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Customer Appreciation Ideas for Your Restaurant

Apr 28
Posted by Daniel in bar tips and advice, Booths, restaurant seating, restaurant tips and advice

What is it that makes any business successful? Without a doubt, it is the customers. You might have the best and most comfortable roomy restaurant booths and tables in the city. You might have the greatest chefs and the most innovative dishes. You might have a themed restaurant that is unique and fun. You might have any or all of those things, but if it weren’t for your customers, you wouldn’t have a restaurant at all. It is important to show your appreciation for them. The following are a few ideas that you can use.

Customer of the Month – Everyone has heard of employee of the month, but not everyone has heard of Customer of the Month. Choose a customer that already comes into your establishment regularly, and deem them the top customer. As a reward for their loyalty, offer them free coffee or soft drinks for the month whenever they place a regular order. Choose a new customer each month. You might even want to take their picture and place them in a Hall of Fame!

Drawings – Drawings are great ways to get your customers even more involved with your restaurant. Have a drawing each month and the lucky winner receives a free meal with the purchase of a drink. You can draw more customers’ names and offer them discounted meals. (more…)

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Get Your Restaurant Customers to Come Back on Slow Months

Apr 20
Posted by Daniel in bar tips and advice, fun, Restaurant, restaurant tips and advice

If you have been in the restaurant game for any length of time, you know that you have some months that are just busier than others. You should be looking for ways to increase your business before those slow months occur and the bounce back idea is one that works wonders. Best of all, it is very easy to implement and you don’t have to spend very much money to do it.

The first thing that you want to do is buy a large quantity of small envelopes. You will place special deals inside those envelopes, all of which are redeemable in the coming month that has been slow for you in the past. You will want to have some envelopes that offer a discount with the guest’s next meal, perhaps some that are 10% off and a few that are 20% off. You can have some of the envelopes contain free dessert or drink vouchers. Others can have a free entrée. You may even want to have one or two that are actually gift certificates for a certain amount that you deem appropriate.

Stuff the envelopes with the deals and place them in a large fishbowl or a tumbler. When the guests leave the restaurant, let them reach into the bowl and pick out one of the envelopes. Since the vouchers are valid for the following month, which is one of your slow months, you can be sure that quite a few people are going to be making return visits. Everyone likes to save a little bit of money, and this is a great way to boost the number of guests that visit during the slow period. (more…)

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Designing Advertisements for Your Bar and Restaurant (Part 2)

Apr 14
Posted by Daniel in bar tips and advice, restaurant seating, restaurant tips and advice

In the previous post, I went over the basics of creating a simple ad in a graphics program. Because there are so many design programs available, and you will have to spend time learning them in order to become an effective designer, it can be time consuming and frustrating. You have another option though. You can choose to hire a graphic designer to take care of the ads for you. He or she might also be able to develop your menus and even restructure your logo if you wish.

One of the great things about the Internet age is that you can hire someone from a thousand miles away to do the work for you. No longer are you limited by your geographic location. That means you have countless thousands of graphic designers from which you can choose.

When you are choosing a designer, you need to check out their portfolio to make sure that he or she has done similar work in the past. They do not have to have a lot of experience, but you do want to see what their work looks like. Most of the designers have online portfolios now, so you can view their work before you even contact them. (more…)

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Designing Advertisements for Your Bar and Restaurant (Part 1)

Apr 11
Posted by Daniel in bar tips and advice, Commercial Seating, Restaurant Furniture, restaurant tips and advice

When it came to designing the elements that went into your bar or restaurant, you probably had a large hand in everything. You chose the flooring, the décor, and you probably spent hours trying to decide on the perfect restaurant furniture, knowing just how important it was. You’ve had your hands in every part of the establishment, and it shows. It is truly your place.

If you are really hands on with your bar or restaurant, you might want to take part in designing the ads as well. Your involvement can be as large or as small as you like. If you only want to come up with the different specials and coupons that you are going to offer on the ads, that is fine. However, you might want to get your hands dirty with digital ink and create the ads from the ground up. In this post, I will discuss the basics of getting your advertisements ready on your own. In part two, I will discuss how to choose the right graphic designer for all of your bar or restaurant’s needs. (more…)

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Elements of a Good Restaurant Website

Apr 07
Posted by Daniel in bar tips and advice, Restaurant Furniture, restaurant seating, restaurant tips and advice

One of the last things you probably thought about when you were coming up with your ideas for your new restaurant was the website that would go along with it. You spent your time looking over the location, the décor, the restaurant chairs and tables that you would buy, and the menu. All of those are very important things, and you need to make sure that you have the best in all of those areas. However, on the technical side of things, many restaurant owners falter.

In today’s world, you need to make sure that you have a great website if you want to be able to compete with other restaurants in your area. More and more people are using the web to find places to dine, whether they are at work or looking on their smart phone.

It is important that you have the right elements on your site, and it must be easy for customers to navigate.

One of the most important things to have on your site is your restaurant’s menu. If you have specials, have a place on the site that is easy to update so that visitors will know what specials are available for any given day. One of the things that many restaurants do, but which is frustrating to their site’s visitors, is offer their menu only in PDF form. Not everyone wants to open up a PDF just to know what is on the menu. Even if you do have downloadable PDFs, make sure that they are just an option. You want your menu to be available right on your site. (more…)

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Sporting Events Should be the Lifeblood of Your Sports Bar

Apr 04
Posted by Daniel in bar stools, bar tips and advice, Restaurant Barstools, Restaurant Furniture, restaurant tips and advice

Swivel bar stools

If you are the owner of a sports bar, you have plenty of chances throughout the year to really capitalize on the major sporting events that are happening. While you might always have the games on at your bar, it really isn’t enough to drum up the excitement you need to pack your bar. There are plenty of other sports bars in town, and you need to make sure that you are constantly doing something special that is going to draw in larger crowds.

As a sports bar owner you have an advantage over many other types of bar owners. People are already coming to your bar because they love sports. How you handle the big events is going to determine how well you do in the long run though. Consider the largest events in the world of sports: the Super Bowl, the World Series, the World Cup, the NBA finals, collegiate sports . . .  the list goes on and on.

Whenever there is an event such as those discussed above coming up, you need to make sure that you advertise your bar and what you offer. Have game day specials, appetizers for half price, discounts for people who come in wearing jerseys, etc. There are dozens of different things that you can do to get people excited about your bar. Something that you might want to try if the hometown favorite loses is to offer “drown your sorrows” discounted drinks. Make sure that you don’t just focus on the “Big Game” though. There are plenty of playoff games that can get people just as excited.

What are some of the other things that you have to do to make sure that you have repeat customers coming back to your bar time and again? You need to make sure that you have an adequate number of TVs, and that they are spaced throughout the bar so everyone will be able to see, and so that you can have more than one game going at a time. You also need to make sure that you have adequate bar seating that is comfortable and that doesn’t make your place feel too crowded. If your seating is old and shabby, consider buying new as soon as you can. Ever little bit you do is going to help your sports bar become memorable in the minds of your customers.

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