Ben Beddow, Author at Online Ordering For Restaurants | ActiveMenus

How to Tell Customers About Online Ordering

Ben Beddow — Sat, 14 May 2022 22:35:59 +0000

How to Tell Customers About Online Ordering

Ben Beddow

Published May 14th, 2022

Your digital ordering platform is all set up, integrated with your POS system, and ready to take orders and direct them straight into your kitchen! You might know that it exists, after all you’ve had the idea and have been researching options for how to take orders from customers online for some time now, but do your customers know it exists?

They don’t yet, and there is a need to spread the word far and wide so you can satisfy the public’s growing need and desire for the convenience of online ordering. The last piece of the online ordering puzzle is to advertise your new ordering method to both your existing and potential customers, and you should use every means at your disposal to get the word out. Here are 9 great ways you can tell your customers about your new internet storefront.

How to Tell Customers About Online Ordering

Direct People to It on Your Website

57% of customers check out a restaurant’s website before deciding where to dine, this means that there are potential customers right at the gateway to your online ordering system. Make sure that the button for your online ordering stands out on your website. You could even consider adding a popup to your site that announces your new, online ordering function to every visitor.

In-Store, Print Marketing

It’s old fashioned but it’s still used because it works! Print marketing in your location is an excellent way to tell customers about how you’ve expanded to the internet. These can be strategically placed throughout the location in places such as: on tables, at registers, at host stands, on takeaway boxes, etc. Print marketing can also be placed in the windows of a venue to advertise the new offering to those people walking by outside.

Receipts

Almost every customer looks at their receipt in some form or another and all POS systems allow you to add a custom note to the bottom of every receipt. Announcing online ordering services in this part of a receipt is a quick and easy way to get this information out in front of your existing customers.

Verbally Inform Guests

Encourage your employees to tell guests about your online ordering offerings, where appropriate. If a guest is expressing satisfaction with their meal then they will probably be happy to find out that they can eat the same delicious meal in the comfort of their own home.

Phone Greeting and Voicemail

If you accepted phone-in orders before the introduction of your online ordering system you can set up a greeting on your phone announcing this to everyone that calls your restaurant. Make it welcoming, short, and snappy before it then pushes them through. You can also mention your online offerings in your voicemail should a customer not be able to get through to the venue.

Social Media

Social media is a free advertising medium where you can reach and relate to your existing customers in a personal way. You should create posts about your online ordering, both photos and videos, encourage the sharing of those posts, and you should also mention it in your profiles on these platforms.

Review Platforms

A staggering 92% of customers read restaurant reviews and 90% of people research a restaurant before visiting it. One of the main places where customers will research a restaurant is through review sites. You should have laid claim to your pages on these sites already and if you have then you can edit your venues description to include information about your online ordering platform.

Emails

If you send out emails to your customer then you can tailor an email blast to inform them of your restaurant’s online ordering offerings. If you send out things like birthday emails or anniversary offers then your online ordering platform should be mentioned in these emails too.

Visit Local Businesses

Businesses in your local area know you and your business and there’s no better way to spread the word about your online ordering than actually spreading the word yourself. Go out and visit the businesses around you, connect with them, and tell them about your new offering. Print marketing such as flyers can also be helpful when doing this as it gives them a permanent reminder of the purpose of your visit.

How Do You Encourage Online Ordering?

You may get the word out using the above methods but how can you give customers that extra nudge to place an order? Loyalty programs are one way with research showing that 45% of customers say that loyalty programs would encourage them to use online ordering systems more often.

In order to encourage customers to place orders you can also integrate deals and promotions into the above methods of promoting your online ordering platform. These offers can be structured in many ways, from percentage discounts to BOGOF offers and can also come in the form of a first time loyalty signup promotion to get them onto your loyalty program.

A Last Word

Once you’ve figured out how to take online orders your customers need to know about it. But promoting online ordering for restaurants is not a one-and-done event like setting up the platform is. In order to keep the orders flowing your platform needs to consistently be on display so that your customers, and potential customers, are always aware that your online storefront exists.

The above methods can be used continuously to promote and encourage restaurant online ordering and things as simple as a social media post or email can give your online ordering a momentary boost, excellent, perhaps, for when things have lulled in the middle of the week.

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How to Set Up Online Ordering for a Restaurant

Ben Beddow — Tue, 03 May 2022 06:18:56 +0000

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How to Set Up Online Ordering for a Restaurant

Ben Beddow

Published May 2nd, 2022

As the boundaries between the physical and the digital blur, brick-and-mortar businesses are finding that setting up an online presence for their venue is crucial to their future success. For restaurants in particular this trend was accelerated by the global pandemic of 2020, as they were forced to shift to sales avenues that enabled them to sell their goods or offsite consumption.

Consuming restaurant food at home has become much more normalized in recent times, and, since 2014, delivery and digital ordering has grown 300% faster than dine-in, and the delivery market is predicted to grow at a rate of 9.96% per year for the next 4 years. So now is as good a time as any to join the online ordering party.

In 2020 3^rd party delivery services took over the delivery market, but since their shortcomings, like extortionate restaurant fees and listing restaurants without their consent, have been brought into the media spotlight it has been found that consumers are not partial to these 3^rd party services, with almost half of consumers believing that it’s cheaper to order directly from the restaurant and 70% preferring to do so.

With the facts all point toward a positive trend for independently offered online ordering more and more people asking how to set up online ordering for a restaurant? And what are the benefits of online ordering for restaurants? Here we’ll explain it all.

How to Set Up Online Ordering for a Restaurant

How to Set Up Online Ordering

Setting up online ordering can be a breeze. Specifically, setting up online ordering with ActiveMenus is a breeze! To start the process, which takes around 5-7 days, shorter if there are only a few refinements, all you need to do is fill out our Get Started form to let us know who you are and what services you’re interested in. Then you can either schedule a meeting for a time that suits you or wait for us to reach out to you about the next step.

In our initial call we’ll answer any questions you have and talk about those next steps regarding setting up online ordering for your restaurant. The data needed for setting up your restaurant online is as you might expect:

Restaurant name and address
Email address
Phone number
Hours of operation
Menu items, descriptions, and customizations (can be scrapped from existing online sources)
Special menu and item specification e.g. brunch menus that are only live for a limited time

This data is then inputted by our team and sent to you to check through for any edits. Once you’ve confirmed everything is correct then you’re ready to go live!

This will give you a widget, with full online ordering functionality, that you can build into or link out to from your existing website along with anywhere else you may have an online presence e.g. social media profiles and review sites.

With this widget we also provide a website, customized to your brand, which you can chose to use if you wish. So if you don’t have a website, or if your existing one is in need of a refresh, then you still get everything you need to set your restaurant up for online ordering. If you find yourself dreaming of a more custom look for your restaurant’s website, then we can certainly do this, however implementing these requests can add 2-5 days to delivery time.

This online ordering is our base level package and the goal here is to get you a professional setup for receiving online orders as quickly as possible. If you have requested any of our other services, such as a branded mobile app, POS integration, or loyalty program integration, setting up these services will take extra time; up to 4 weeks in total, depending on the service.

Restaurant name and address
Email address
Phone number
Hours of operation
Menu items, descriptions, and customizations (can be scrapped from existing online sources)
Special menu and item specification e.g. brunch menus that are only live for a limited time

This data is then inputted by our team and sent to you to check through for any edits. Once you’ve confirmed everything is correct then you’re ready to go live!

Restaurant name and address
Email address
Phone number
Hours of operation
Menu items, descriptions, and customizations (can be scrapped from existing online sources)
Special menu and item specification e.g. brunch menus that are only live for a limited time

This data is then inputted by our team and sent to you to check through for any edits. Once you’ve confirmed everything is correct then you’re ready to go live!

How to Receive Online Orders

Once your widget and website have been created you will also have access to the OrderLogic app, downloadable for any iOS or Android device, where you will receive your orders. If you requested POS integration then you will use the app until the verification process for the integration has passed, this can take 2-4 weeks depending on which POS system you have.

Editing Your Online Ordering Menu and Storefront

We understand everything in a restaurant is constantly in flux and being able to update your menu on the fly, adjust operating hours for holidays and different seasons, and even change the appearance of your website is critical for an easy flow of restaurant operations. Once your online ordering is set up you will have access to the merchant portal, which is separate from the OrderLogic app, where you can perform all of these changes (and push them live instantly), generate reports regarding your orders through the platform, and adjust your financial information.

