Running a restaurant is anything but simple. Nothing can guarantee your success, but you can definitely increase your chances with these very important pieces of advice. Tooliers has some tips and tricks for restaurant owners, in order to make your life easier.

1. 1.      With your menu as the focus of your restaurant, don’t list your prices in a column down the side of your menu. Also remove the currency sign ($, £, €). By leaving the price only in numbers, your guests will likely spend more. This allows your guests to focus on your food, rather than on price – leading them to choose what they really want to eat, instead of the cheaper option. Simply place the price after the description of the item.
2. 2.       Why aren’t your guests coming back? Perhaps you need to take better care of them. Train your staff so they are more attentive and courteous to your guests. By training your staff, you are empowering them to deliver a premier experience along providing them with a sense of purpose, which your guests will appreciate.
3. 3.       Do you play music in your restaurant? Well, depending on the type of restaurant you have, you need to choose the right music to create the right atmosphere. Remember not to play it too loudly, because you’ll end up disturbing your guest’s experience. Also, don’t use the radio! You can use radio only if you own a café, not a restaurant.
4. 4.      Want more traffic to your website? Adding a map to your site can boost local search results! Google and other services can help by making available embedded maps on your website. Allow those visiting your website to visually find your restaurant.

Adding a map to your site can boost local search results!
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1. 5.       Did you know that 60% of restaurants fail within 3 years? In order to be a part of the other 40%, when opening a restaurant, you need to have enough capital to sustain your business for at least a year.
2. 6.       Do you need to provide your employees a reason to stay? Give them the opportunity to earn incentives or bonuses, because you don’t want them to leave you when you need them most. You can also use team building exercises to help and motivate them to work together.

Use team building exercises to help and motivate them to work together.
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1. 7.        Nowadays, social media creates the perfect environment for people to connect with each other, brands and restaurants.  Make the most of your social media presence.  You can start giving, for example, 10% discounts via Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare.  Not only will you get more people as your audience, but your sales will also increase.
2. 8.         The menu is the center of your restaurant’s universe. Does your menu mention the preparation method (braised, seared, oven-roasted)? This keeps guests focused on quality and not on prices, which could lead to 27% sales increase.  Use convincing, but realistic descriptions, for your customers to feel good about their choices.
3. 9.         Don’t forget about your menu’s design! It is proven that restaurants which list the most expensive items at the top of the menu have better revenues. If you use this tip, you will see your guests buying more.  That is because compared to the first items, the others seem reasonable. This also works if you list the expensive dishes on the right side of the menu, since people have the tendency to look there first.
4. 10.       Transform your slowest night into cash generator.  Determine your slowest night of the week and create a special offer to increase sales during that night.  By having a special offer, you’ll attract guests that would have otherwise not come into your venue and you’ll generate more cash.  You can offer a buy-one-get-one-free night, or bring a jazz singer, or organize a comedy night, or even some sort of bingo night.  You know what your guests enjoy best. .

What would you add to our list of tips and tricks for restaurant owners?

The post Tips and Tricks for Restaurant Owners appeared first on Tooliers Blog.

It’s ancient knowledge to restaurant owners that the customer is always right. That is the key for business development.

Yet, so many places still fail to educate their frontline personnel to use customer feedback constructively, rather than neglect it or, even worse, take it personally and transform the table chat into an “I’m right – you’re wrong” dispute.

In the hospitality industry, just like any other sector, the customer is always right.  This simply means that, even when your guests are technically wrong (as they often may be), your staff should still acknowledge their opinion and do their best to deliver to expectations, or at least communicate in a specific way that their requests are taken into consideration.

Your staff should acknowledge customers’ opinion and do their best to deliver to expectations,.
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It might be true that the client had the same fruit cake the previous time she was in the restaurant, but if she says that the previous time it was sweeter this simply means that she is looking for a different tasting experience and indirectly asks for a suggestion.  Your waiter’s job is to satisfy this new sweet craving by recommending another cake, rather than enlighten the client about what she really had the previous time.  This is a simple way to stay focused on the opportunity (up sale), and avoid a dispute.

Shrugging off an unreasonable complaint is bad business for your bar or restaurant: your wait staff gets used to shrugging off complaints (unreasonable and reasonable), your customers won’t return to your premises and the ones that still want your special treat of the day won’t go into “feedback-giving-mode”, anticipating an unfriendly response.  Unsurprisingly, the best waiter is not the one that is always right but the one who knows how to receive, respond to and help managers use customer feedback to improve your services.

Acknowledging your clients even when they’re wrong doesn’t mean you are living a lie.  It simply means that you are truthful to your foremost objective: being successful in a customer-centered business.

