Limited Seating Capacity; How to Strategize to Boost Sales

In this new normal era, restaurants have to cut their seating capacity down to comply with government measures, and impact is inevitable. More than half of the normal seating capacity is gone, but the costs haven’t decreased along with it. So, how do you boost your sales? We have some strategies to introduce.

First, you should know that the source of sales is from the number of customers X the average price per person.

The price per person = the amount of money a customer pays for 1 meal at the restaurant per day.

So, if you want to boost your sales and profit, there are two ways: increasing the number of customers and increasing the average price per person or the amount of money paid by each person. Let’s take a look at how you can boost the number of customers and the average price per person.

Ways to Boost Sales for Buffets:

Let’s start with buffet restaurants. The first thing restaurants with several price options should consider is cutting out the lowest price option, so you’re left with the medium and high price options or just one price option to increase the chance to make as much profit as possible from the limited number of customers in each round.

Another method is to reduce the eating time for each round, for example, from two hours down to 90 minutes, which is the average time for eating at a buffet. This method helps speed up the table turnover rate. If you can make customers finish eating 30 minutes faster, you might gain enough seats for two more rounds and increase the opportunity for more customers even though the seating capacity is reduced.

Ways to Boost Sales for Buffets vs a La Carte Restaurants: For a la carte restaurants, when the number of seats is limited and social distancing is enforced, sitting as a group or a family is reduced and ordering a lot of dishes to share with each other is more difficult. The recommendation is to offer 1-person meal sets to boost sales more easily. Customers can make decisions more easily and feel worthwhile. In addition, it’s convenient for restaurants to handle and reduces eating time which helps speed up the table turnover rate.

Boosting Sales Through Other Channels

1. Takeaway is another way to boost sales that many brands have done, for example, creating a grab-and-go menu so people can choose>grab>pay>sit down and eat or take it home. You could make a shelf and place it in front of your restaurant where the food can be conveniently selected by any passerby or the customers in your restaurant can even buy some to eat at home or for someone at home.

What you have to consider is the packaging must be ready for customers to buy and eat immediately without the hassle of having to find a cup, plate, bowl or spoon.

2. Have promotional periods for customers to buy and go eat somewhere else, for example, offer promotions around lunchtime because it’s a time when customers would gather simultaneously. Since your seating capacity is limited, you’ll lose the chance to sell. However, if you can make it so customers can buy the food to go eat at home or at the office, you can boost your sales. You’ll have to lose some money to the promotion, such as for a 10% discount, but it’s still worth it.

3. Sell through Delivery, So Customers Can Order Everything All in One Bill: In the end, the delivery option is still necessary. However, we want to give you something to mull over: Most restaurants only choose to offer their main dishes for delivery.  For example, a savory restaurant would only offer savory dishes. However, from the customers’ point of view, they want each delivery order to have everything, so it’s worth the delivery fee, including savory dishes, desserts and beverages. So, consider what your restaurant is missing and whether you can fill that gap. If it’s not convenient for you to do it yourself, could you coordinate with another brand to boost your sales?

   Other than the limited seating capacity, some restaurants that originally only sell from the evening to almost sunrise also have to face the curfew that prevents them from selling during their regular hours. Our suggestion is to switch to selling during the day instead. However, a lot of locations don’t support daytime sales. If that’s the case, you’ll have to set up your restaurant earlier and prepare the ingredients from home. That way, when it’s time to open, you can start selling right away without having to waste time preparing the ingredients. Also, if you’re prepared for it, you could sell via the delivery channel during the day from home to boost sales.
   
   Images from: Facebook Texas Chicken Thailand

   Click to read other articles here:

• Discounts for Better Profit! We Invite You to “Lean Your Whole Restaurant”; Reduce Chances for Financial Losses and Deficits
• Meal Kits, a New Sales Opportunity for Restaurants
• Save Costs, Create Cash Flow: A Restaurant’s Way to Survive
• Is Your Restaurant in a Crisis? Check Your Status Now with the P&L Method!
• 5 Ways to Cut Food Costs Without Lowering Quality!
• New Normal, Changed Consumer Behavior; Restaurants Need to Adapt in Time