Setting up Order with Google with ActiveMenus

If you’re looking to set up online ordering through Order with Google then the set up process for this service is completely automated. You’ll have to give similar details as above, along with a few others specific to Order with Google, such as average prep-time.

Once everything is set up you can send some test orders, edit your menu, and enter your details so you can get paid and go live! Ready to get started? Follow this link to get the ball rolling with Order with Google!

A Final Word: What are the Benefits of Online Ordering for Restaurants?

In the beginning we brought you the statistics that show the continued growth of online ordering for restaurants. Here we’re going to leave you with some of the benefits for restaurants of having an online ordering system.

More Dine-in Customers: Customers that have placed online orders for a restaurant are 67% more likely to come in for a meal.
Increased Checks: It has been shown that digital orders are as much as 18% larger than their phone-in counterparts.
Increased Sales: With an online ordering system you’re opening up another storefront, at a low cost, that has unlimited seating. Pre-pandemic, 60% of operators say that they saw an increase in overall sales when they introduced an online ordering service.
Richer Customer Data: Through an online ordering platform you can track the customer’s journey from beginning to end and gain a better insight into their ordering habits.

Don’t delay, Get Started today!

More Dine-in Customers: Customers that have placed online orders for a restaurant are 67% more likely to come in for a meal.
Increased Checks: It has been shown that digital orders are as much as 18% larger than their phone-in counterparts.

Increased Sales: With an online ordering system you’re opening up another storefront, at a low cost, that has unlimited seating. Pre-pandemic, 60% of operators say that they saw an increase in overall sales when they introduced an online ordering service.
Richer Customer Data: Through an online ordering platform you can track the customer’s journey from beginning to end and gain a better insight into their ordering habits.

Don’t delay, Get Started today!

More Dine-in Customers: Customers that have placed online orders for a restaurant are 67% more likely to come in for a meal.
Increased Checks: It has been shown that digital orders are as much as 18% larger than their phone-in counterparts.
Increased Sales: With an online ordering system you’re opening up another storefront, at a low cost, that has unlimited seating. Pre-pandemic, 60% of operators say that they saw an increase in overall sales when they introduced an online ordering service.
Richer Customer Data: Through an online ordering platform you can track the customer’s journey from beginning to end and gain a better insight into their ordering habits.

Don’t delay, Get Started today!

The post How to Set Up Online Ordering for a Restaurant appeared first on Online Ordering For Restaurants | ActiveMenus.

Defining and Reducing Shrinkage

Ben Beddow — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 17:58:16 +0000

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Defining and Reducing Shrinkage

Ben Beddow

Published April 19th 2022

Food and beverage costs are one of the most variable, and one of the most manageable, costs in a restaurant. Shrinkage is a factor in the production and distribution of all goods that is practically impossible to fully eliminate, especially when dealing with perishable products. However, in a restaurant, techniques and practices can be put in place to greatly reduce shrinkage.

Properly calculating and managing shrinkage can increase a venue’s profitability by enhancing the accuracy of inventories, introducing accountability into a venue’s practices, and increasing the use of best practices.

It is first important to define shrinkage. The source of shrinkage in the restaurant then needs to be uncovered before techniques and practices can be implemented to reduce it.

How To Define Shrinkage For Your Restaurant

Defining Shrinkage

Shrinkage, is the discrepancy between an actual inventory count and what your sales report for the period says you have sold. Shrinkage is calculated using inventories, invoices, and sales reports.

Shrinkage can be caused by a variety of factors, cannot be accounted for in menu prices, and will vary from period to period. The causes of shrinkage include: spoilage, spillage, over-serving, poor accounting, inaccurate inventory counting, not accounting for re-fires, and theft.

Shrinkage, is the discrepancy between an actual inventory count and what your sales report for the period says you have sold. Shrinkage is calculated using inventories, invoices, and sales reports.

Shrinkage Formula

It is possible to calculate a venue’s shrinkage from readily available data. To properly calculate shrinkage you will need a starting and ending inventory, the sales data for the period between those inventories, and the invoices for the same period. The inventory shrinkage formula is as follows:

(Starting Inventory + Invoices) - Ending Inventory = Actual Product Used

POS Sales - Actual Product Used = Shrinkage

(Shrinkage ÷ POS Sales) x 100 = Shrinkage as a Percentage of Sales

All the amounts above can be in either currency or units. For an example a restaurant has the following figures:

Starting Inventory = $20,000
Invoices = $6000
Ending Inventory $18,000
POS Sales = $7200

Note that POS Sales should be the total amount sold for the period, including all discounts and comped items, along with any product recorded on the wastage record.

Entering these numbers into this formula we get:

($20,000 + $6000) - $18,000 = $8000

$7200 - $8000 = -$800

(-$800 ÷ $7200) x 100 = -11.1%

This means that there is $800 worth of product, or 11.1% of sales, unaccounted for on the POS system. This example covers a whole restaurant’s inventory, and the shrinkage could be occurring in one or many items that the restaurant orders and uses. To narrow down where the shrinkage is occurring it can be necessary to comb through the available data to work out which item is the culprit of the shrinkage.

(Starting Inventory + Invoices) - Ending Inventory = Actual Product Used

POS Sales - Actual Product Used = Shrinkage

(Shrinkage ÷ POS Sales) x 100 = Shrinkage as a Percentage of Sales

All the amounts above can be in either currency or units. For an example a restaurant has the following figures:

Starting Inventory = $20,000
Invoices = $6000
Ending Inventory $18,000
POS Sales = $7200

Note that POS Sales should be the total amount sold for the period, including all discounts and comped items, along with any product recorded on the wastage record.

Entering these numbers into this formula we get:

($20,000 + $6000) - $18,000 = $8000

$7200 - $8000 = -$800

(-$800 ÷ $7200) x 100 = -11.1%

(Starting Inventory + Invoices) - Ending Inventory = Actual Product Used

POS Sales - Actual Product Used = Shrinkage

(Shrinkage ÷ POS Sales) x 100 = Shrinkage as a Percentage of Sales

All the amounts above can be in either currency or units. For an example a restaurant has the following figures:

Starting Inventory = $20,000
Invoices = $6000
Ending Inventory $18,000
POS Sales = $7200

Note that POS Sales should be the total amount sold for the period, including all discounts and comped items, along with any product recorded on the wastage record.

Entering these numbers into this formula we get:

($20,000 + $6000) - $18,000 = $8000

$7200 - $8000 = -$800

(-$800 ÷ $7200) x 100 = -11.1%

The Causes of Shrinkage

Once the product (or products) that is the reason for the shrinkage has been found then a cause needs to be identified. There are many things that can be the cause of shrinkage and these can be split into four categories.

Poor Bookkeeping - When shrinkage amounts are as high as in the example above then there is often a bookkeeping error to blame. Review the data used to calculate shrinkage and identify any errors that may be causing it. The major errors to look out for are: miscounted inventory, incorrectly entered invoices, invoices in the wrong period, using the wrong period of sales data, discounted items or wastage logs not being included in the sales data.

Re-fires and replacement meals that are not accounted for in the POS system are also filed under poor bookkeeping, as such things should be recorded by floor managers.

Wastage - There are two major causes of wastage and these are spoilage and spillage. Spoilage includes both fresh and prepped products passing their use by date, along with the overcooking of foods so that they are not sellable. Spillage refers to any accidental product wastage, such as dropping it on the floor.

Over Serving - In terms of shrinkage, over serving is when a dish or beverage exceeds the recipe amount. This could be an extra strip of bacon on top of a bacon cheeseburger or an extra ¼oz of liquor in a drink. Over serving errors are often repetitive and can add up quickly.

Theft - It is said that 75% of restaurant shrinkage is due to theft. Theft includes the traditional style, taking product without permission, but it also includes the gifting of product to guests by employees without the consent of a manager.

Re-fires and replacement meals that are not accounted for in the POS system are also filed under poor bookkeeping, as such things should be recorded by floor managers.

How to Reduce Shrinkage

The above are the causes of shrinkage and you want to prevent them from occurring. To accomplish this shrinkage solutions are needed and these include: accurate record keeping and accounting are needed, alongside regular best practices training for employees.

Bookkeeping - Bookkeeping practices should be put in place to efficiently organize invoice and inventory data. It is also important that managers use best practices when recording re-fired or replacement meals to ensure that they are accounted for in the POS system.

