Business
Builders

Drive Guest Traffic with Online Reservations

1.  Guest convenience

First and foremost, make sure you choose a vendor that is easy for your guests to use. Consumers are busier than ever these days so there’s no question why online has become the norm for instant access to local restaurant information. Online reservations should give your customers a quick, convenient way to book a table in your restaurant, allowing them to choose the time, date and number of people in their party, without any risk of mix-ups or confusion. Look for a service provider that will allow you to accept reservations through your own website or an affiliated website in their reservations network, 24 hours a day.

Improve Operations and Boost Profits with Wireless Point of Sale Terminals

Wireless point of sale terminals (handheld) originally debut in the 1980s but faded away when the POS industry went from register based systems to PC based systems. In 2001 with the growth of WIFI technology in the main stream world, handhelds began to resurface in the table service sector of restaurants. This market represents an estimated 41 percent of the wireless POS market according to 2005 research from Mercator Advisory Group, a research firm for the payment industry. The benefits for table service operators from use of handhelds include turning tables faster, delivering more accurate orders and maximizing server productivity and customer satisfaction.

One operator taking advantage of the handheld technology is Sam’s Chowder House in Half Moon Bay, California. The restaurant seats about 280, offering indoor and outdoor seating in addition to private dining rooms. Serving approximately 20,000 people each month, Sam’s Chowder House is a large restaurant with a reputation to match. Sam’s Chowder House has over $6 million in annual sales and wins praise from tens of thousands of seasonal tourists and destination diners from the San Francisco Bay Area.

25 Ways to Build Same Store Sales

We work in a chaotic industry whose success—or failure—is often determined by pennies earned or pennies lost on a store by store, period by period, and shift by shift basis. So I thought it may be helpful to share some quick and effective tips, tricks, and techniques to help build your bottom line over the next 90 days. The ideas are a mix of both the new and time-tested-and–true…but enough talk. You’ve got sales targets to hit and here’s a quiver-full of revenue-building arrows.

1.  Learn faster and train better than the competition does.

2.  Improve service. Serve your team and guests better than anyone else, which will increase employee retention, customer traffic, and repeat business.

3.  Market repeat visits to every customer through every transaction. The goal is not merely to “sell more” but to get the customer to come back more often. Getting a guest to return one more time in a month increases your sales 100% with that person.

Understanding the New Economy

Amid a host of challenging economic factors, operators are fighting back. They are taking advantage of lessons learned from the past, and leveraging new trends for promotions and innovations. Operators are partnering with SYSCO to build traffic and achieve success. Learn how.

The Situation

Operators face tough economic challenges. These challenges include:

• Food prices that are escalating at the fastest rate in 17 years

• Record high gas prices that are decreasing consumers’ willingness to drive and eat out

• Rising unemployment

• Continued housing market concerns

• Low consumer confidence

The Result

These factors have conspired to constrain growth in all segments of the foodservice industry. In 2007, restaurant industry traffic grew just 1%, which is far below the industry’s historical rate of growth, and check size grew at its slowest rate in a decade. Confronted with these challenges, operators are asking, “What can we do?” In partnership with SYSCO, operators can fight back by:

• Learning and applying lessons from past periods of economic softness

• Looking at best practices from the present

• Leveraging tools and resources from SYSCO

Source: The NPD Group/NPD Foodservice/CREST