Introduction
If you are a restauranteur, chances are you have been hit badly by the pandemic. Amidst the current situation, we understand how hectic the crisis is for you with restaurants and cafes shut for visitors and sales continuously going down. But once the situation is under control, things have to be normalized again. Businesses are ought to start and the major concern would be to cover up the sales target that has drastically dropped due to COVID-19. But the question is, how are we going to manage things?
Fret not, we are here to help you out with your food-based business and how to carry out everything post COVID19. For you to visualize it easily, we have categorized customers into dine-in and online ordering.
DINE-IN CUSTOMERS
Now, as the restaurants are going to open doors for the dine-in customers there is a major challenge awaiting them. Coronavirus might have dragged you down but now it is time to gear up. Getting new as well as previous dine-in customers would be difficult, but it is not impossible.
Let us look at some strategies to drive traffic to your restaurant.
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- Social Media Campaigns
The foremost advantage of launching an app for your eatery would be the steep increase in its visibility among a large portion of mobile users. Apart from your delicious food, welcoming ambiance, and top-class service, wide-spreading online visibility will help your restaurant gain popularity, giving you an edge over your competitors. Moreover, you can give yourself an attractive USP, Unique Selling Proposition, a term used to describe what you do best that is different from all the other brands out there.
321 million users joined social media this year which accounts for a total of 9% increase in consumption. More than 60% of the world’s population lives on the internet.
Optimizing your social media handles like official Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages according to the targeted audience can help you drive traffic post COVID19. Organizing online competitions, quizzes, and other fun activities can help you to gain the attention of potential visitors thereby hiking the sales.
2. Send Out Positive Vibes
With all the negativity around the corner, it is the time you should send out some positive vibes in the form of health tips. Nobody would like to visit a place where there is a risk of getting infected again. So, the first and foremost thing you should do to get more traffic is to send out personalized messages to the would-be visitors explaining how you are managing things and keeping the environment of the restaurant completely sanitized and clean. This creates a sense of trust between customers and service providers by conveying that their safety is your priority. Again, the use of Social Media to send out such messages can be handy.
3. Set Up the Ambience
It is high time you should renovate your beautiful cafe or a restaurant. People coming back to a completely new ambiance with soulful music playing in the background is a complete mood lifter. Consider making changes in the sitting area and make it more appealing and calm so that people genuinely feel excited to visit your restaurant. This can increase the sales and ultimately will help you perform better with yielding maximum outputs post-pandemic.
ONLINE ORDERING SYSTEMS
While you may take all the steps to ensure a healthy and safe environment for your visitors, people are less likely to dine out due to the threat of catching the lethal infection again. Online ordering systems come into play here and in fact, they are a blessing in disguise. Once the pandemic is over, the workload from respective organizations would increase suddenly and people would be under strict deadlines. In this scenario, cooking meals, especially for single moms and people living alone would be difficult and they would eventually move to online ordering systems. Thus, whether a pandemic is active or not, masses would continue to order food through online delivery apps provided by the respective food-based business.
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- Offers And Discounts Like No Other
81% of the customers prefer searching for deals before buying from a particular restaurant, claims a report by Valassis. Heavy discounts and offers play a great deal when it comes to increasing sales and growth. Luring customers with attractive deals on bigger portions prompt them to go larger than usual and thus, increasing your chances of growth and profits. Sending push notifications through the optimized food delivery app of your restaurant can make this happen. We, at AIPOS, are helping millions of restaurants and cafes through our POS systems Australia by curating personalized native apps for their businesses.
2. Freebies and Rewards
Along with some regular offers, you can increase the sales of a particular food item by providing mini add-ons like mousse, a small cup of coffee, etc. This can act as a sample beverage and once the customers get accustomed to its taste, they will surely crave to get more. Similarly, rewards can appear like a steal deal to many potential consumers.
3. Premium Deliveries
With people spending more time in the office or their workplace post-pandemic, the demand for online food delivery will reach heights. Making use of this opportunity the restaurant owners can opt for premium food delivery by providing no-contact delivery along with sanitized food containers. You can also make the deliveries more customized and hassle-free for your buyers by adding options like optional biodegradable cutlery.
4. Customizing the Menu
Creativity goes hand in hand for the better performance of a business, be it food-based or tech-based. You can add new dishes to your menu with some creative and funny names making people curious about it. This can induce a reaction of trying the food item at least once in order to explore more. While this can prove beneficial and equally rewarding, it cannot happen if you operate through third-party food delivery apps like GrubHub, DoorDash, etc. For this matter, you can turn to AIPOS, based on pos systems Perth to get across the pros of having branded online ordering systems.
Final Words
While we have listed strategies, you can opt for attracting more customers, it is highly recommended that you keep the safety of your valuable customers in the picture while setting up things. Even you would not want to risk your health for taste buds. So is the case with many people out there.
Since most of the people are stuck in their homes right now, demand for restaurant food is going to rise amid and post COVID19. The opportunity to compensate for your lost business cannot get any better, for it is high time you should plan out things and start working out the solutions accordingly.
AIPOS is a premium venture that provides services to food-based businesses in Australia. We have a wide range of solutions for your business and can help you to grow and reach new standards. Getting your hands on the customized native app according to the requisites of your business is now easier than ever. With effective solutions like POS systems, Loyalty Programs, etc. we are here to improve the performance of your restaurant. To know more about us, visit our homepage.