1. MEASURE SOMETHING

In the business world, these are often known as KPIs or Key Performance Indicators and they are specific to your restaurant to help you run your business better. It could be more customers, more money, more profits, more freedom, lower turnover or lower expenses. Whatever you feel is important to you.

Here’s an example.

If your pain point is that your customers aren’t spending enough money, you need to increase your per person average. You can simply start tracking your per person average by taking the total sales for the day divided by the number of customers you served that day. You can use a simple Excel spreadsheet or some more complex software, (it’s up to you).

You can also identify one or two things on your menu to improve. Maybe you can add avocado to an entree, offer a larger size beer from 16oz to 23oz or offer a higher end spirit/liquor.

Once you identify your pain point, there’s no special training that you need – just start tracking it! Your POS system will tell you how many well and premium drinks you sell and then you can create a goal to upgrade 10 well drinks into higher end spirits.

If you measure it, you can fix it.

2. INTERSECT TRAFFIC

Yes! Forming a partnership is something you can do now to improve your restaurant tomorrow. While finding new traffic to come into your restaurant can be expensive, if you intercept traffic, it’s far less expensive.

Find someone who already has the attention of your potential customers and work with them to get your marketing materials and restaurant in front of their customers.

Find a charity that you’re interested in – it could be a local school or charity related to something something in your family has suffered from. If the people involved with the charity are your potential customers, pick up the phone and ask them if you can do a charity event with them or if they would like to hold a charity event at your restaurant. Maybe they can mail their customer list a free coupon for your restaurant. The specifics are far less than actually identifying and creating that partnership.

3. LEVEL UP

For this tip, all you have to do is find something that you’re already doing, but want to do it a little better. It could be a good dish on your menu that could be GREAT. It could be that you want to level up how you take your reservations or how you market on social media. The idea is to take something that is currently a 7 of 10 and ask yourself this one question. How could this be an 8 of 10, then do that thing. If you level up one thing in your restaurant every single day and never stop, you will be an 11 of 10 across the board in no time.