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Just as different people like all kinds of food, there is a wide range of restaurant concepts and categories to meet the broad expectations of customers. While it’s great to have such a variety of cuisines and formats, a restaurant’s levels of success can often be improved by a narrower set of key considerations.
There are an estimated 27,000 restaurants in Australia – how can you make yours stand out? You’ll find the sweet spot when you successfully couple the art of food with the science of business. Here are 10 tips to help you run a successful restaurant and set your business apart.
1. Carve out a unique niche for your restaurant
Hopefully, you will have created comprehensive business and marketing plans as you established your restaurant. Now, to drive them towards success, it’s important you stand out from competitors by promoting what makes your venue unique.
Your mission as a restaurant owner will play an important role in determining your market niche. Perhaps your mission is to serve your customers fresh, locally sourced, sustainable produce, or maybe it’s to celebrate a specific culture or cuisine. For example, Alatonero on the Mornington Peninsula serves authentic Greek cuisine, which is reflected in its branding. Whatever your mission is, it’s crucial for shaping your restaurant’s identity, guiding its operations, and connecting with customers and staff.
Whatever price point you’re operating at, you can create a unique and memorable customer experience by carefully designing the ambience in your restaurant to match your brand. Factors such as music, decor and lighting all play a part and can be tailored to suit your unique restaurant concept.
You could reinforce this uniqueness in your branding, social media and other revenue streams such as merchandise. Lox in a Box owners Candy and Gaia saw a gap in the Sydney market for good quality, house-made bagels. Discovering that both their grandparents operated delis in the UK, they launched their brand, which combines tradition with a contemporary spin. Successfully expanding from one location to three, they also sell stylish retro beanies, caps and even homewares such as their signature fish bottle water carafe – there are no limits to the possibilities for reinforcing or building on your branding.
2. Serve a quality product
Quality should be considered at every touchpoint in your restaurant, and it starts with your product. Buying quality ingredients will not only keep your customers happy but can also mean a reduction in wastage and, therefore, an increase in your bottom line. While your market position and price point (key elements of any successful business plan) will shape what ingredients you can afford, it’s important to align yourself with quality suppliers whose products and services you trust and whose own mission and business values align with yours.
The same principle goes for your equipment, furniture and fit-out. A ‘buy once, buy well’ mentality, whereby you purchase the best quality equipment you can afford, will help you deliver a better product and give your customers a more comfortable dining experience. It might also mean savings in maintenance and replacement costs.
3. Consistency is critical
Consistency establishes trust, so it’s essential your customers know they can rely on your service and product. From sourcing to serving, delivering a consistently excellent product increases your word-of-mouth exposure and helps turn one-time customers into loyal ones.
Consistency always starts with staff training for your entire team, no matter their role. Consistency at the point of sale (POS) and in the kitchen is vital. But your menu should also be planned with the delivery of a consistently high-standard product in mind. That might mean simple meals, ingredients and processes are best, allowing you to deliver quality food over and over again. Your restaurant might choose to nail one staple product with a few variations.
Consistency becomes particularly critical if you’re looking to expand to more than one location. The owners of Fishbowl went from one store to 30 in the space of five years. Along the way, they’ve maintained efficiencies and product consistency as they’ve grown, earning trust and recognition from their customers, who know that they can expect the same excellent standards wherever the location.
4. Innovate your menu and be flexible
While consistency of product and service is critical, it’s also important to keep your offering fresh. Using seasonal produce and incorporating holiday-themed items are great ways of introducing variety and can help keep your menu interesting. In winter, you might offer mulled wine to complement your food offerings, or you might incorporate seasonal fruits into existing desserts.
You should also cater for customers’ dietary requirements and tastes by offering food variations and modifiers, such as gluten-free pasta or simple vegetarian substitutes for your burgers. Square for Restaurants makes it refreshingly easy for front-of-house staff to vary menu items and for your kitchen to see straight away what’s required.
5. Accurately account for your costs
You may have already undertaken detailed financial planning for the establishment of your restaurant, but as you look to grow, you will need to be nimble with how you think about finances. The costs associated with produce, bills and staffing can change day to day – often unexpectedly – so having an understanding of the costs associated with each facet of your business is essential to turning a profit.
For a start, you’ll need to know how to calculate your food cost percentage and know what a good target percentage is for your restaurant format. Once you have an idea of these costs, you’ll be better placed to manage your expenses.
As we’ll cover, it’s essential to show your staff that you value them, but you also need to be meticulous when considering what you’re spending on labour. Square Shifts lets you manage rostering and time tracking, and it simplifies labour cost reporting, giving you more time to focus on your customers and your business.