Wastage - A wastage log should be implemented to account for all wastage and each occurrence should also have a reason attributed to it e.g. spoiled, overcooked, and dropped. Reviewing these logs will provide insights into the cause of the wastage and this informs how to reduce it. Techniques to reduce wastage include: employee trainings on best practices, such as FIFO, and reviewing par counts and prep quantities and reducing as necessary. Accidents are often unavoidable but should be monitored to look for frequent offenders and patterns that could indicate theft.

Over Serving - The production of menu items should be monitored to ensure that recipes are being followed and that the correct amount of product is being served. Bartenders should be pour tested and, for the kitchen, recipe cards should be created and chefs should be asked questions about the amount of product used when preparing menu items.

Theft - Extra security and close monitoring of valuable products may be required to ascertain who the culprit is. It is also worth reminding employees that giving away food and drink without a manager’s approval also counts as theft. Often, informing employees that product is being lost due to theft can stop it from happening, but that doesn’t help to catch the culprit.

Shrinkage Won’t Shrink to Zero

Sometimes, especially for venues seeing a high level of shrinkage, it is possible to see the effects of shrinkage reducing tactics almost immediately. On other occasions, pinpointing the source of shrinkage, and subsequently reducing it, can require putting improvements in place over a few inventory cycles.

It is worth noting that the techniques mentioned here can reduce shrinkage, but it is nearly impossible to reduce shrinkage to zero. Training and implementing best practices helps to get all employees onboard with reducing shrinkage, and these are a restaurant’s best tool against all forms shrinkage.

The post Defining and Reducing Shrinkage appeared first on Online Ordering For Restaurants | ActiveMenus.

Getting Guest Recovery Right (The LEARN Method of Guest Recovery)

Ben Beddow — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 21:34:54 +0000

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Getting Guest Recovery Right (The LEARN Method of Guest Recovery)

Ben Beddow

Published April 7th, 2022

The ultimate goal of every restaurant is to satisfy and exceed the expectations of every single guest that walks through the door, turning them into loyal and returning patrons in the process. Such a level of perfection is an unrealistic goal, because, no matter how hard you may strive, it is impossible to please everyone.

There will always be people who are unhappy in all types of restaurants, and restaurant managers, and their customer facing employees, need know how to deal with unhappy customers, how to deescalate an an angry customer, and how to best recover a guest and make all of these guests feel like they’ve been heard and their issues has been properly resolved.

One of the best, easiest to teach, and simplest to remember methods for guest recovery, especially for an angry customer at a restaurant, is the LEARN method. LEARN is an anagram that stands for: Listen, Empathize, Apologize, Recover, Nurture. Each step in this process is explained below in greater detail, detailing why it is important and the effect that it has on the guests perception of the individual in front of them and, ultimately, on the effect it has on their opinion of the venue that that individual is representing. If you’re looking for an answer to “how would you handle an upset customer at the register?” then the LEARN method is a perfect step-by-step guide for this situation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The LEARN Method

Listen

The guest who is talking has a problem, you are representing their point of contention and the source of their frustration. it is important to pay attention to the details and the nature of their complaint. Only by fully listening to the guest can you fully understand their problem.

Do not interrupt the guest whilst they are explaining their frustration. Make eye contact with them and give them your full attention. Allow the guest to get their full point across to you before responding to them. If needed, take notes whilst the guest is talking, especially if their issue is related to a food poisoning, assault, or theft that is said to have happened in your venue or on your property. These notes will be valuable later when relaying anything to the relevant authorities and when stories are retold. Note that if the complaint is as serious as food poisoning, theft, or assault you should politely interrupt the guest at the beginning so that you can obtain the materials needed to take proper notes of their account of the incident.

Empathize

Put yourself in the guest’s shoes. No matter how small their issue may seem, they have encountered a problem that has upset them enough for them to raise the issue with an employee or to ask to speak to a manager. They are looking for a resolution to their problem, but, often most of all, they want their problem to be recognized. That recognition is empathy.

Tell the guest that you have heard them and that you understand where they’re coming from. As you do this, reference the points that they made during their initial complaint so that they know that you listened to and understood their concerns.

Apologize

It is important to note that empathy comes before or with the apology. Apologizing without empathizing with the customer can give the impression that you or your establishment are brushing their issue aside with an apology. This can give them the impression that you do not wholly care about their issue and, ultimately, them. Apologies should be sincere and should directly address the guest’s concerns.

There are a few occasions where an apology shouldn’t be given. An apology amounts to an admission of guilt and should not be given for situations where you or the business could be considered legal liable, these situations include: accusations of food poisoning, and theft or assault by a restaurant employee. You should also not apologize when the guest is the one creating the issue, e.g. harassing employees or being loud and/or rude. It best to use your best judgement on whether to apologize to a guest in any given situation.

Apologize, don’t give an excuse. An excuse is a reason and it is never equitable to an apology. Providing an excuse instead of an apology can sometimes further anger a guest because the problem is not being owned and the excuse is not fitting what they expected.

Recover

A guest has complained because they have a problem severe enough to be brought to the manager’s attention, and they expect that problem to be fixed. Recovery is fixing that problem to a standard that is acceptable to the guest and the restaurant.

After going through the previous steps you will have an understanding of the guest’s complaint and a good feeling of how upset the guest is and what level of recovery suits their specific complaint and their level of upset. Recovery needs can vary from guest to guest and situation to situation, and it is important that managers lean on their previous experience in guest recovery to refine their response to the guest in front of them. It can also be helpful for owners, especially those of franchises and groups, to standardize how certain incidents are recovered; ensuring that recovery standards exist across the company so that guests are treated the same, no matter which venue they’re in.

Nurture

Once the guest’s issue is resolved the recovery process doesn’t stop. It is imperative that the manager checks back with the guest to show that the restaurant cares. If the guest will be returning at a later date for the compensation of their recovery, e.g. a free meal or bottle of wine, then you should take care to remember who they are so that you can recognize them on their return and provide them with special treatment. Nurturing a guest post-recovery can solidify their faith in your restaurant and turn them into loyal patrons.

To make sure they receive the best treatment for their recovery it is beneficial to tell them to book in advance and mention a special card that you gave them regarding this recovery. This way you can place them in the section of your best serve and the manager will know to pay them special attention. Nurturing can go a long way to turning a disgruntled guest into a loyal customer.

A Final Word: A Manager’s Challenge

Upset guests need to be tracked, ideally in a managers log. This is partially to see if there are any pattern or similarities in the complaints that could be permanently resolved, and also to keep track of potential repeat offenders. These people may be trying to take advantage of an establishment’s policies. These guests provide a problem for managers, not only because their actions lead to a loss in revenue, but also because of the frequency of the disruptions they can cause to the flow of the restaurant and the experience of other guests. Distinguishing between a customer who has high expectations and will provide insightful feedback and someone who is looking to take advantage can be a challenge. Such a skill is learnt through experience, but the result and the insight that can be passed on are invaluable.

Guest recovery can seem like a simple matter, but dealing with and listening to each complaint personally and individually is an important factor in it having a lasting effect on the customer and the business. If you’re looking to teach this method of guest recovery many prefer to do it by using it in examples of dealing with difficult customers in a restaurant.

By properly recovering an angry restaurant customer and nurturing a relationship with them, managers can gain key insights into where their customers think their venue is not hitting the mark and, thus, can help them to focus their efforts on improving the elements that most impact the customer experience in the customer’s eyes.

The post Getting Guest Recovery Right (The LEARN Method of Guest Recovery) appeared first on Online Ordering For Restaurants | ActiveMenus.

Why We Built an Online Ordering Solution for Restaurants

Ben Beddow — Sun, 27 Mar 2022 21:31:50 +0000

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Why We Built an Online Ordering Solution for Restaurants

Ben Beddow

Published March 27th, 2022

After years of existence, online ordering for restaurants is still a rapidly evolving segment of the restaurant industry. It provides convenience for customers (who now expect restaurants to offer online ordering), an additional and upward trending revenue stream for restaurants, and it expands the restaurant’s presence from their brick and mortar storefronts into the virtual world.

But getting it right, so that the online ordering system works for both the customer and the restaurant, was a difficult balancing act.

We found that the same pain points were impacting the decisions made regarding delivery and takeout services for all types of restaurants: franchises, groups, and independent locations, ranging from quick service concepts, to ghost kitchens, to fine dining venues. As a result, we designed a white label, restaurant online ordering system that specifically addressed and solved the issues raised by the restaurants we spoke to.

Why We Built An Online Ordering Solution for Restaurants

Servicing Both the Restaurant and the Customer

The customer is king when they’re sitting inside a restaurant and they’re also king when they’re ordering online. 3^rd party order and delivery providers recognize this and put the customer experience at the top of their list, followed by their own profitability, with restaurant’s falling last in line in their list of priorities.

