Whether you own a small coffee shop or a restaurant on a busy high street, you constantly want to be maximising your profits. This could be because you have dreams to expand, or just want to keep being a popular and reliable destination for your customers to enjoy. Whatever the reason, it can sometimes feel hard to know what to do to increase sales and maximise your profits.
This is why the team at Freshways have put together this guide to 10 great ways to increase the profits at your restaurant or cafe. Read on to find out more.
Open An Outside Area
While an attractive storefront is great for attracting customers inside, being on the street or road means you can make a profit without customers even having to set foot inside your cafe or restaurant. This could be a counter selling your delicious baked goods, or a takeaway drink stall so your customers can get some hydration on the go.
This can be perfect in any season. During the colder months you can sell delicious warm food or drink, and in the summer provide refreshing alternatives to cool people down. If you’re a restaurant, having outside seating will increase the number of potential customers you can be serving at once, leading you to get more money. Passersby will also be able to see the great food and drink you’re serving and potentially come in for a meal.
Get Online
In this modern day world, the best way to bring business to you is through social media. Start Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts, where you can post updates about your business, special offers you have on and have the opportunity to chat with customers.
This way you can attract customers who may not have ever heard of your cafe or restaurant before encountering it online. You may even go viral online if you have an interesting, unique product on offer.
Free Samples
Offering free samples of food actually encourages customers to buy the normal version. They might see something that they’re not sure about and not want to waste the money on it, but if they have a sample first and like it, they’re more likely to decide to buy the product.
So get a member of staff out on the street with samples. This could be small bites of food or shot glasses with your best drinks inside. They can then point people in the direction of your business, maybe even giving over a voucher to encourage them.
Simple Selection & Specials
Having a lot of products can overwhelm customers, leading to fewer sales. Think carefully about what your business does best and what sells more. Keep these items and consider getting rid of the less popular ones.
You can also offer a daily special. This is a great way to maximise profits as customers are more likely to order a special. Having a large quantity of one item means lower costs and higher margins. The special changing every day will also encourage customers to come back to try new dishes.
Host Events
Increase profits by hosting events at your cafe or restaurant. Allow other businesses to rent out the space for a party, or host your own events. This could be a book club, concert, wine and cheese night or speed dating. You can cater the event yourself and include this in the ticket price, or the guests can buy food and drink once they are there.
Pre-Packaged Selections
Expand your customer base by offering pre-packaged plans. You could offer a picnic bundle including a selection of pastries and drinks, so customers can take your products to the park and enjoy them.
Another idea for a restaurant is making meal kits up. This can include all the ingredients of a dish and a recipe to follow along with, meaning your customers can make and enjoy your great dishes at home, perfect for a date night or when they want to treat themselves to a top quality dish. You could even make it an interactive live workshop, where customers tune in to a live stream of one of your chefs making the dish, so they can follow along with top tips.
Reduce Waste
You can reduce waste and maximise profit by making sure all of your expiring food and drink is sold before the end of the day. Apps like Too Good To Go allow cafes, shops and restaurants to package up their goods that are still edible at cheaper prices to make sure they are sold by the end of the day.
Another way of reducing waste is by doing careful inventory and analysis of what products are popular. This way you won’t end up buying excess ingredients for products that might not sell as much. For example, if only one dish uses limes, you may want to think about reducing how many limes you buy or consider changing the dish so you don’t use ingredients that aren’t popular.
Knowledgeable Staff
Customer service is the key to any business. Customers do not appreciate rude staff that do not know anything about the business. Make sure your staff are all friendly and they know the menu. This way they can ask customers what they feel like and make recommendations to them, making the experience more personal. Customers are more likely to buy more items at once and keep customers coming back for excellent customer service.
Loyalty Scheme
All customers like to feel special when they are at a cafe or restaurant. A great way to do this is to reward their loyalty with a loyalty scheme. Millions of businesses offer loyalty schemes in different forms, from the basic stamp card to more sophisticated apps and websites.
If you are a small cafe, one of the easiest ways to build loyalty is with a scheme where you get a free drink if you buy a certain number of them. While a free drink may seem counterproductive to making profits, having a loyalty card will encourage a customer to come in more and buy things from your cafe. A normal customer might not come to your cafe multiple times if there are other options, but if you have a loyalty scheme they’ll be encouraged to come back.
A restaurant can offer exclusive deals for loyal customers, such as a free starter, glass of wine or money off the total bill. A loyalty scheme can be adaptable to you and your business, so choose the option that suits you and your business model the best.
Go Wholesale
One of the best ways to increase profit on your business is to shop wholesale and in bulk instead of in small increments. Wholesale is when a business buys goods in large quantities, either directly from manufacturers or from a wholesale business. As they come directly and in large volumes, you can normally get great deals on the prices.
For example, a supermarket might sell you a bag of flour at a markup price so they make a profit on it, but with a wholesaler you can buy 10 bags of flour without any added money to the price, saving you money in the long run.
Buying wholesale and in bulk is a great idea for cafes and restaurants as instead of constantly buying expensive ingredients from supermarkets, you buy a bigger quantity for cheaper. This will save you money and also mean you don’t have to constantly keep running out to buy more ingredients when they get low.
Freshways: Your Wholesale Food Suppliers
If you’re looking to make the switch to buying wholesale products in bulk, work with Freshways today. As well as being the UK’s largest independent processing dairy, we stock a variety of everyday brands that your cafe or restaurant would need, including bread, eggs, juice and assorted dairy products we produce ourselves.
We supply our products to clients of all sizes across London, Wales and the rest of the UK, offering amazing quality products at competitive wholesale prices. There are no third parties involved in our process, meaning you can expect a fast and efficient service direct from our family run business.
For more information about our services, call now on 0208 746 2046 to talk through your requirements with one of our friendly and knowledgeable team. Ready to shop? Visit our website today to browse the full selection of products and brands we offer and order online.