restaurant planning and schedule

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Social Networking and Your Restaurant

May 19
Posted by Daniel in bar tips and advice, fun, Restaurant, restaurant tips and advice

You probably use social networking in your personal life. Most people today do. Perhaps you Tweet about the things that you are doing with your friends or family or about the latest movie you saw or book you read. People love Facebook too, and it can be a great way to keep in touch with people you know and even to meet new people. Of course, social networks are also a great way to promote your business. If you want to get more people into your restaurant, get onto all of the social networks that you can.

Set up special pages on Twitter and Facebook specifically for your restaurant. While you want to let people know about all of the great things that your restaurant serves, you don’t want to inundate them only with promotional posts. Make your restaurant’s social network a fun place. Give people some insight into the neighborhood where your restaurant is located. Maybe post some information or links about things people can do in the area after they’ve dined at your place. Of course, you will also want to make sure that you add information for any discounts or specials that you are currently offering – just don’t overwhelm people. (more…)

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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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Honor Heroes at Your Establishment

Apr 21
Posted by Daniel in restaurant tips and advice

As you’ve noticed, I decided to write a series of posts that will help you not only increase your income and number of customers but will also benefit the customers themselves.

This time the focus is on the men and women in uniform.

As we have seen time and time again, the world is a better place with the brave military men and women, firefighters, policemen, and paramedics. They put their lives on the line to help people each day, going into places and situations that would make most people pale with fear. They have jobs that most people don’t want and that even more people couldn’t handle. As the owner of a bar or a restaurant, you are in a position to give these folks a little bit of recognition.

Set aside one day per week for each of the above professions. On one day, you can offer discounts on meals or drinks to the men and women in uniform. On another day, you can honor the firefighters and the paramedics by offering them discounts. Then, give the policemen their discounts on yet another day. You may even want to offer free desserts or something similar to them and whomever they happen to be dining with at the time. They are sure to appreciate these tokens of gratitude on your part. (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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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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Three Ways to Advertise Your Bar without Breaking the Bank

Mar 17
Posted by Daniel in bar stools, bar tips and advice, Commercial Seating, Restaurant Furniture, restaurant tips and advice

Spring is here (almost). And many people are glad to get out of the house and enjoy a nice evening outside that might, more often than not, end at a restaurant or bar.

As the owner, you love your bar, and you know that others would love it too if they just knew about it. Advertising and marketing is one of the most difficult things for businesses to understand.

The reason it is so difficult is that people really don’t know what does and doesn’t work with advertising. Some things you do are going to stick, and some won’t. The trick is to market as much as you can until you find what works for your bar. However, you can’t constantly spend thousands of dollars on advertising and not get results. You would go broke quickly.

The following are three simple ways that you can advertise without spending a fortune. Implement all of them and see what works the best for you.

First, look at your website. You do have one, right? If you don’t have a website, you need to put in the effort to set one up right away. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money to do this. See if you have someone working for you that can set up a site and have them do it for you. It will be much more cost effective than hiring out. You might even want to choose a blog instead. You can set one up on your own in just minutes. You can have separate pages that have images of your bar furniture and interior design, of happy customers, drink specials and much more. Turn it into a community for you customers, a place where they can gather even when they aren’t at the bar. It is a good idea to keep your site updated and post on your blog at least once a week about what is happening at the bar. (more…)

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