Before companies like DoorDash, GrubHub, and Ubereats came along and created this greatly improved online ordering experience, restaurants were using antiquated online ordering systems that offered a clunky and often frustrating experience for the user. It has been found that the majority of customers, 70% in fact, would prefer to order directly from restaurants rather than through 3^rd party service providers. But setting up and maintaining a proprietary restaurant online ordering system that also offers an exceptional customer experience was an expensive and time consuming task. So restaurants kept using 3^rd party solutions.

Another huge benefit for restaurants was that these 3^rd party services also took care of the customer support side of the off-premise orders they facilitated. Dealing with these customer service issues, and training their staff on the procedures to do so properly, had always been a huge headache for restaurants. As a result, restaurant owners were willing to send their own customers away from their website, lose the valuable customer data, and pay a fee of 15-30% for the privilege of having this problem taken off their hands.

Some restaurants have even chosen not to enter into this world on online ordering, reducing their exposure to the way customers order in the modern world, resulting in them missing out on the gains of their competitors and not realizing their full potential.

been found that the majority of customers, 70% in fact, would prefer to order directly from restaurants rather than through 3^rd party service providers. But setting up and maintaining a proprietary restaurant online ordering system that also offers an exceptional customer experience was an expensive and time consuming task. So restaurants kept using 3^rd party solutions.

ActiveMenus: Built to Service the Restaurant and the Customer

ActiveMenus offers a new solution for restaurants, enabling them to have their own, branded online ordering platform, both web and app based, that offers the amazing and seamless experience that their customers have come to expect from their previous experiences. Restaurants using the ActiveMenus services can also access built in rewards systems for their customer -of whom 45% said that mobile ordering or loyalty programs would encourage them to use online ordering services more often- as well as an automated marketing system that tailors marketing materials and special offers to individual customers using that all important customer data.

The ActiveMenus online ordering software for restaurants is designed to offer a seamless and exceptional user experience across all restaurants, but it has especially been designed to provide an unparalleled user experience for the customers of multi-location restaurants and franchises as well as the customers of multi-concept and multi-location restaurant groups.

ActiveMenus also offers customer support as an additional feature to all of the restaurants who use our services. Through this service the ActiveMenus team receives and handles all customer complaints related to the orders placed through our digital ordering solutions. Managing everything from placing new orders and their redeliveries, to customer refunds. This keeps these issues out of the restaurant’s hands and allows them to focus on their orders and their customers.

The ActiveMenus online ordering software for restaurants is designed to offer a seamless and exceptional user experience across all

restaurants, but it has especially been designed to provide an unparalleled user experience for the customers of multi-location restaurants and franchises as well as the customers of multi-concept and multi-location restaurant groups.

Delivery: Linking the Restaurant to the Customers

Delivery is a difficult undertaking even for the most popular and cash-flush of restaurants, and many restaurants, for this reason, choose to outsource delivery services. Other restaurants want to manage delivery in-house but delivery logistics can be nightmarish, especially when a large amount of orders come in and delivery times begin to suffer. This eventually leads to a brand losing customers because the restaurant isn’t meeting customer expectations.

Before a restaurant has reached that point in their delivery lifecycle there is the complex process of setting up and marketing a delivery service. This includes working out your delivery zone, knowing what you’re actually allowed to do in your locality, how to pay your delivery drivers, hiring delivery drivers, what insurance you need, what you’re going to deliver, and more. 3^rd party services handle all of these headaches for restaurants by taking the concept of delivery off their hands. Many restaurants opt for this option instead, and pay the 15-30% premium for doing so.

Those that do create and use their own, in-house delivery service find that they’re competing with the likes of DoorDash and Ubereats for drivers. This is because the driver experience when driving for these companies is so much better than it is driving for the restaurants themselves. Working for a third party service provider makes it easy for drivers to receive orders and make deliveries, they also receive their payments quickly through the app and the driver’s earnings are gamified, which only adds to the draw. restaurants simply can’t compete with this superior working experience and, as a result, they find it very difficult to hire and keep drivers.

ActiveMenus: Delivery That Works for Everyone

At ActiveMenus we’ve created a delivery solution that rivals the big companies in both service to the restaurants and the driver experience. Our app offers all the automation and features that keeps the drivers happy and restaurants that use our turnkey online ordering solutions can opt to take advantage of the ActiveMenus delivery logistics solution or not, but it’s not all black and white.

The ActiveMenus delivery solution also offers a hybrid approach, allowing restaurants to call on our network of delivery drivers to support their in-house team of drivers when there are large influxes of orders that will adversely affect delivery times and their brand image. This means that restaurants can manage the last mile delivery themselves but also call on the ActiveMenus network of delivery drivers when they need them.

A Final Word

The ActiveMenus restaurant online ordering and delivery solutions are designed to empower restaurants by enabling them to offer an exceptional and branded online customer experience that rivals that of the big tech companies.

Using the ActiveMenus solution a restaurant also gets back all of their valuable customer data and they can opt-in to services such as customer support, loyalty rewards programs and automated marketing services, as well as full service or hybrid delivery solutions.

Ultimately our goal is to make restaurant online order solutions work for both the customer and the restaurant, and empower the restaurant to provide the services and experience their customer demand, along with the high standard customers have come to expect from online services.

The post Why We Built an Online Ordering Solution for Restaurants appeared first on Online Ordering For Restaurants | ActiveMenus.

9 Labor Cost Reducing Tactics

Ben Beddow — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 15:30:02 +0000

Labor Cost Reducing Tactics

Ben Beddow

Published March 8th, 2022

Labor costs are one part of a restaurant’s prime costs, and prime costs are responsible for over half of a restaurant’s overall costs. Restaurant labor costs are one the most controllable costs for a location, and the results of properly managing a restaurant’s labor costs can be realized almost immediately.

Controlling labor costs is crucial to a restaurant’s continued survival. But labor costs for restaurants are not a stationary target. A venue’s labor costs are dynamic throughout the year, fluctuating with business, and they will change year on year as business levels change.

Here we’re going to use the labor cost dollar amounts to calculate a figure that can be used to assess how efficient a restaurant is when it comes to its labor costs. After that we’re going to look at labor cost reducing tactics that can be implemented to bring those costs down.

Labor Cost Reducing Tactics

What Should Labor Costs Be In a Restaurant?

The ideal restaurant labor costs are between 25-30% of total sales, and can vary greatly by location. Quick serve locations that require fewer service staff may be able to push their labor costs below 25% of their total sales, but fine dining locations may find that their labor costs stay above 30% of their total sales.

Labor costs are typically viewed as a percentage of total sales. The formula for calculating labor costs is a simple one:

(Total Labor Costs ÷ Total Sales) x 100 = Labor Costs as a Percentage

It is important to note that total labor costs are not just the sum of all the wages and salaries paid out to employees. Total labor costs include everything associated with labor, including:

Insurance
Employment taxes
Paid time off, PTO
Workers compensation
Employee benefits e.g. shift meals

Labor costs are typically viewed as a percentage of total sales. The formula for calculating labor costs is a simple one:

(Total Labor Costs ÷ Total Sales) x 100 = Labor Costs as a Percentage

It is important to note that total labor costs are not just the sum of all the wages and salaries paid out to employees. Total labor costs include everything associated with labor, including:

Insurance
Employment taxes
Paid time off, PTO
Workers compensation
Employee benefits e.g. shift meals

Labor costs are typically viewed as a percentage of total sales. The formula for calculating labor costs is a simple one:

(Total Labor Costs ÷ Total Sales) x 100

= Labor Costs as a Percentage

It is important to note that total labor costs are not just the sum of all the wages and salaries paid out to employees. Total labor costs include everything associated with labor, including:

Insurance
Employment taxes
Paid time off, PTO
Workers compensation
Employee benefits e.g. shift meals

How to Reduce Labor Costs in a Restaurant

A quick tip is to also calculate labor costs by department, i.e front of house and back of house. This can help to pinpoint where labor reducing tactics might have the greatest effect and could tell you which ones to implement first. Labor reducing tactics focus around two goals:

Increasing employee efficiency to reduce the amount of time they spend on the clock
Balancing staffing levels with expected business levels

If there is a method to achieve one of these goals, without reducing the quality of service to guests, then it can be counted as a labor reducing tactic.

