Due to the pandemic, the food industry has been affected greatly. Bars and restaurants were forced to close down following strict safety and health protocols. To recover, tons of food places are looking for new and different ways to recover. The problem is, reaching out to customers again and keeping them interested in eating at your place is not an easy task. Do you need some real-world promotion ideas for your restaurant? Then check out this guide!
Understand your margins
Knowing the margins of everything on your menu is useful in creating a profitable bundle of offerings. For instance, while you can always opt to give a free milkshake to every customer within a particular time frame, it might be better to offer free milkshakes when customers buy a particular meal. Promote offerings that have high-profit margins as a lead into the items in your menu. Be sure to know your margins to figure out the right discounts to give.
Plan holiday promotions
For everyone in the business industry, holidays are perfect times to offer more and earn more. Pick the best holidays where your customers are more likely to dine out and plan it out. You can host Halloween costume contests where customers can get gifts or giveaways or a Thanksgiving event with a specialized menu. These promotions aren’t just great for attracting people to come in, but most of them will also share or tag your restaurant on their social media posts.
Work on your specials
Famous restaurants always make an effort to curate their specials. You can have happy hours in which you’ll offer food specials, beverage discounts, or both. You can do similar deals every day or different specials for each day of the week.
There are also lunch specials wherein you can offer salad and sandwich combo deals to fill your place even during quiet hours. Or, opt for weekday specials and offer different drinks or food, and use fun alliteration such as Meatloaf Monday and Taco Tuesday, or Margarita Monday and Tequila Tuesday, and so on.
Create loyalty offerings
People have always love loyalty programs, and having one can make customers dine at your restaurant more often. Common loyalty offerings include buy three large milkshakes and get one for free or get a free beverage for every order of items on your special menu. You can give exclusive punch cards to your loyal customers so that they can get a free cup of tea or appetizer on their next visit. Make sure not to offer too generous discounts. Instead, offer something that’s a good profit margin for the restaurant and an enticing deal for your customers.
Get some renovations done
Let’s be honest, most customers today typically opt for places that are aesthetically pleasing or what they also call “Instagram worthy.” If you want to get these people’s attention, you have to make sure your restaurant looks appealing inside and out. Bring in some intriguing backdrops and decors, repaint your interior and exterior walls with a new color, hire landscaping or snow removal services for clean and beautiful grounds, or use mismatched seating and tables for an interior change. Make your restaurant picture perfect!
Take advantage of social media
Are you a picture-perfect restaurant with a great menu but don’t get too much attention? Use social media to promote your business! There are tons of paid advertising options for businesses out there that want to boost brand awareness and engagement. The good news is most of the social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook offer affordable advertising. This can help you generate traffic for your site, boost your promotional content or posts, and get more shares and likes for your restaurant page.
Engage with influencers
Another effective method to advertise your business is to engage with influencers or food bloggers. There are many ways to do this other than straightly paying the influencers to take a video and say something nice about your restaurant. You can invite food bloggers and their friends to dine in your restaurant for a great discount. Or, you can send them free food and politely ask them for feedback. However, it’s unfair to demand a positive review, but asking for an objective one is not.
These are just some of the amazing promotion ideas to help your restaurant get more orders and earn new customers. The best promotional plans are planned, prepared, and organized in advance. Just take into account to only apply the tips that best suit your restaurant, budget, and of course, customers. Use our list above and be ready to increase your sales and profits.
