How to make your restaurant or café more successful
Café culture in the UK is booming and it’s hard to walk down a high street without passing numerous coffee shops and restaurants with tables spilling out onto the pavement. If you are thinking of going into the restaurant trade or you already run your own café or restaurant, you’ll know that you are only ever as good as your last meal served and your last review. This thought can be a nerve-wracking as you need to maintain high standards to ensure your profits rise continually. Below are some top tips that can help to make sure your restaurant or café stand out from the crowd and pull in even more customers.
Ride the highs and the lows
Running a café or restaurant can be challenging at times, as can running any small business, and you need to be prepared to ride the highs and the lows. There may be months of selling out each day and taking seemingly endless bookings for tables but be aware that there can also be dips in business, especially at the start when you are trying to establish your name. Persevere, be flexible and mentally prepare for long days and hard work.
To theme or not to theme?
You may wish to theme your café to give you a unique selling point and make your establishment stand out from the crowd. It could be anything from a cat café, where customers sip their drinks as they share the space with an array of beautiful cats, to a café dedicated to board games, where customers can order a Sunday Roast as they get Monopoly underway. Or you could specialise in something, like cocktails or craft beers. Ultimately, this will help attract customers and make you stand out from other cafes.
Branch out
Perhaps your busiest time of day is the lunch rush and post work things quiet down? If so, look at ways to branch out and get more people interested. Could you host an open mic night or a poetry slam? Get local bands in or run fun workshops in the space? Not only would you potentially reach new customer bases with this but you could also earn more as people will continue to spend throughout the evening.
Retain your staff
The restaurant and café business is famous for high staff turnover, and investing in your staff can pay off by ensuring they stay with you for longer. Share the tips out fairly and ensure the management never take a percentage of the tips. Train your staff well, make sure they know what the food or drinks specials are and let them taste them all so they can describe and recommend dishes to customers. Motivate staff with monthly competitions, such as selling the most coffee in a day. Recognise their hard work with an employee of the month acknowledgment, offering a small prize as an incentive. Ensure you give regular breaks and offer them food during a long shift.
Customer service with a smile
Very rarely a café or restaurant will do well almost despite their customer service. In some cases, this has even become the selling point, a chance to test the reputation of rude waiting staff. However, for most cafes and restaurants, having friendly and professional waiting staff and customer service is essential. People don’t want their coffee served with a scowl or their soup slammed down in front of them. Eating out should be a relaxing experience, so train your staff to put the customer first and ensure it is a pleasant atmosphere for all. Ask staff to make sure each customer feels welcomed, make eye contact with them and be honest about wait times. If you give customers a good dining experience, it will pay off with repeat custom and positive word-of-mouth recommendations.
Go seasonal
If your menu feels stale, try to mix it up. Offer a special menu night, such as a fondue evening or a vegan taster menu for one night only and sell fixed-price tickets in advance, so you know how many you’ll be catering for. Introduce seasonal dishes and keep produce as fresh and local as possible. These days many people are interested in eating organic and lowering their food miles so tapping into this can help to give your business a boost. Keep your menu relatively narrow so you can use fresh foods and give relatively quick service. You don’t want to overload your kitchen with too many different types of food at any one time.
Invest in equipment
Investing in top quality equipment can help to ease the running of a café or restaurant. Buying an expensive coffee machine that can make lattes, flat whites, cappuccinos and espressos may seem expensive initially but will pay off in no time once word of your quality coffee gets around, and you could also offer a takeaway service. A glass washer machine may be useful, as will upright freezers and fridges. Don’t underestimate the importance of waste disposal, for example, Tapflo air pumps could help with the efficient waste removal of oil and fat during cooking.
Family friendly
If you want families to come to your café or restaurant, you have to make sure they feel welcome. Install a baby changing facility, ideally in a unisex toilet so both parents can change a baby. Provide colouring pens and notepads for little customers and put a toy box in a corner to keep the kids happy. If you have space and want to prioritise a family-friendly atmosphere, then you could invest in some soft play equipment and advertise to mothers and parents groups as a meeting up destination, even offering coffee and cake deals and a specialised kids menu. Once you’ve decked your place out for kids, you could host children’s birthday parties as another potential money earning avenue.
Know your business inside and out
Make sure you know every aspect of your business inside and out so that you can make sure it all runs as smoothly as possible, and jump in should any problems occur. For example, a staff member might call in sick, or your delivery might be delayed, so you need to be quick thinking and able to help out to ensure ongoing success.