Sidework Sheets

Sidework sheets represent organization, and organization is key to increased efficiency. Sidework sheets lay out all the extra responsibilities and expectations for an employee outside of their primary restaurant role on that day. Sidework typically focus on three different periods of the restaurants working day: opening, changeover, and closing. Sidework sheets increase employee efficiency and reduce the amount of time it takes them to complete their necessary tasks.

Recipe Cards

Detailed recipe cards can increase the time efficiency of prep cooks by streamlining their work flow. Recipe cards should contain ingredients, cooking and food preparation utensils, along with a detailed list of recipe steps. Having detailed recipe cards for everything prepared in-house can also help to increase product consistency.

Cross Training

Having employees that are cross-trained can not only improve the guest experience but can also reduce the need to have multiple employees on during slower business periods. If the bartenders are competent servers then they can be given a section of tables, as well as the bar, and then a server need not be on shift. If servers are trained to manage the host stand, e.g. using reservation software or other reservation method, then a host might not be needed on slower days of the week. On slow days can an expediter complete the job of both the expediter and the food runner? All of these examples result in an increase in employee efficiency and also mean that there is one less employee on shift, resulting in an immediate reduction in labor costs.

Reducing Overtime

Overtime requires paying an employee more, typically 50% more, per hour worked and these extra costs can add up quickly. Overtime can be a necessary evil during busy periods but it shouldn’t happen every week. Reducing overtime to zero is the gold standard and proper scheduling and having enough employees on the roister to be able to be scheduled is key to accomplishing this. No overtime also means that no one is overworked and that staff can have a better work-life balance, potentially reducing workplace stress.

Self Ordering

The pandemic introduced the public, en masse, to self ordering. These processes are often viewed through the lens of customer convenience, however, they are also a great labor reducing tactic as they reduce the amount of employees needed on the restaurant floor. Self ordering comes in many forms. It can be via a QR code on the table or menu, through a self ordering kiosk, or via a dedicated mobile app. ActiveMenus offers digital solutions like beautiful and branded mobile apps and sleek website ordering platforms that can help to enhance the self-ordering customer experience.

Cutting Employees

If there are too many employees in the restaurant for the level of business the restaurant is experiencing then some should be sent home to reduce unnecessary labor costs. It is best for a manager to use their best judgment here because they know best about how business flows in their venue. Some states have reporting time pay laws that require employers to pay non-exempt employees a minimum amount of hours worked if they show up to a shift and are then sent home.

Review Scheduling Practices

If a restaurant is regularly cutting employees then they should review their scheduling practices to prevent this from happening. Restaurant scheduling is dynamic across all periods but that does not mean that data cannot be used to improve scheduling practices. Schedule data from this period last year along with sales forecast data can be used to greatly improve scheduling practices. It is also good to make notes regarding scheduling each day so when looking back at previous data it is possible to see what the impact of scheduling was that day.

Working out labor cost percentages on a macro, day-to-day basis can also help to give an insight into labor percentage fluctuations over the course of the week and to identify days where labor costs can be reduced. The main tactic here is to bring employees in later or have them leave earlier so that they cross over for the rush and are not clocked in when they don’t need to be.

Increase Employee Retention

We spoke about the importance of employee retention, and how to go about increasing employee retention, in this article. Hiring and training employees is an expensive process, estimated to cost 25% to 40% of their expected annual pay. The way to reduce this is to increase employee retention so this cost simply doesn’t happen.

Labor Management Incentives

Having more staff on shift makes a manager’s job easier and managers are likely to keep employees on the clock for this reason. If a manager is not incentivized to control the labor costs of their venue then they will keep extra, often unnecessary, staff on shift resulting in perpetually high labor costs. High labor costs are often attributed to the venue’s ability to consistently meet or exceed a high standard of customer experience. However, a high standard of customer experience can also be achieved and maintained in restaurants operating within their budgeted labor cost range.

Managers, both front and back of house, should be incentivized to make decisions that are both financially smart for the business and in the best interest of the customer experience. Many restaurant owners will tie the managers’ bonuses to targets for both their venue’s labor percentages and the results of quality of service reviews. Ensuring consistency in these reviews can be done by using secret shoppers.

Final Considerations

When reducing labor costs, especially when looking at staffing and scheduling, it is good to keep in mind that labor costs should never be reduced at a detriment to the level of service expected in that establishment. Finally, if a location’s labor costs are not where they need to be, and they cannot be reduced further without being detrimental to customer service or employee satisfaction, then managers and and owners will want to look at other cost reducing tactics as well as methods of increasing revenue that don’t involve an increase in labor costs e.g. menu engineering.

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6 Ways to Grow Your Restaurant’s Online Food Delivery Orders

Ben Beddow — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 06:14:59 +0000

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6 Ways to Grow Your Restaurant’s Online Food Delivery Orders

Ben Beddow

Published February 3rd, 2022

It is well known fact that online food delivery has been booming since the spring of 2020. Here are a few nuggets of knowledge that provide an excellent overview of the current and future of the online food ordering and delivery market:

Over half of adults now say that purchasing takeout and delivery is essential to the way they live
Online food delivery revenue is expected to grow by over 9% each year between 2022-2026
By 2025 30% of all restaurant orders will be placed through digital sales channels
42% of restaurant operators say they have added delivery services since the spring of 2020

It is quite clear to everyone involved in the restaurant world that digital ordering, and consuming a wide variety of restaurant food at home, is now the norm. This is an expanding sales avenue that cannot be ignored.

With the online food delivery market expected to exceed 9% growth in each of the next 5 years, many restaurant operators are wondering how they can get a slice of this digital revenue pie. Which online food ordering services can a venue, or restaurant group, add to their arsenal to enhance their ability to take advantage of this societal shift toward online ordering?

Table of Contents

Integrate with Order with Google

Google processes over 1 billion restaurant related searches every month, and in 2019 they released Order with Google. Order with Google is an online food ordering system for restaurants that is built directly into a venue’s Google My Business results, alongside their reviews, images and menus. Meaning that, in one click, a customer can order right from the Google search results page.

Order with Google provides a simple cost model to restaurants, whilst providing users with an easy to use and recognizable interface that they will be confident using to order food online. The “Order Food” button can also be found on a restaurant’s Google Maps result, and Google Maps is used by more than ⅔ of the nation’s map users. A restaurant opening themselves up to this audience can easily have a positive impact on their online food delivery order.

Integrating with Order with Google not only means that customers who find a venue via Google My Business can place an order for pickup or delivery both quickly and conveniently, but it also means that digital orders go straight through the venues POS system and into the kitchen. This removes the human, error inducing, element associated with phone-in orders that also saves on staffing and food costs.

Website Ordering Platform

77% of diners visit a restaurant’s website before deciding to place a food order. So giving them the opportunity right there on the website seems like a no-brainer. Today it is highly important that a restaurant’s website is user friendly and visually appealing. This is especially true for a website’s mobile version, with 72% of food and beverage related searches being made from mobile devices.

The convenience of website ordering as an online food delivery system cannot be understated in today’s digitally orientated world. 94% of diners say that reading a restaurant’s reviews influences their ordering decision. This underlines the importance of managers owning their venue’s presence on review sites and linking out to their website where users can then easily and conveniently place a food order.

Branded Mobile App

Having a branded mobile app for a venue comes with multiple benefits:

It removes the venue from the clutter of 3^rd party order and delivery platforms
It gives the proprietor freedom of design
It is instantly editable (for both the removal and addition of items)
It can be used to send notifications to users: customized by both content and time
It helps to increase customer loyalty
It allows users to easily reorder previous orders

70% of customers would prefer to order directly with a restaurant instead of a 3^rd party. Combine this fact with the knowledge that branded apps increase customer loyalty (with branded app users ordering up to 2x as often as on other platforms) and it is easy to see why offering a branded app can increase a restaurant’s online food delivery orders.

Having a branded mobile app for a venue comes with multiple benefits:

It removes the venue from the clutter of 3^rd party order and delivery platforms
It gives the proprietor freedom of design
It is instantly editable (for both the removal and addition of items)
It can be used to send notifications to users: customized by both content and time
It helps to increase customer loyalty
It allows users to easily reorder previous orders

Having a branded mobile app for a venue comes with multiple benefits:

It removes the venue from the clutter of 3^rd party order and delivery platforms
It gives the proprietor freedom of design
It is instantly editable (for both the removal and addition of items)
It can be used to send notifications to users: customized by both content and time
It helps to increase customer loyalty
It allows users to easily reorder previous orders

Loyalty Program

Members of a loyalty program will spend almost twice as much as their non-loyalty member counterparts, and some reports have found that increasing customer loyalty by just 5% can increase profits by up to 95%. Loyalty programs should be incorporated into all restaurant delivery systems, as well as dine-in services. It could be as simple as using dynamic QR Codes on packaging or other customer touchpoints to get customers to sign up for a loyalty program. Doing this almost always has a positive impact on a restaurant’s digital delivery orders.

