There is a lot of content available to restaurant owners about short and long-term goals. Everything from boosting average check order values to getting more diners in the door. While these restaurant goals make sense from an operational standpoint, there are other goals restaurant owners should focus on that don’t get much attention. Our top four restaurant goals are often overlooked but can be crucial to your ongoing success.
Know and Show Love to First-Timers
Every business faces the question, “how do you get customers to come back for more?”. As a restaurant owner, getting people to try your restaurant for the first time is no small feat. So it is critical to make a great first impression! Most businesses are pretty good at making sure their regulars feel welcome and cherished. But when it comes to first-timers, restaurants could do a better job. Growing your business long-term will be problematic if you don’t focus on moving first-timers into the loyal customer category.
Make it a restaurant goal to earn the repeat business of at least 70% of your clientele every month. If an avid restaurant-goer in Los Angeles dines out three times a week, that’s twelve times a month. People love discovering new experiences when they dine out, so it is safe to say that about eight of those dining experiences will be at establishments customers visit for the first time. That leaves four meals per month for customers to return to old favorites.
Make it your goal to capture this business. The key is making your first-time guests feel a level of satisfaction that they can’t help but share with anyone that will listen. If you treat your first-time customers with this level of care, you will see increased revenue and build a solid foundation for your restaurant for years to come.
Maximize the 51% Solution
In the restaurant business, it won’t be easy to implement the level of service and excellence to drive repeat business if you don’t hire good, talented people. When evaluating people who can help your restaurant reach its goals, you want to look intently for those who have strong emotional and technical skills. If the ideal candidate were to score 100 on a suitability test, they would score 49% for technical excellence and 51% for innate emotional skills. You want someone who can do the nuts and bolts of the job with ease. But relating well to others on a personal level, being optimistic and thoughtful, curious, having a great work ethic, showing empathy easily, being self-aware, and having high integrity would count for 51%. It’s a perfect balance.
As an owner or manager, you should make it your restaurant goal to hire more for emotional skills than technical skills. Unfortunately, most restaurants hire people who can mostly do the technical aspects of the job fine enough. But the ratio between technical and emotional is more like 80-20 than 49-51. As such, guests often leave without feeling cared for and feel like their outing was more a transaction than an experience. Having caring, genuinely friendly, and thoughtful people will be rewarded in repeat business and great word of mouth from satisfied diners.
Feedback Percentage
Businesses love to talk about hearing from customers and getting feedback and reviews. So why is it that companies don’t seek it out? Restaurants are no different. How often have you experienced excellent service and been asked to not just give a review on your experience but provide honest feedback on aesthetics, service, food, operations, and any other part of the overall restaurant experience?
Restaurant owners should make it a goal to get feedback from every customer that comes through the door. First-timers, regulars, it doesn’t matter. Make it effortless for your diners to provide recommendations, tell you their thoughts on any subject, and become a “partner” to ensure your establishment thrives.
Feedback is different from a review. A review talks about the experience at a given time overall. Feedback gets more granular about the experience and can highlight areas of improvement that can take your establishment from good to great. Make it a goal to get feedback from 50% of all diners that come through your doors over a given year.
There is a lot of content available to restaurant owners about short and long-term goals. Everything from boosting average check order values to getting more diners in the door. While these restaurant goals make sense from an operational standpoint, there are other goals restaurant owners should focus on that don’t get much attention. Our top four restaurant goals are often overlooked but can be crucial to your ongoing success.
Boost Online Ordering, Delivery, and Takeout
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, restaurants have had to adapt to a changing landscape, where more people ordered takeout as dining rooms were closed. Now that things have opened back up and diners are filling dining rooms once again, the shift in online ordering, delivery, and takeout isn’t going to subside. People realize the benefits and ease of online ordering, and your restaurant needs to ensure it can keep up with ongoing demand.
Using an online ordering system such as ChowNow will provide your restaurant with all of the tools it needs to efficiently and cost-effectively get food into the hands of hungry diners who don’t want to dine in. Make it a goal of yours to invest more time and resources into promoting your online ordering and delivery options to ensure you maximize the revenue potential of your most ardent customers.
Any business needs to have goals in place to reach its full potential. This is definitely the case for restaurants operating in such a competitive industry. As you evaluate your restaurant goals, think outside the usual metrics and expand your goals to include opportunities to make your customers smile and grow your bottom line.
