Restaurants and pizzerias are also said to suffer from the crisis in the country. Maybe part of it is true, but it is equally well-known that many restaurants are always full.
So where is the truth from?
The Latins said that “the truth is in the middle”, and I too am inclined to say that although there is suffering in the business fabric, the problem is probably focused on the greater or lesser ability of our companies to react and adapt to the changes taking place in our society.
The last 20 years have profoundly changed the balance in our world, so that, from the opening of borders to the industrialization of emerging countries, from the advent of the internet to the birth of smartphones, we are within an epochal transformation that has changed the dynamics of trade, changing the rules of the game and pushing the competition to levels that did not exist before.
The customer-restaurant relationship has also changed over the years, so excellent culinary preparation is no longer the distinctive element to decree the success or failure of a restaurant or pizzeria.
Today the “food” product must be enhanced by the services that the restaurant is willing to offer to enhance its quality and to satisfy the increasingly complex needs of customers.
How Business Changes Today.
One of the most frustrating situations that every restaurateur must face is certainly the high fluctuation of customers present and the difficulty of foreseeing their presence with a good approximation.
So it happens that one minute you stand without doing anything, while the next minute you have the restaurant full of customers. To develop a Restaurant Mobile App you can contact a trusted Restaurant Mobile App Development Company & Service
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Or even have the restaurant too full from Friday to Sunday (with simultaneous losses in the quality of the service at the expense of customers or even without being able to serve them all) and with few covers between Monday and Thursday.
What to do?
The change lies in understanding how demand changes (low/high season, weekdays/holidays/weekends, lunch/dinner, young people/couples/families, etc.) and adapting to always keep the number of seats high by determining the right promotions, prices and conditions and costs according to the situation.
We need to find a system that can reduce the “random” effect and offer a more flexible, more predictable, and above all more manageable approach according to the strategies of the business.
Let’s take the example of a restaurant-pizzeria that works from Tuesday to Sunday for lunch and dinner, which has a large number of customers for dinner between Friday and Sunday and for lunch from Monday to Friday, being in a central area full of offices while in the remaining shifts, the total number of seats is much lower.
An idea could be to satisfy the needs of customers by determining new and dynamic pricing strategies suitable for achieving customer satisfaction to maximize the covers.
For example, the week of low turnout days could be:
- Monday closed for shift
- Tuesday evening fixed-price buffet service for university students and young people (typical university evening)
- Wednesday evening fast service with light dishes for those who go to the cinema or return to the soccer field
- Thursday evening couples evening with an à la cart service, with wines by the glass and a complete tasting.
- On Saturday and Sunday lunch menus and specific offers for families to encourage them to have lunch outside the home thanks to a children’s menu at a discounted price.
It is not necessary to overturn your menu. Still, it would be enough to simply modulate the presentations of the day to satisfy and entice those target audiences who are more likely to leave the house on those specific days.
This is just a simple example, but it is useful to understand that with specific management techniques, it is possible to increase the number of covers. The area in blue is the gain assumed with the differentiated strategy.
How to Attract And Consolidate Customers?
Customers come back when they feel like it unless there is something to encourage them to come back when you want. The example above helps, but it is even more important to have the ability to actively communicate with your customers.
Waiting for customers is counterproductive so you have to create a system that incentivizes them to come back whenever you want.
Unfortunately, it is no longer enough to insert a photo on Facebook, write a Tweet, or update the website homepage, because these systems require that the customer be intercepted by your communication at that moment, and above all they are increasingly saturated and no longer work as before (unless advertising campaigns or lead generation).
It’s like fishing in a lake hoping to find a bunch of fish to pass there at that moment: you can imagine where the fish are thanks to experience, but in the end, given the many variables, it is almost always a matter of luck.
It is necessary to have a strategy that constantly identifies the target customers to consolidate and increase the sales of the covers throughout the week.
The strategy certainly depends on the venue, the location, the menu, and many other factors, but surely one of the common objectives is to find a system to actively communicate with already consolidated customers to make them come back more often and whenever you want.