Before 2020, in a NRN survey, 45% of respondents said that offering mobile ordering or loyalty programs would encourage them to use online ordering systems more often. It is important that a venue’s loyalty program is not generic and can be programed, through the use of data analytics, to suit the venue’s offerings and even the customers themselves.

POS Integrations

Integrating orders that come through the many channels of a restaurant’s food delivery system directly into the venue’s POS system has multiple benefits. The main one is that the ordering process is streamlined, and that this integration removes the human element from the process and thus reduces the quantity of human induced errors. This means that the customer always gets the right food and, therefore, has the best digital ordering experience possible with that restaurant. This, in turn, increases the chance that they will return and become a loyal customer.

Removing the human element by integrating orders into a POS system also means that there can be less food wasted on re-makes, which can lower a venue’s food costs by as much as a few percentage points.

Delivery Service

Offering a delivery service adds a whole new element, essentially a whole new business-arm, to a restaurant. Doing this requires owners and managers to learn the ins-and-outs of the laws regarding, amongst other things, the hiring, insuring, and liability of delivery drivers.

A restaurant’s food delivery system cannot exist without drivers, but there are, thankfully, last mile delivery services that remove the stress associated with managing the intricacies of a delivery service. This then allows restaurant managers to focus wholly on their venue and their product. Such 3^rd party delivery services are not associated with the ordering of the food, like Grubhub and UberEats are, and often charge a substantially lower fee for the services they provide.

The Takeaway

ActiveMenus is a digital restaurant service provider that provides everything from digital food ordering systems to last mile delivery services, allowing restaurant owners and managers to focus on the things that matter to them the most inside their venue. ActiveMenus can integrate digital ordering platforms with over 40 POS systems, meaning that there’s no messing around transferring orders from an iPad, email, or printout to a POS system; a process which introduces a costly human error factor.

Reach out to us today to schedule a consultation and to learn how ActiveMenus can take your venue’s digital ordering experience to the next level for both you and your customers!

The post 6 Ways to Grow Your Restaurant’s Online Food Delivery Orders appeared first on Online Ordering For Restaurants | ActiveMenus.

4 Factors of Successful Restaurant Promotions

Ben Beddow — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 15:39:16 +0000

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4 Factors of Successful Restaurant Promotions

Ben Beddow

Date Published January 26th, 2022

A restaurant’s marketing budget is generally expected to equate to 3-6% of its total sales. This varies depending on multiple factors including, but not limited to: location, competition, business volume, and cash flow. This marketing budget expectation is just that, an expectation. There are certain times of the year when a venue will spend more than this on marketing, and rarely will they spend less.

How much capital is available for a restaurant’s marketing plan is a small element of achieving success with a promotion for a restaurant. What is more important is how that budget is applied to produce marketing materials for restaurant promos and how they fit into a restaurant’s marketing plan.

There are four factors of successful restaurant promoting that can be viewed as 4 simple questions: Who?, What?, When?, and Why? The answers to these four questions can underpin any and all marketing strategies for a restaurant, and can help to increase the success of individual promotions by better informing their intent during the concept and design processes. Before delving into the four factors of successful restaurant promotion it is important to first touch on business analytics.

Table of Contents

Business Analytics

To have a better chance of success a restaurant promotion should rise from solid foundations, and those solid foundations are built out of data. When you involve business data to inform the promotion decision making process it can increase the efficiency of a marketing budget.

A venue’s owner or manager might have an intuitive sense of the What, When, Who, or Why for a specific restaurant promotion, but using data sourced from their POS system will allow them to inform their decision making in a much more accurate and confident way. Data that can be pulled from a POS system to better inform a restaurant’s marketing efforts include:

COGs
Sales volume/Menu item popularity
Guest count by time period (be that hour, day, week, or month)
Party size
Average check size

Different data points pulled from a location’s POS will inform each of the factors below that can impact a promotion’s level of success.

A venue’s owner or manager might have an intuitive sense of the What, When, Who, or Why for a specific restaurant

promotion, but using data sourced from their POS system will allow them to inform their decision making in a much more accurate and confident way. Data that can be pulled from a POS system to better inform a restaurant’s marketing efforts include:

COGs
Sales volume/Menu item popularity
Guest count by time period (be that hour, day, week, or month)
Party size
Average check size

Different data points pulled from a location’s POS will inform each of the factors below that can impact a promotion’s level of success.

COGs
Sales volume/Menu item popularity
Guest count by time period (be that hour, day, week, or month)
Party size
Average check size

Different data points pulled from a location’s POS will inform each of the factors below that can impact a promotion’s level of success.

Who: Target Market

The vast majority of restaurant promotions will be aimed at a specific group of patrons, either existing patrons or new ones. New customer acquisition can cost five times more than focusing on keeping existing customers returning, and the cost of results can be a big factor in this decision.

Once a target customer group, new or existing, has been established the next step is to tailor the marketing material to better suit the venue’s target market. Both data analytics and a location’s general target market can influence this. If, for instance, a venue has seen a drop in the number of children’s meals sold over the past few months then it is possible that fewer families are visiting the location. This provides the venue with a clear potential target audience for their promotion. Knowing the target audience a promotion is aiming at can greatly inform the verbiage and visual content of said promotion.

What: COGs

Completing a COGs analysis for a promotion, using the latest pricing data from suppliers, can provide “big picture” insights into the promotion and ensure that it provides value to the business, instead of taking value away from it. At a very minimum the promotion price should cover the COGs of the items in the promotion, and, ideally, a restaurant should breakeven on all of its promoted items.

If a restaurant promotion includes discounted or free menu items as a way of enticing people through the door then knowing and managing the COGs of these items is imperative to ensuring that the promotion doesn’t hurt the business as it tries to help it.Completing a COGs analysis for a promotion, using the latest pricing data from suppliers, can provide “big picture” insights into the promotion and ensure that it provides value to the business, instead of taking value away from it. At a very minimum the promotion price should cover the COGs of the items in the promotion, and, ideally, a restaurant should breakeven on all of its promoted items.

When: Timing

The timing of when a restaurant promotion is released can seriously affect its effectiveness and the value it generates for a venue. The timing of a restaurant promotion is dependent on multiple factors, all of which will be unique to each restaurant, its clientele, and its location.

Seasonality can affect restaurant promotions in many ways. Colder and warmer periods of the year will affect the content of promotional materials, and seasonality is also an important factor for many restaurants located in resorts, towns, or districts where there is a seasonal fluctuation in business levels. If a restaurant or area has an off-season, when there are fewer potential customers in the area, then any marketing conducted during this period will largely be a waste of time, effort, and capital.

If sports are an element of a venue’s offerings then the coming and going of the region’s popular sports can impact the effectiveness of a venue’s sports based promotions; and general promotions. Combining promotions with the beginning of sports season can help to bring customers in through the door who may then become a regular for that season; and maybe for other seasons to come.

Time, in terms of restaurant promotion, can also define the scope of an individual promotion. When analyzing data from their restaurant an owner or manager may find that there is a particular day or time period where business numbers could be improved by bringing in more clientele. Time is also a factor in LTOs where a promotion, like a 2-4-1, only runs for a limited period of time.

Why: Press or Customers?

Press and customers are the goal of all promotions and marketing efforts, combining for the common goal of helping a venue increase its revenue. But each individual promotion will lean toward one over the other. Knowing whether press or customers is the overarching goal of a particular promotion helps to better inform marketing decision making.

If the purpose of the promotion is to bring attention to an existing menu item, part of a location, or a service offered, e.g. an award winning dish, a new app, a private dining room, or delivery service, then the goal of increased revenue is being reached through press. These types of promotional materials are often aimed more at existing customers than new customers.

Other marketing materials could contain an offer that is aiming to bring guests through the doors at a particular time of the day or season. Here the purpose of the promotion is more directly focused on customers, and can often be considered to be aiming more at new customers rather than existing ones.

The Takeaway

Marketing and promotions are a crucial element of a restaurant’s success, and well informed and thought out promotions and marketing material can substantially increase the chances of success with a marketing campaign. Taking the above four points into consideration when creating a marketing campaign can not only increase its chance of success but can also help to make a restaurant’s marketing budget much more efficient.

