How to get a competitive advantage to regularly increase your customer spend

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2 How to get a competitive advantage to regularly increase your customer spend PURPOSE This document will explore the different ways restaurant managers and restaurateurs can increase customer spend on a regular basis through innovative use of technology. INTRODUCTION Maximising every customer s spend is one of the biggest challenges that restaurants face on a daily basis. Some rely on the charismatic staff to promote offers and stock, whilst others rely on having a good memory and relationship with their regulars. But what if you could increase each of your customers spend on a regular basis? We explore a few ways restaurants can (and are) using technology to increase customer spend. BEFORE DINING GETTING YOUR CUSTOME RS THROUGH THE DOORS The first step to increasing your customer s spend, is getting them into the restaurant in the first place. Whilst many diners may make bookings, no shows are always an unwanted distraction to your service. Traditionally, staff would be allocated to start one to two hours early to attempt to contact patrons by telephone before service to reconfirm their bookings. With the use of innovative SMS services, restaurants can now automate this process, which leads to more cost efficiencies. Restaurants are slowly embracing this mobile technology; venues ranging from casinos with many onsite restaurants, to local savvy restaurants are utilising this technology with great results, finding the cost of an SMS message far outweigh all other communication options (e.g., a person and a phone). A recent observation has shown that when one the UK s premier restaurants started utilising acknowledgement SMS s coupled with a reminder SMS, they were able to reduce their no show rate significantly.

3 THE DINING EXPERIENCE Now that your customer is seated at your restaurant, you are faced with a completely different prospect; to upsell the experience. It has become increasingly competitive to make a dining experience stand out. Traditionally, restaurants would have relied on good relationships with their long-standing repeat clients to remember their favourite dishes/wine, and thus be able to upsell items. By integrating a Point of Sale (POS) system with a real time table management system such as ResPAK, you can do this on a regular basis with almost all your repeat clients. Imagine having the ability to have a record of what a returning patron ate and drank previously! For example, having the ability to record any wine purchased by the customer gives a sommelier the insight to suggest bottles that are prices in the same range or greater the next time they visit your venue. Integrating table management software will also prevent the following scenario from occurring. The old story comes to mind about the new waiter out to impress on his first week on the job. A customer comes in and asks what wine the waiter could suggest for his meal. Without the knowledge of the patron being a regular that usually buys from the premium $100+ range, the waiter innocently suggests a nice $30 bottle of wine, resulting in a loss of customer spend from a regular.

4 LOOKING FOR OTHER WAYS THAT TECHNOLOGY CAN INCREASE CUSTOMER SPEND? 1. Invest in a Table Management System that can control real time reservations across your entire business. There is nothing worse than losing a guest s reservation because a staff member wrote it on a piece of paper and didn't enter it into the booking diary. 2. Get to know your customers. When investing in a Table Management System, ensure that it has a thorough CRM (Customer Relationship Management tool) capacity that is suitable for your restaurant, to capture information on your patrons. This will allow all your staff to offer the same level of service and increasing the return patronage of any guest. 3. Make the customer s experience seem effortless. Invest in anything that can quicken the customer booking process, whether it is online booking tools, better reservation management tools, or SMS services to confirm reservations. Every element adds up to enhancing the experience. 4. Market to your existing client database. Don't forget your most valuable asset is a well maintained database. Use this to your advantage. For example, if you don't have enough bookings for a Thursday night, send a quick SMS or out to patrons in the local area inviting them to come in for a last minute special.

5 Activity Before dining questions: What do you currently do to reduce the number of no shows to your restaurant? If you were to utilise an SMS service for your restaurant, what would your cost savings be? (Remember the labour costs, and how you could re-allocate those resources). This number will give you an indication if investing in an SMS service would be beneficial for your business The dining experience: Identify the last time you were able to upsell a wine or a customer s favourite menu item. How much more were you able to increase your customer s spend? Now, imagine having the ability to do it consistently for all repeat customers. How much more revenue would you generate from being able to do so? Next steps: Do a google search for restaurant management software specialists to find a solution for you to implement for your restaurant. Good luck! This content is sponsored by AS Digital. AS Digital is a full-service Digital Agency providing world leading software & internet solutions together with marketing strategy, design and development to venues in the hospitality industry and their customers. With a global footprint in over 40 countries and over 2500 clients worldwide, AS Digital connects restaurants with their diners. ResPAK is the most comprehensive and reliable Table, Reservation and Guest Management software solution in the hospitality industry. With seamless integration into the world s leading POS and PMS systems, as well as bookarestaurant.com for real-time, instantly confirmed online bookings, ResPAK provides venues with a 360 degree view of their front-of-house operation. Since 1983, AS Digital has seated more than 250 million diners at partner restaurants, ranging from Michelin starred fine dining restaurants to casual suburban eateries. The company is based in Melbourne, Australia with products and services available via direct or reseller relationships throughout the world. W: E: info@asdigital.com P: