How to Increase Average Spend Per Staff

Finding ways to ensure that customers and restaurant patrons spend more money with each visit is a concern that no business owner can afford to take lightly. From staff education to menu specials and promotional events, there is no shortage of ways to increase the average amount that customers are likely to spend.

Meetings Before Each Shift

Simply setting a new policy or instructing staff to upsell the customers is not always sufficient to ensure the level of results that business owners are seeking to enjoy. 

Scheduling a pre-shift meeting can often be worth the time and effort involved, especially for restaurants that have been experiencing problems that may be stemming from poor communication among the staff. 

Making a special effort to ensure that all policies are understood and adhered to and ensuring that all kitchen and waitstaff are on the same page prior to the start of each shift can make a world of difference.

Suggestions and Upselling

From desserts and appetizers to drink orders and entrées, a little effort to upsell an order is often all that is required in order to start seeing higher average spending among the restaurant’s clientele. Offering larger sizes of the most popular menu items can also be a great way to entice the table to place a group order that might otherwise have been left off the ticket.

Training wait staff to upsell and ensuring they are sufficiently knowledgeable enough about the menu to make suggestions to the customers are both basic tactics that no restaurant should ignore.

Facilitating Easier Transactions

Simply making it easier for customers to place an order or to pay for their meal can also help to improve average spending. Scheduling enough waiters to work for the crowd, updating to a point-of-sale system that is able to accommodate a wider range of payment options, or installing a self-ordering kiosk in order to decrease lines and wait times can encourage customers to spend a little more during each visit.

Specials and Bundled Menu Items

Adding special items to the menu is a great way to keep things fresh and interesting. Offering a bundled appetizer and drink order or an entrée that is served with a dessert can be a powerful sales technique, especially for restaurants that are seeking ways to encourage their patrons to spend a little more on each order.

Drink specials can be especially useful as they can help to create a more relaxed or festive atmosphere, one that can help to entice guests to stay later and order more. Offering a happy hour special or cutting drink prices on certain nights or occasions can help to improve sales figures on other menu items.

Many of the same promotional efforts and sales tactics that are widely used throughout other industries can be just as viable when it comes to encouraging restaurant patrons to spend a little more on their next order. The right sales policy, promotional special, or a self-ordering kiosk can all be potent resources for increasing average spending.

Visit Best Digital Mate again to read more fresh and relevant pieces of information.