Developing a successful restaurant takes time and practice. Beyond that, you also need to consider how to maintain continued growth. While you’ll have your fair share of challenges leading up to your grand opening, it’s the days, weeks, and months that follow that can truly impact your business as a whole. That’s why it’s so important to focus your efforts on brand development. After you’ve established a certain rhythm and flow for your brand, you need to consider further enhancements and improvements.
Whether this means developing some eco-friendly practices, consolidating your delivery and takeout efforts, or revamping your marketing strategy, there are plenty of approaches you can take. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level and enhance your ongoing successes, these are some of the things that you need to know.
Restructure takeout and delivery options.
Especially these days, it’s important that you offer strong delivery and takeout choices for your restaurant. Since the industry is dependent upon these services for continued success, you need to position yourself smartly to take advantage. In your average case, restaurant takeout and delivery range from somewhat simple to overly complex. Some restaurants and eateries work to employ their own delivery drivers or have certain staff members on rotation. While this is a sound strategy, it can cause some added stress if a team member is out delivering food, while you experience a wave of incoming orders or your limited dine-in capacity hits a peak.
There’s also the complication of working with third-party delivery apps. In a standard setting, services like Doordash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats offer you a tablet that you integrate with your POS system. Of course, if you want to position yourself as a leader in your local market, you’ll probably want to partner with several different delivery services. When you start to do some of the math, it gets messy. After all, using more delivery providers gives you greater access to potential diners and customers. However, if you’re juggling a tablet or software platform from each service, it isn’t easy to keep track of who is placing orders and which ones have modifications, upsells, and priority.
Luckily, there are ways to rethink your approach to delivery and takeout. Brands like Cuboh (cuboh.com), in particular, offer a different strategy that many restaurants relish. Instead of using disparate tablets and platforms, Cuboh allows you to consolidate it into a single system. That makes it much easier to spot orders as they come in, fire them off to your POS, and maintain a diner’s place in your digital queue. On top of this, you’re much less likely to drop orders, mess up add-ons or modifications, or sell items that are out of stock. The right delivery and takeout service makes it much easier to reach a larger audience more intuitively.
Consider eco-friendly solutions.
These days, customers are more and more discerning about the brands that they support. When customers start to vote with their wallets, it’s paramount that you find ways to ensure brand loyalty. This is where a green initiative can benefit your business. Instead of using outdated practices that produce larger amounts of food and equipment waste, you can rely on smarter software and product choices to maintain an eco-friendly status. For instance, a smarter inventory management system can track and automate your stock levels. When that happens, you’re less likely to order too much of a perishable item. Of course, even with automation in place, you can still manually adjust orders to account for holidays and upcoming promotions.
Beyond that, you can rethink your dinnerware. Disposable wood plates, for example, are easier to recycle if they’re cleaned properly. These are excellent for takeout and delivery as opposed to your traditional styrofoam packaging. It’s a great idea to find different ways to encourage your supporters to adopt green practices. You can also choose to offer biodegradable flatware or forks, knives, and spoons crafted from recycled materials. Paper straws, reusable packaging, and recycled materials go a long way toward encouraging brand loyalty and showing that you focus on the environment.
Also, if your brand relies on a lot of plastic packaging or bottles, you can switch to a water delivery service that uses green initiatives. Whether you’re looking for a water cooler with a cleaning and refill service or a bottle delivery that uses recyclable materials, there are ways to avoid the plastic waste that can impact your brand image and business reputation. It’s a smarter way to show customers that you care.
Update your marketing.
If your website, social media, and online presence look sparse, that needs to change. With reduced foot traffic and ongoing dine-in restrictions, it’s not enough to rely on word-of-mouth and referral traffic. Instead, you need a robust digital presence that helps diners find your restaurant and place orders quickly. Web design, in particular, is integral for this. You can work with brands like Webolutions (webolutions.com) to integrate a delivery page or quick social media links to ensure that you’re using every available channel. With an omnichannel approach to your business, you give customers the convenience of choosing their communication and contact platforms of choice.
Though this does mean that you’ll have to rethink your customer service approach, since you’ll be juggling more communication outlets, it’s a smarter way to ensure you’re expanding your presence. This is a better growth strategy and makes it easier for diners to find and engage with your brand. Use these tactics to develop a more robust brand strategy and incorporate online feedback to make yourself known.
Of course, these are just three of the hundreds of strategies for your restaurant’s ongoing success. You need to prioritize continued growth to guarantee that your brand lasts for years to come. Between adopting customer-friendly practices to enhancing the options you provide, there are ways to scale your operations in a smarter, more effective way. Especially nowadays, your brand’s growth is critical. Don’t neglect your role as a business owner, and do your part to ensure continued success.
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