The post 4 Factors of Successful Restaurant Promotions appeared first on Online Ordering For Restaurants | ActiveMenus.

Training Staff On Menu Knowledge

Ben Beddow — Sat, 08 Jan 2022 02:27:31 +0000

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Training Staff Menu Knowledge

Ben Beddow

He likes to write content and travel the world. He has been in the hospitality industry for soooo many years and still at it!

Published January 7, 2022

All too often, in restaurants across the country, a server or bartender heads to the kitchen to ask the chef a brazenly simple question that, all in all, they should know the answer to. These members of staff represent the location to its guests’ and it is their job to present the menu to the guests in the correct manner. This correct manner is effortless, will confidence, coupled with informative descriptions, and immediate answers to any of the guest’s questions.

Unfortunately, this is not the case all the time. The same issue also exists with beverage menus and a venue’s alcohol offerings. Servers are often seen headed to the well to ask the bartender about a certain drink or liquor, before returning to their table. All these trips away from the table create unease and uncertainty for the guests and also display a lack of professionalism on the part of the server and the establishment.

Many managers are blind to the plight of a lack of in-depth menu knowledge amongst their employees, and many just take it as a part of service. But managers, and their guests, shouldn’t expect this subpar level of service from their servers. Before we jump into training staff menu knowledge let’s first look at the benefits of proper menu knowledge.

Training Staff On Menu Knowledge

The Benefits of Menu Knowledge

Server Confidence: The more knowledgeable a server is of the menu the more confident they can be in their presentation of it.

Guest Confidence: When a server leaves the table to answer a question the guest is left feeling awkwardly embarrassed, and can mean they lose some faith in the quality of the venue they’re dining in.

Higher Level of Service: When the server knows the menu their level of service is elevated by knowledge and confidence. This is noticeable by the guests and gives them confidence in dining in that location; potentially meaning that they’ll spend more money.

Better Time Efficiency: Running back and forth to the kitchen or bar to ask questions wastes time. Not only the time of the server but also that of the other members of staff and the guest.

Guest Loyalty: If servers are knowledgeable and confident, guests are confident and trusting of the service staff. Such confidence and trust in a venue and its staff can increase guest loyalty and mean that they’re more likely to become a returning customer.

Server Confidence: The more knowledgeable a server is of the menu the more confident they can be in their presentation of it.

Guest Confidence: When a server leaves the table to answer a question the guest is left feeling awkwardly embarrassed, and can mean they lose some faith in the quality of the venue they’re dining in.

Higher Level of Service: When the server knows the menu their level of service is elevated by knowledge and confidence. This is noticeable by the guests and gives them confidence in dining in that location; potentially meaning that they’ll spend more money.

Better Time Efficiency: Running back and forth to the kitchen or bar to ask questions wastes time. Not only the time of the server but also that of the other members of staff and the guest.

Guest Loyalty: If servers are knowledgeable and confident, guests are confident and trusting of the service staff. Such confidence and trust in a venue and its staff can increase guest loyalty and mean that they’re more likely to become a returning customer.

Server Confidence: The more knowledgeable a server is of the menu the more confident they can be in their presentation of it.

Guest Confidence: When a server leaves the table to answer a question the guest is left feeling awkwardly embarrassed, and can mean they lose some faith in the quality of the venue they’re dining in.

Higher Level of Service: When the server knows the menu their level of service is elevated by knowledge and confidence. This is noticeable by the guests and gives them confidence in dining in that location; potentially meaning that they’ll spend more money.

Better Time Efficiency: Running back and forth to the kitchen or bar to ask questions wastes time. Not only the time of the server but also that of the other members of staff and the guest.

Guest Loyalty: If servers are knowledgeable and confident, guests are confident and trusting of the service staff. Such confidence and trust in a venue and its staff can increase guest loyalty and mean that they’re more likely to become a returning customer.

Before continuing there is an important note to make regarding dietary knowledge. Specific dietary requirements, be they allergies, intolerances, or preferences, are becoming more commonplace. When a member of service staff can answer a guest’s questions regarding their requirements with authority the guest feels exceptional welcome, gains confidence in the location and is more likely to return or recommend the venue to their friends and family.

The Elements of Successful Restaurant Menu Training

These tools for menu training range from the basic training of food menus to more in-depth methods of menu training for servers in restaurants. There is no one way to train employees on menu knowledge, as everyone learns differently. But, stressing the above benefits to employees can help them see why such knowledge is important to both their success and the success of the venue they work in.

Hard Materials

Standard practice is often to provide new employees with copies of the menus to keep and use how they wish. This should include the food menu, the beverage menu, and a list of all liquors and liqueurs on offer in the location. These materials allow an employee to study the menu outside of the location and gives them no excuse not to learn the menu.

Hard Materials

Menu 101 Session

Managers, and even the chef, should sit down with new hires for a 1-on-1 session to discuss the menu in full. Covering everything from the most basic menu items to the signature items of that location. This should be done with the employee’s hard copy at hand so they can make notes on it for their own future reference. It should also take place in a space free of judgement or prejudice, allowing the employee to freely ask whatever questions they want, no matter how silly or basic they may seem. The more they ask now the less they’ll ask later and the more confident they’ll be during service.

Here it is important that all allergy suitable menu items should be identified and marked up, along with those items that can be modified to fit specific dietary requirements.

Tasting

Tasting food allows an individual to connect the dish on the menu with tangible flavors and to talk about it from a first person perspective. However, conducting a tasting for every new employee would be an expensive and wasteful process. What venues can do, however, is offer a new hire an introductory meal from the menu, trying to push them towards the signature items they would want them to try. They can also give them samples of some of the most important elements of a dish.

If a location is conducting a major menu revamp then they can consider producing all of the menu items for an employee tasting before launch. This allows the employees to taste all the new items and to refresh their taste buds on existing menu items. Allowing employees to taste new menu items is also common practice when just one item is being added to the menu.

Formal Testing

Weekly menu tests are a common practice in fine dining, but outside of this world running menu tests for servers and bartenders is rare. Many venues have, however, begun testing new employees before the end of their training period, stipulating that they must pass in order to serve at that location.

Setting formal menu tests ensures that the employee will study the menu thoroughly and be better informed for service than if they were not tested. At a minimum formal tests should cover:

Most popular items
Item modifications
Gluten free items and modifications
Vegetarian and vegan items and modifications
Spirits on the shelf
What beers are available
signature cocktails

It is up to a particular location to decide if and how often they formally test their employee’s menu knowledge, and some will go as far as to hand out consequences -such as spending a week back waiting or running food- for failing tests.

Continuous and Casual Testing

Asking employees menu questions on the fly in front of their peers can keep them all on their toes and is a helpful tool to ensure that everyone keeps up to speed with their menu knowledge. These impromptu questions work best at line up and during slow periods of business.

The Final Course

There is a lack of expectation in restaurants regarding staff menu knowledge, and the notable improvements it can make to service and a restaurant’s reputation are often overlooked. Ensuring that a location’s employees know their menu back-to-front not only makes life easier for them and their colleagues but it improves their work confidence and, as a result, can severely enhance the guest experience in that location.

The post Training Staff On Menu Knowledge appeared first on Online Ordering For Restaurants | ActiveMenus.

Prepare Your Restaurant for 2022 with These Restaurant Digital Marketing Tips

Ben Beddow — Mon, 27 Dec 2021 22:50:09 +0000

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Prepare Your Restaurant for 2022 with These Restaurant Digital Marketing Tips

Ben Beddow

He likes to write content and travel the world. He has been in the hospitality industry for soooo many years and still at it!

Published December 27th, 2021

Restaurant marketing trends ebb and flow but the importance of digital marketing for restaurants in the 21st century cannot be understated. In today’s world an online presence is essential for a restaurant to sustain its business and to continue to attract new customers. Being present online means you’re keeping up with one of the latest marketing trends for restaurants as more and more consumers utilize the tools of the internet to inform their dining decisions.

The internet can benefit a restaurant in multiple ways: it provides another realm where the restaurant can interact with their customers, it provides a way to market a restaurant, it provides a revenue stream, through online ordering, and can provide restaurant’s with better insight into their customers. But what online tools and techniques, and restaurant marketing trends and ideas, should restaurant owners and managers be focused on to enhance their venue’s chances of success in 2022?

2022 Restaurant Digital Marketing Tips

Social Media

82% of Americans have a social networking profile, with the most popular being Facebook and Instagram. Instagram -with its highly visual interface and over 140 million members in the USA- is high suited to showing off the food and drink produced by restaurants, and 90% of Instagram users follow at least 1 business account.