Be truthful to your foremost objective: being successful in a customer-centered business.
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If you want to get a systematic assessment of your present marketing effort you can generate your customized marketing assessment report using Marketing Lens, the business-development self-assessment for bars and restaurants  available online on tooliers.com.  This tool is especially designed for bars and restaurants to help them identify their main weaknesses in their marketing activity.

The post The Customer is Always Right! The key for business development appeared first on Tooliers Blog.

Attract customers into your restaurant and see your sales going up.

Discover how to maximize the number of customers and reduce the number of empty tables using Marketing Lens Assessment for Bars and Restaurants.

Research shows that for a typical business, 20% of time and money generates 80% of its success. By zeroing in on the right 20% of your efforts you can considerably multiply your success. This means a huge space for business growth.  Understand your business from a fresh perspective and discover what to add to what you are doing already, what to do better and what to stop doing.

Understand your business from a fresh perspective and discover what to add to what you’re doing.
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Marketing Lens is a tool designed to help you accomplish precisely that.  This self-assessment audits your current marketing activities and gives you new insights into the way you run your restaurant business.

It’s quite simple.  After you fill in an online self-assessment (multiple choice questions) you will get a visual report in which you can identify easily the enablers and weaknesses of your business.  Your customized Marketing Lens Report shows you new ways to:

• – attract customers and reduce your vacancy rate
• – market effectively
• – stand out from the crowd by differentiating your offer from that of your competition
• – generate top-of-mind awareness amongst prospective clients for your brand, products and services
• – gather valuable feedback and ideas from your market on how to improve your products  and services
• – increase visibility and brand awareness in your market and build a lasting reputation
• – ensure, maintain and improve marketing effectiveness

One more thing. Marketing Lens draws upon an impressive and invaluable body of research. This self-assessment was designed combining classic and brand new ideas about marketing. It uses concepts coined by authors such as Philip Kotler, David Ogilvy, Seth Godin, Guy Levine and Scott Klososky.  Taking the Marketing Lens assessment is just like employing all these great minds to work on your business.

Start today your diagnosis and attract customers!

The post No More Empty Tables Tonight – Attract Customers In Your Restaurant appeared first on Tooliers Blog.

The Client: A bar in New York

Business Challenge: The bar, a well-established and successful business, pursues the objective of attracting more customers in order to double its turnover and use marketing more professionally.   To do this, the bar’s management decided to start using a marketing diagnosis report designed to improve marketing effectiveness.

Red Flags: According to the Marketing Lens Report, the marketing diagnosis report generated on tooliers.com, the main challenges were:

– limited use of educational marketing with limited impact in generating sales 
– unsystematic knowledge about competition
– incomplete use and limited impact of marketing tactics
– inadequate use of online marketing.

Solutions:  The bar’s management put up a list of solutions based on the key findings of the Marketing Lens Report.  As a result of two brainstorming sessions, they came up with the following solutions to improve marketing effectiveness:

Use educational marketing to build a stronger brand.
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1. use educational marketing to build a stronger brand

• – promoting the theme events organized in an education-based style by sharing interesting information about the themes (for example, the history of burlesque)

• – including information about beer making or nutritional and health information in the bar’s food and drinks menu and promotional materials.

2. identify and use clear and relevant information for a better and more useful understanding of the competition:  products, marketing budget, sales initiatives, promoting channels, promotional activities and company structure.  The first action after choosing the criteria was to study three rival bars that have the same target and to identify which of their tactics have good impact on their businesses.

Identify and use relevant information for a better understanding of the competition.
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3. implement a voucher-based cross-promotion initiative

• – strike a partnership with another bar from a different area of New York, that has the same target market.  Each bar gives a free drink voucher in the other bar, offered together with the bill.  This way, both bars push clients from one another, keeping their clients close.
• – partner up with five stores (5 min walk from the bar) by offering a free drink to anyone that buys merchandise of $50 or more.  This way, the shop gives a present to its clients, and the bar gets more openhanded clients into its premises.  These clients come in usually during the dead time of the bar (2pm – 6pm).  Thus, this is a way of generating a nice additional profit, without any investment or cost.

4. better use of online marketing tools

• – encourage clients to submit positive reviews on tripadviser and other review sites
• – PR Manager responds timely to all reviews, especially the negative ones
• – upload photos and videos with the bar’s fantastic atmosphere on social media channels (facebook, google+, youtube) and review sites (tripadviser).

Results:

– bar’s brand strengthened by education-based marketing 

– an increased number of good business ideas collected from competitors

– new clients attracted via the voucher-based cross-promotion initiative that generate additional profit with no investment

– bar’s online image improved and new customers attracted.

If you own or run a small to midsize business you can use Marketing Lens to grow your business in a similar way. The 7 minutes diagnosis is available here.

Improve marketing effectiveness starting today!

The post Marketing Lens Case Study: Improve Marketing Effectiveness Using Self-Diagnosis appeared first on Tooliers Blog.