Driving new guests, increasing product Sales, and generating profits require you to build brand awareness of your restaurant or bar. Leveraging marketing and sales tools is one of the best ways to achieve these goals. However, most restaurants and bars in the United States are not familiar with digital resources, tools, and channels to streamline the process.

Whether you have a small restaurant, bar, or national chain, you need a solid marketing strategy to spread the word, win over more diners, and generate higher profits. Today’s article will discuss the best tools to help you reach your target audience and drive those hungry new customers to boost product sales. Read on!

An Intuitive Website

An intuitive and user-friendly website is essential for your restaurant or bar because it improves your brand’s online presence and converts traffic into customers/guests.

Research shows that 77% of people check a restaurant or bar’s website before eating or drinking there, and about 70% of diners avoid visiting a restaurant with a poor, slow, outdated website.

Therefore, you must create a new and well-designed website with helpful information like menu, hours, and contract details. On the other hand, you can update your restaurant or bar website by increasing its speed, optimizing mobile friendliness, adding social media links/widgets, and an About Us page.

Don’t forget to illustrate your restaurant’s mission, vision, and history. Likewise, share your brand story to solidify connections with your existing customers and potential guests. Add an “online ordering” feature to your website because it helps convert potential guests into customers.  You could develop your website by Dhepa Coding Studio

Social Media Channels

Social media is the best tool to increase product sales in your restaurant or bar. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are reliable social networking platforms for restaurants to share information with existing customers. Similarly, you can reach new customers reliably and quickly by publishing valuable content.

Social media platforms allow you to interact directly with diners, run ad campaigns, track performance via analytics and modify your strategy from time to time to achieve optimal results. For instance, you can share menus and special food items/liquors and repost customer photos.

You can run daily polls asking questions about menus, staple food items, ambiance, online delivery, and more. The purpose is to get feedback and generate valuable insights. These insights will help you make informed decisions.

Moreover, publish photogenic, graphic-rich, and video content to increase engagement. Learn Hub reports that video content generates more likes and shares than text-based content because viewers absorb 95% of your marketing, product, or service-related message.

Read More: How To Increase Food & Beverages Brand Awareness

Email Marketing

Email is an excellent method to spread the word about your restaurant or bar and remind customers to choose your establishment the next time they dine out. According to Web FX, email marketing is a profitable marketing technique for businesses because every $1 you spend will return $44.

You can find numerous email marketing tools to ramp up your campaign. The purpose is to create attractive emails, create eye-catching messages, and track metrics/performance indicators via analytics. Focus on growing your subscriber list while refining your email marketing campaigns. For example, you can gain subscribers through the following:

• Discounts
• Birthday surprise
• Complimentary appetizer
• Free delivery service

Special Offers or Promotions

A recent research report highlights four out of five (80%) of people make a first-time purchase due to an “offer” or “promotion.” So, offering a special package or deal for first-time customers will encourage them to decide quickly and choose your restaurant for dining or ordering food.

We suggest adding banners or photos of “free delivery” for first-time customers on your website or smartphone app. Besides, win back previous guests by offering a 20% or 30% discount on their next order. Offer “15% off” on every menu item for customers who order over $25. You can use these strategies to increase your average order value.

Moreover, promoting specific menu items to existing and new customers is an excellent way to increase sales. Use this strategy to incentivize larger basket sizes. Focus on new releases and highlight the most delicious, demanding, and profitable items on your website, social media pages, and smartphone application.

Inventory Management Software/App

Most restaurants and bars find it challenging to streamline inventory management and control costs. If you experience the same issue, you can find and use a reliable inventory management system to monitor what you sell and how much food/liquor costs you have on hand. Therefore, switch from the traditional, time-consuming, and manual spreadsheets to a cutting-edge inventory management system. The goal is to improve your restaurant or bar’s internal efficiencies, record inventory data, and generate valuable insights to improve profit margins.  

KEXY is an advanced, feature-rich, and user-friendly tool to optimize inventory management and achieve efficiency, reliability, and speed by 85%. KEXY is a fully customizable tool, allowing you to use features that best fit your needs. So, you can create unique workflows and gain insights that truly matter to your restaurant or bar’s success.

Loyalty Programs

Acquiring new guests is daunting, time-consuming, and costly. However, you can achieve your goals by implementing loyalty programs. Research shows that successful businesses have 41% of revenue generated from the top 8% of customers. So, customer loyalty is critical to your business’s overall success.

You can build customer loyalty in various ways, such as offering “punch cards” to your guests and encouraging them to leverage your restaurant’s POS system. So, this strategy allows your customers to collect points or cashback as they check out. Likewise, you can give customers $5 or $10 off of their next order with you.

Final Words

According to the National Restaurant Association, establishments, including restaurants, cafes, and bars, experienced $65 billion of losses in sales compared to sales in the pre-pandemic era. Failing to adopt the “new normal” caused more than 90,000 restaurants to close their doors.

Various factors affect restaurant sales, such as seasonality, quality of food and service, menu and pricing, location, branding, technology adoption, and cost reduction. Businesses can use the tools/strategies above to streamline product.

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