[Restaurant Community]

The average check for restaurants keeps shrinking. Does anyone have ideas on how to turn this around?

[tjvance42]

Training is very important. Train your servers how to sell and not just be order takers. Make sure your servers know which products provide the highest profit. It's your responsibility to train your servers how to sell these high profit items by making them familiar with the ingredients of these dishes or key words they can use to make the dish seem to be more appealing to your customers. It's as simple as, "that's my favorite dish on our menu". Have a contest and give $0.25 for each of the high profit dishes sold in a night, week or month.

[stairboy]

The most common answer is to make sure that your controllable costs are controlled. Be aggressive with labor cost control, even if that means management works a little more. Be sure of portion controls and waste. When times are good we tend to ignore these things! Costs are up everywhere and we must anticipate them. Another common answer is training....and it is a common answer for a reason! good luck!

[Psychlone]

Menu item placement is PARAMOUNT to upselling items - even when your servers don't know the menu that well (in the case of trainees, etc.)

When a person walks in your restaurant, they already know what they'd like to eat because they've been there before and liked a specific dish, or because you're offering a special on something that they like from somewhere else.

But, when they receive their menu, it's going to TELL them what they want! - And it's all due to placement, font, color, etc.

The first 2 and last item in any given category should be your highest profit items, because most people will remember the first 2 and last one. Also, (going into psychology) the first place a person looks when they open up a menu, is on the right-hand page, about half way down...this is the 'Hot Spot' for items that you really want to sell!

Another thing to note which is probably the most common problem with menus - is drawing a line out to a price, keeping them all in margin, allowing the customer to 'price shop' - even though they want a BLT, they'll get a grilled cheese because you've made it easy to see that it's a buck fifty less!

Make your menus easy to read, centered and simple fonts with easy-on-the-eyes colors. Also ensure that there are no grammar or spelling mistakes!

All this is *not* to say that training isn't necessary - this information should be in addition to proper training!

And, of course, when raising prices just isn't an option, decreasing portion sizes of some things, even by only a quarter ounce on sandwich meats or simply less spring mix in your salads, can help to reduce the profit-gobbling cost increases that we're all experiencing...as long as it's not a noticeable decrease in any portion, your customers won't even know. I got this idea because of our local bread company - instead of increasing their prices, they began either slicing their bread a little thinner and/or decreasing how many slices we receive in a loaf - this keeps them from raising their prices without actually sacrificing quality.
You can always decrease the quality of your food, or replace fresh-made ingredients with already-prepared ingredients, but I absolutely *refuse* to do so (they're MY degrees on the wall!), so the only alternative for me is to slightly decrease how many french fries we put on each plate, decrease our sandwich meats from 5.5oz to 5.25oz, etc. - leaving all of our steaks/seafood/etc. alone (because sometimes even a 1/4oz is not only noticeable, it's purely wrong to advertize a 12oz Ribeye and only cook an 11.5oz Ribeye (obviously pre-cooked weight)

Anyway, that's my input. I do want you all to know that my restaurant is struggling just as much as everyone elses - especially all the mom-and-pops out there...I believe that this too will pass, and maybe we can get on with our lives and run successful businesses in the near future!

Psychlone

[stevebelus]

I have seen in the past to offer smaller versions of appatizers. This keeps coustmers buying more food and also keeps them at your establishment longer to drink as well as eat. They think they are saving money when in fact they are staying longer to eat and spend more money.

[Fireside]

Since my waitstaff is always competing with each other. I've created a $20 club. Just an incentive to get my staff to sell more. The one who sells an average of $20 or more to the most customers gets rewarded. Rewards can be making the schedule, gas cards, gift certificates, etc...

[sportsmans]

I am fairly new at this business. I leased a restaurant in 07. My profits have gone down since last fall. I've seemed to have tried it all. New menus ,advertising,daily specials,cutting costs where possible,cutting employee hours. I work many hours myself to save money 7 days a week some days 12 hour days.This is a small town our best time is the summer when we have tourists. Does anyone have any suggestions? Right now paying employees,taxes,food costs,repairs,utilities,insurance. I am really struggling here to try to make ends meet. And have no answers right now of what else to do.

[ChefBeorn@909.236.COOK]

Training is H-U-G-E! You have to be "sold out" on the quality of your food and your servers have to be "sold out" too! Coming from both food and sales backgrounds, I believe in positive reinforcement....incentives. I'd gladly pay out an extra $20 bucks a night to a server who moves lots of product...consistently! I just moved back to Calif from Arizona and guess what? The average server gets paid $2 bucks an hour! Think the servers will respond to an incentive? Heck yes!

Whatever you do, definitely train your staff to know what's great about the food and what goes into it. Upselling by pushing beverages and sides are important too.

Remember, it's all about the food!
-Chef Beorn

Originally Posted by tjvance42

Training is very important. Train your servers how to sell and not just be order takers. Make sure your servers know which products provide the highest profit. It's your responsibility to train your servers how to sell these high profit items by making them familiar with the ingredients of these dishes or key words they can use to make the dish seem to be more appealing to your customers. It's as simple as, "that's my favorite dish on our menu". Have a contest and give $0.25 for each of the high profit dishes sold in a night, week or month.

[saltydog]

you might try a birthday club have your customers fill out a paper with there birthday name address email if you wish then send them a birthday card good for the month of there birthday giving them 5 to 10 dollars off there visit no one celabrates by themselves but be ready to get busy i do this and it works

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