seating tips

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The Seating in Your Restaurant Makes the Difference

black vinyl club chair

Let’s pretend that you are not a restaurant owner or manager for a few minutes. Let’s imagine that you just moved to a new city and you are looking forward to trying out a restaurant that serves your favorite food. So you head over to the place for dinner one night with your spouse. The atmosphere seems warm and inviting, and then the pleasant host takes you to your table.

On your way to the table, you notice that everything seems cramped. The tables are too close together. Once you sit down, you find out that the chairs aren’t comfortable at all. After a long day at work, you wanted to be able to find a nice comfy place to have dinner, but the chair is worse than the one you have in your cubicle.

By the time the appetizer arrives, you are already complaining to your spouse about the chair. You barely register the taste of the appetizer. It might have been good, but you just don’t care. When the food arrives, you are even more uncomfortable. People trying to get past your table have bumped and jostled you half a dozen times and almost spilled your wine. You don’t care much about how your food tastes. Once it is all over, you head home and write a negative review about the restaurant online. And only because of the restaurant seating.

Now, let’s step back into the shoes of the owner or manager of the restaurant. (more…)

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Customer Appreciation Ideas for Your Restaurant

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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Sporting Events Should be the Lifeblood of Your Sports Bar

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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Three Ways to Advertise Your Bar without Breaking the Bank

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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The Modern Sports Bar: (Part 2)

In The Modern Sports Bar: (Part 1), we looked at the importance of décor and people’s perceptions when they first walk into your bar. Now, we will examine some of the other things you are going to need to have the best sports bar in the city.

What’s On the Tube?

You need to have televisions and plenty of them. Choose high quality TVs from a reputable maker, such as Sony. They might be more expensive than some of the lower end televisions out there, but the picture quality is going to be better. You also need to spring for high definition. Since most people have HD in their homes and they already have large flat screens, you need to be able to compete.

You don’t want to focus on only one sport, and that’s why you need to have more than one television. You want to have as many as you can comfortably fit into the bar, and you need to make sure that you have satellite that works on all of the televisions so you can have them set to different stations and catch the most sports possible. This will help you appeal to a larger crowd. More sports equal more people.

Seating is Important Too

Something that many people don’t consider when they are creating their sports bar or renovating the one that they already own is the bar’s seating. Too often, they search online or through catalogs and choose the cheapest alternative for their tables, chairs, and bar stools.

This is a mistake. (more…)

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The Modern Sports Bar: (Part 1)

Everyone has their own preconceived notion of what should be in a sports bar, and you might be surprised to find out that those notions are often the same across the board. If you run a sports bar, or you are considering opening one, there are a few things that you simply need to have.

Set the Stage with the Right Décor

The minute someone walks into your bar, they are judging it. The first impression they get is very important, and it is going to play a part in whether or not they become a return visitor. The interior “look and feel” of your bar is important.

If you haven’t given much thought to what you are going to use as the décor in your bar, now is the time to consider it. Sports memorabilia is a nice touch for any sports bar. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a sports bar that doesn’t have signed photos, jerseys, pucks, balls, and other gear on the walls. (more…)

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