Restaurants - Wake up to a new opportunity for week end profits

Today happened to be my daughter's 18th birthday and we all had decided to go out dinner. Since, it was her responsibility to fix the restaurant, she had not "thought through " , (her first responsibility of becoming an adult) , and when we landed up at the restaurant, it was full, and we ended up waiting for more than one hour waiting for the table.

Once seated, we saw week end specials were being advertised, we ended  up ordering a number of those items. As can only be expected, the delivery was slow( obviously, the restaurant is not geared for such rush week end business) and we ended up spending more time waiting for food to arrive than in eating it, all the while other customers were waiting to be seated. Even the waiters were not trianed to make an estimate of the total food required for a table of 8 and we also contributed to the problem by ordering piece meal.

Learnings :-

For us :-

1. Don't go out on Sundays without a reservation
2. Keep plenty of time on your side, including time to park and walk. From the entry into the mall gates till the time we got out of the car, took more than 20 minutes.

Profitable learnings for the restaurant :-

1. Focus on "items that can be made fast", not on "weekend specials", which by nature will take more time to make..
2. Train your steward, to estimate the total food required, with a caveat that one dish may become extra, but ordering later on will take a lot of time, due to the busy time. Most diners will go with the suggestion.
3. Evaluate, if you can have two menus , one for week days, when people are conscious of money spent while at work, and another a smaller/ different menu but priced slightly higher . After all many hotels have started having two prices for their buffets. One cheaper with lesser number of itemes for the week days and another one only for week ends, with larger number of items for a higher price. Finally, what people will eat in terms of quantity will any way be the same.  But , they sure make a little more money this way.
4. Finally, learn to make a proper estimate of the waiting time. Nothing is more frustrating for diners to be told the waiting time is 15 minutes, but made to wait for more than 30 minutes.
5. If you have to turn away customers, remember to give them your visiting card with phone no, facebook and twitter names, etc asking them to save your number on their cell phones, and call up next time before they come in. This way, you will get free recall with  your regular set of customers.
 

 
 
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Wishing you a great week ahead !
 
 

  

Posted in: Customer Service, Fast Movers, Profit, Restaurants, Retail, Weekends