Social media is one of the greatest restaurant internet marketing tools available for online marketing for restaurants. Business that use social media can build themselves a profile and use it frequently to interact with their followers but many also opt to use these social media platforms to run paid advertisements to help them gain more customers. In order to run a successful social media account a restaurant needs to take multiple factors into account:

Engagement: Being active on social media is critical to using the platform successfully. A business should post at least once a week on their social media accounts to maintain visibility and to foster customer engagement.
Discoverable: Businesses should tag their posts with hashtags to make them discoverable.

Videos: Videos are proving to be the most popular and most sharable content on social media platforms. Business should make sure their videos are short and enticing to draw engagement from their followers.
Behind the Scenes: Images and videos of food and drink and guests having a good time are great! But followers also like to get a peek behind the scenes. Chefs cooking food and bartenders shaking cocktails are just some ideas of behind the scenes footage available to restaurants.
Personal Connection: Social media can be used to build a personal connection with guests who aren’t in the venue.

Engagement: Being active on social media is critical to using the platform successfully. A business should post at least once a week on their social media accounts to maintain visibility and to foster customer engagement.
Discoverable: Businesses should tag their posts with hashtags to make them discoverable.
Videos: Videos are proving to be the most popular and most sharable content on social media platforms. Business should make sure their videos are short and enticing to draw engagement from their followers.
Behind the Scenes: Images and videos of food and drink and guests having a good time are great! But followers also like to get a peek behind the scenes. Chefs cooking food and bartenders shaking cocktails are just some ideas of behind the scenes footage available to restaurants.

Personal Connection: Social media can be used to build a personal connection with guests who aren’t in the venue.

Engagement: Being active on social media is critical to using the platform successfully. A business should post at least once a week on their social media accounts to maintain visibility and to foster customer engagement.
Discoverable: Businesses should tag their posts with hashtags to make them discoverable.
Videos: Videos are proving to be the most popular and most sharable content on social media platforms. Business should make sure their videos are short and enticing to draw engagement from their followers.
Behind the Scenes: Images and videos of food and drink and guests having a good time are great! But followers also like to get a peek behind the scenes. Chefs cooking food and bartenders shaking cocktails are just some ideas of behind the scenes footage available to restaurants.
Personal Connection: Social media can be used to build a personal connection with guests who aren’t in the venue.

Google My Business

Google My Business is a free service that allows business owners and managers to claim and manage their listing on Google results pages and Google Maps services. When a restaurant takes control of their venue on Google and keeps their information up-to-date they’re much more discoverable through Google’s platforms when users are searching for food in that area. Claiming their Google My Business is one of the easiest to implement and most popular marketing tips for restaurants.

Surprisingly, there are many businesses that have not claimed their business on Google and those businesses that are unclaimed are much less visible that those that are. Claiming and filling out their Google My Business profile can significantly increase a restaurant’s visibility, and it also offers users invaluable information, such as a star rating aggregated from multiple review sites, opening and closing times, as well as the opportunity to book a table and the ability to order food with Google.

Online Ordering

Google answers over 1.5 million searches for “delivery near me” each month and the events of the past few years have accelerated the previously steady growth of online ordering, for both takeout and delivery. When done right, online ordering can provide a venue with another revenue stream that can enhance profitability and increase revenue without majorly increasing the workload of a location’s employees.

Online ordering isn’t just about integrating with Google or providing customers with a killer branded mobile app to order from, online ordering is also about setting up a venue’s online presence to optimize its effectiveness at turning browsers into customers. A 2019 survey found that 77% of customers said that they are likely to visit a restaurant’s website before they dine-in or order takeout or delivery. Using this insight a venue should ensure that their website, along with the rest of their information online, is highly appealing to customers in order to further facilitate that conversion of browsers into customers.

SEO: On-Site and Off-Site

SEO is all about increasing a website’s likelihood to appear in the top search results in Google. SEO is now considered an integral part of any business’s online presence and should be factored into the design of a venue’s website as well along with how all the business’s presences across the internet interconnect.

On-site SEO covers everything that happens on the venue’s website and includes:

Highly visible hours, phone number, and address
Strategic keyword usage
Alt image tags
A site’s content
A site’s load speed
Both inbound and outbound links

Off-site SEO covers how other sites link back to a venue’s website. The more backlinks a website has the greater domain authority it can obtain on the internet and the higher the chance that it will rank #1 in searches. Whenever a restaurant is mentioned online, be it in the news, as an event sponsor, or elsewhere, that page should link back to the venue’s website. Not only is this important for SEO but it also allows potential customer’s to easily find the location.

On-site SEO covers everything that happens on the venue’s website and includes:

Highly visible hours, phone number, and address
Strategic keyword usage
Alt image tags
A site’s content
A site’s load speed
Both inbound and outbound links

On-site SEO covers everything that happens on the venue’s website and includes:

Highly visible hours, phone number, and address
Strategic keyword usage
Alt image tags
A site’s content
A site’s load speed
Both inbound and outbound links

Reviews

A staggering 93% of restaurant and café customers look at the reviews of a location before making a dining decision. 87% of those believe the reviews are important to their decision making whilst 50% of them only pay attention to reviews written in the past 2 weeks. These statistics show us that online reviews are highly important to customers. Fortunately, restaurants are not left at the mercy of their online reviews and can influence them to their advantage.

Take Ownership: A restaurant should take ownership of all its online review profiles to make sure the information displayed on them is always up to date.
Respond: An owner or manager should respond to both negative and positive reviews. This shows potential customers that they care.
Make it Easy: Customer’s should easily be able to find a restaurant on their preferred review sites.

Ask: Regular reviews are important and when guests are in a restaurant they are a captive audience. At the end of the meal members of staff should ask them to review the restaurant online.
More is Better: The more positive reviews a venue has the less a negative review is going to affect their rating. With star rating being the most important factor for consumers and only 48% saying that they would consider visiting a restaurant with less than 4 stars then the more positive reviews there are to offset the effect of the inevitable negative reviews the higher a venue’s all important star rating will be.
Different Sites: All review sites have different audiences and if a venue’s customers use one more than the other that one can be name dropped to help increase the quantity of reviews there.

Take Ownership: A restaurant should take ownership of all its online review profiles to make sure the information displayed on them is always up to date.
Respond: An owner or manager should respond to both negative and positive reviews. This shows potential customers that they care.
Make it Easy: Customer’s should easily be able to find a restaurant on their preferred review sites.
Ask: Regular reviews are important and when guests are in a restaurant they are a captive audience. At the end of the meal members of staff should ask them to review the restaurant online.
More is Better: The more positive reviews a venue has the less a negative review is going to affect their rating. With star rating being the most important factor for consumers and only 48% saying that they would consider visiting a restaurant with less than 4 stars then the more positive reviews there are to offset the effect of the inevitable negative reviews the higher a venue’s all important star rating will be.
Different Sites: All review sites have different audiences and if a venue’s customers use one more than the other that one can be name dropped to help increase the quantity of reviews there.

Take Ownership: A restaurant should take ownership of all its online review profiles to make sure the information displayed on them is always up to date.
Respond: An owner or manager should respond to both negative and positive reviews. This shows potential customers that they care.
Make it Easy: Customer’s should easily be able to find a restaurant on their preferred review sites.
Ask: Regular reviews are important and when guests are in a restaurant they are a captive audience. At the end of the meal members of staff should ask them to review the restaurant online.
More is Better: The more positive reviews a venue has the less a negative review is going to affect their rating. With star rating being the most important factor for consumers and only 48% saying that they would consider visiting a restaurant with less than 4 stars then the more positive reviews there are to offset the effect of the inevitable negative reviews the higher a venue’s all important star rating will be.
Different Sites: All review sites have different audiences and if a venue’s customers use one more than the other that one can be name dropped to help increase the quantity of reviews there.

The Final Course

Restaurant online marketing and a restaurant’s online presence are an ongoing and ever evolving process that, once set up properly, requires only a few hours of upkeep each week in order to respond to reviews and reply to posts, update any information, and to run or monitor marketing campaigns.

2022 is predicted to be another year of growth for restaurants, both digitally and through in-person business. Utilize the above points to enhance a venue’s internet presence and to get ahead of the competition as the new year brings new opportunity for each and every restaurant!

The post Prepare Your Restaurant for 2022 with These Restaurant Digital Marketing Tips appeared first on Online Ordering For Restaurants | ActiveMenus.