Depending on your restaurant concept, location and a range of other factors, you will have other overhead costs to consider as well as staffing. Once you have a clear view of these, you’ll be able to calculate the revenue and profit you need to achieve for your restaurant to be a success, and you’ll be better placed to weather and adapt to any unexpected cost increases.
6. Run an efficient kitchen
Running a successful restaurant is a high-pressure gig, but maximum efficiency means minimum stress – for you and your team. Your investment in quality equipment will help you deliver quality products, but many of your efficiencies will come down to systems and processes, your kitchen layout, POS transactions, and communication between your front-of-house and kitchen.
By creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) for food preparation, cooking and cleaning, and ensuring your staff are trained in these, you’ll be able to maintain an efficient kitchen that delivers a consistently high-quality and safe product. Your workflow design feeds directly into your SOPs. Your kitchen should be organised for optimal flow, considering the potential for multiple staff to complete different tasks in a small space. You can minimise disruptions and bottlenecks by strategically considering the placement of equipment and work areas, and by ensuring team members take responsibility for their own tasks.
Square for Restaurants gives you real-time synchronisation between your front-of-house and kitchen. Square’s Kitchen Display System (KDS) gives your kitchen a single source of truth for all your orders, whether that’s in-person, online or delivery. With the option of a paper-free docket system if you choose, you’ll never again have to lose a docket and deal with frustrated customers wondering what’s happened to their order.
You can also set menu item counts ahead of service so they’re marked as unavailable once you’ve sold out, or manually mark items as unavailable and have them instantly sync between the KDS and all your front-of-house POS. Here too, you’ll be avoiding misorders and frustrated customers.
7. Show your staff you value them
If the professionalism and capabilities of your staff are not up to scratch, your restaurant might be memorable for all the wrong reasons.
It’s important you hire for qualities and train for skills, and one of the best qualities you can find in new team members is a shared understanding of your values and vision. But you’ll also need to continually invest in their education, training and development.
To keep the most talented staff engaged (and to keep them working for you and not your competitors), it’s important they see clear pathways to promotion and development. You should also acknowledge and celebrate the achievements of your team, and consider rewarding staff for consistent dedication and strong performance. Team events are also a great way to help staff connect with each other outside of work and to celebrate your restaurant’s successes with you.
8. Show your customers you value them
In making your customers feel valued, you’ll foster loyalty, encourage positive word-of-mouth and enhance their overall experience. All of that contributes to a restaurant’s long-term success and competitive advantage.
Ensuring your premises, furniture and equipment are spotless and well-maintained also demonstrates how much you value your customers and your work. It not only indicates you take your business seriously but reassures them you take their health and safety seriously, too.
Perhaps the surest way to show how much you value your customers is by delivering them exceptional customer service. This might be as simple as greeting your customers warmly, following up on how they are enjoying their meals, and thanking them sincerely when they leave. It also comes down to how well you train your staff and how appreciated they feel (happier staff give better service), and ensuring consistent and efficient procedures at every touchpoint in your business.
Square Loyalty lets you reward your clientele for coming back and, by integrating it with Square Marketing, helps you keep them in the loop about new products, special events and any exciting news about your restaurant. You can also use Square to encourage customer feedback about what’s working well and what could be improved, giving you the opportunity to acknowledge feedback and act on it, showing customers you value their opinions.
9. Stand out through your online marketing strategy
A recent survey showed that 62% of customers googled a restaurant before dining there, and 50% checked a restaurant’s website. For these reasons, it pays for restaurant owners to set up and optimise a Google Business Profile, including on Google Maps.
It also pays to finesse your social media strategy. American Express research shows that of those who typically look to social media for restaurant recommendations, a whopping 96% are most likely to visit after seeing a restaurant on social media. That’s because we eat food with our eyes first, and social media is a sure-fire way to promote your mouth-watering meals and entice people to order online or step inside your restaurant. For example, Hugo’s Deli in Melbourne uses social media to promote new products and events to followers and potential customers, and has established a loyal family of followers.
When it comes to online marketing strategies, restaurants have many avenues to explore. Social media and email marketing campaigns are essential components to understand and invest in. You might even work with content creators to expand your reach and improve your brand recognition.
10. Explore and expand to find new revenue streams
COVID-19 saw restaurants get creative about expanding into new revenue streams, from take-home meals to partnerships with other local businesses. But it shouldn’t take a global pandemic to get you thinking about the many expansion opportunities you could consider.
New revenue streams can complement your existing offering and bring you a new customer base. You might stock condiments or other ingredients in-house, release your own line of merchandise or even consider the expansion of your restaurant to another location.
How you choose to make your restaurant more successful depends on your mission and objectives, your restaurant format and your appetite for risk. But by investing in these basics, you’ll give your restaurant the best opportunity to grow and a greater likelihood that your customers will come along on the journey with you.
