Quality is Everything
Quality is not only a checkbox; it needs to be your underlying principle and the guiding star for all decisions in your restaurant strategy. Every factor, from the choice of ingredients to the arrangement of dishes on the menu, must speak volumes about the level of quality you aim to provide. Maintaining quality not only guarantees that you surpass the expectations of your target audience but also helps you establish a dining atmosphere that becomes synonymous with the best restaurants out there.
Diverse Revenue Streams
In the ever-changing restaurant industry, it's important to have multiple revenue sources. You can consider options like catering, rental revenue from the space, pop up locations at local markets and sending out dinner kits for delivery. You could also host cooking workshops and collaborate with other businesses to help you keep the revenue flowing, especially during the low traffic days.
Find a Unique Selling Point
As a restaurant owner, figuring out your unique selling point is the only way to differentiate yourself. A USP is something that makes you one of a kind and pushes your target audience to eat at your place because of these unique things you offer.
To identify your USP, start by looking at your target market to figure out what customers are looking for that they can't find nearby. It might be a mutton steak or a sauce that incorporates a secret recipe.
Find out what it is, learn how to make it, and get your chef trained. But it doesn’t just have to be about the food. Alternatively, you can have speed, quality, lower food costs and food waste, staff friendliness, or anything else as your USP.
After identifying that one thing that makes you different, make it a part of your restaurant's brand, push it through marketing, and present it to customers at all touch points. Make it known that you’re the home for the best meat in town, committed to ensuring that your consumers are guaranteed the best experience ever.
If you’re exceptionally good at your UPS and are able to deliver on your promise, you will get clients willing to eat at your restaurant forever. Providing you with repeat business, which in turn enables your restaurant to turn a consistent profit in the long run.
Find a Star Chef
This will be the most crucial decision that eventually determines the long term success of your restaurant. A terrific chef is a dreamer who propels your growing enterprise forward with new ideas and delightful food. Having this star player ensures you consistently have a line of eager guests waiting to eat your food. A chef with an inventive mindset will set your eatery apart from the rest of the pack.
Keep Your Staff Happy
A restaurant is only as good as the people working there. Well-trained, organized, and motivated kitchen staff and front of house lead to excellent customer service in your restaurant. A happy staff member can do more than just take orders and bring food. They can also connect with customers, improve customer engagement and create loyal customers.
It goes without saying, staff members deserve decent salaries and benefits, along with a chance to excel in their careers. Establish a working atmosphere that encourages relationship-building between employees.
Conduct regular advanced staff training courses to help them acquire new skills and encourage teamwork and collaboration. Celebrate staff success, and make them feel connected to your restaurant. In the end, a motivated team will guarantee satisfied clients and restaurant success.
Be Consistent
Once all these major growth strategies have been integrated, we must stress the importance of remaining consistent. Consistency pulls strings on all the other factors mentioned above, making sure that every step you take will make your restaurant successful in the long run. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so don’t expect your restaurant to run counter-parallel to this proverb.
Consistent quality in customer satisfaction, branding, ingredients, and food will help you establish and maintain trust and, consequently, loyalty, which acts as the pillar upon which your long-term growth will be built. The bottom line is it’s not enough to excel in one area; you must consistently deliver excellence across all aspects of your restaurant’s operations to survive in the ever-changing restaurant industry.
For almost 20 years, 3S POS has offered one of the most flexible EPOS systems to international brands such as Caffe Concerto, Maroush, Comptoir Libanais, Pepe’s Piri Piri, GDK and thousands more delighted customers.
If you are looking for an Restaurant POS System that will not just help you accept payments but includes inventory management, loyalty programs, and much more, speak to our sales for a free demo.