To do this, offering services that can facilitate customer loyalty and relationship consolidation is essential. The use of some techniques that can decree the success of today’s restaurants is certainly linked to mobile devices (who doesn’t have a smartphone in hand today?).
Mobile Websites And Apps are the Key to Restaurant Success
Restaurants and pizzerias are increasing, offering their customers the possibility to book 24/7, order takeaway food, pay with PayPal learn about menus, and news, or use interactive navigation systems through applications or mobile websites.
This is because of communication, the market has moved to mobile devices and people are using them to do most of their daily operations.
Not being present on mobile today (with the website, the APP, the maps, the local pages, etc.) is like having a MasterChef dish aware of a few close friends.
Takeaway/Home Delivery
Can your product also be taken away? How user-friendly is it to sell through websites or specialized mobile applications and have to pay a percentage for each product sold, being always and in any case in competition with the restaurants in your area?
The adage “better alone than badly accompanied” is perhaps perfectly indicated in this situation: being able to have your tool to sell to your customers, therefore already targeted, without competition from other clubs in the same area, can bring significantly higher profits and lower expenses.
Your customers can easily purchase from their smartphone and come to pick up the product or have it delivered directly to their home. This is what we call a win-to-win situation in which consumers and restaurants benefit.
Mobile loyalty programs will increase your customers’ visits
Many market researches indicate that loyalty programs are one of the main ways to increase the turnover of your business and mobile applications represent a great opportunity to manage them. Integrated directly into the APP, it will be very easy to update them and modify them without having to print any card.
For example, imagine offering the opportunity to have a free meal for every 10 consumed, or to discount dinner by 50% upon reaching the goal of attendance in a given period, or even to offer a 20% discount for your customers on a low-traffic day, almost certainly – as happens in many sectors – you will have many customers who will do anything to get the prize.
And this will benefit the covers and your turnover.
Reservations via the APP increase customers and save you time
For restaurants, reservations are often a big problem. We never know when the customer decides to book and therefore sometimes happens to call during closing times so he decides to veer towards a competitor. Thus many customers are lost and covered without even realizing it.
Offering them the possibility to book 24/7 days brilliantly overcomes the problem and allows you to manage and measure the service. You save time and you will find many more customers who want to come to you even if you will always be in front of their eyes thanks to the icon of your restaurant visible on their smartphone.
Statistics are a Fundamental Element for Improvement
One of the biggest problems of many marketing campaigns is that of not being able to monitor their success or failure. And by success, I mean conversions (turnover and increase in customers) and not simple interactions (like retweets, receipt of flyers, etc.).
Unfortunately, many small businesses often give up on using analysis systems because they are complex or because they do not have dedicated resources, so it becomes necessary to simplify them and make them simple and intuitive to everyone, even those who do not have the technical skills.
Being able to easily evaluate the results of your marketing campaign must not be a limit but an essential element for growth, so it is important to use complete products that already include monitoring statistics.
Mobile technology in the restaurant sector can create incredible culinary experiences thanks to simple-to-use and convenient tools for the owner of a restaurant or a pizzeria (also takeaway).
Above all, thanks also to the boost offered by push notifications, it is very profitable and allows you to increase coverage and turnover intelligently and conspicuously.
Conclusions
In the last 5 years, the system with which customers approach purchasing has profoundly changed (they use smartphones, do searches on Google, read and write reviews, and compare on social networks) and so the restaurant/customer relationship should also conform.
Accepting and reacting to change is certainly the first step to enhancing the relationship with customers through more performing tools and understanding and satisfying new consumer attitudes.
Today having the best cuisine is no longer enough, but it is also necessary to simplify the service, continuous offers, interactions, and sharing with your customers.
It is these common elements that must be part of every entrepreneur’s vocabulary because this is what the market wants and, unless you create a new one, the most logical solution is to align with current customer needs by studying new and effective marketing actions, although perhaps a little far from their cultural and entrepreneurial background.
If you think like me, stop for a moment and find out what you can really do with Mobile Applications for your restaurant. Octal IT Solution is a top food-ordering app development company that offers custom food-ordering solutions for business owners.