Happy Hours and late night dining

In Australia there is not as much focus of Happy Hours as there is in the United States where they are very popular.  Many US restaurants do a great job of getting the most number of turns out of every seat possible.  This is something that many other restaurants do not focus on, but in order to increase profitability, they are now starting to turn towards number of turns per session and Happy Hours are one of the great ways of doing this.

It doesn’t need to be an alcohol related offer.  It can be an early menu, that is quick and easy to cook, or maybe some Tapas or sharing plates.  Remember to sort out your objective first.  Do you want to upsell with alcohol, get them to stay for the full dinner menu, or get in early and leave early, freeing the table for a full dinner customer?

The logical extension of this is late dinner dining and dessert specials.  Many restaurants don’t do a great job of dessert, so a couple of great desserts can make a big difference.  If the restaurant can bring in 10 extra couples a night on average for desserts which are $12.50 each, that is an extra $65,000 a year and if food prices are 25% of revenue, that is a cool $48,000 extra in profit.

happyHour

This Filipino restaurant may be taking the idea of a Happy Hour a little far J
happyHour2

The Happy Hour offer doesn’t need to be around alcohol, but this sign outside Sierra Nevada in San Francisco was hard to walk past.

 

previous   next


Is Poor SEO Killing Your Restaurant?

Too many times we see customers with websites that are costing restaurants thousands of dollars every month through poor design, poor messaging and poor SEO. If your website could be improved to bring in 200 extra visits per month and just 10% of those made a booking, and each booking was for 2.5 seats on average at $50 a seat, you would have an extra $2,500 in revenue a month. A 30% food cost, that is $1,750 in profit extra a month. This ignores those customers coming back as regulars – which is more profit.

Remember, if these customers aren’t finding your Restaurant, they are finding your competitors.

Get one of our obligation free 7 point website SEO audits to see what you can get your web developer to fix to increase your revenue today.