A few weeks back, I told you about how things that are urgent are very different than things that are important. If you haven’t watched it yet, go check it out now. (OMG EVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT IN YOUR RESTAURANT)

That deals with your schedule, today’s training uses similar tactics, but it’s is all about your menu.

WHAT’S MISSING FROM YOUR MENU

There’s 2 things that most restaurants leave off their menu. Wanna know what they are? Urgency and scarcity. It’s the combination of these two things that creates a little buzz and need for people to buy stuff, spend more money and enjoy their experience in your restaurant a little more.

URGENCY

Let’s say you go out to a fancy steak restaurant. The first thing they do after you place your entree order is to let you know that the soufflés take a long time to prepare and you should get your order in now if that’s something you’re going to want.

It works because it’s delicious and since you haven’t stuffed yourself full of mashed potatoes, steak and lobster, your mouth is watering and so you place the order.

Do they HAVE to put that order in now? Well maybe, they’re not that hard to make, they don’t really take that much time…but it’s a genius marketing move.

Another restaurant that I work with freezes their ice cream per order. Premium, single batch ice cream with six or seven different flavors. The catch, you have to order it when you order your entree so that it’s ready.

These two situations are absolutely genius because they create urgency.

If you don’t order now, you can’t have it later…nobody wants to miss out, so they order it.

SCARCITY

Now, you don’t want to run out of everything on your menu, but you do want to run out of some things. If you do a special – then only have a few of them. It can be as simple as an amazing lasagna only available for one night. Maybe you make 8 portions and let your servers know so they can tell your customers how amazing it is, but there’s only 6 portions left. You can even presell this on your reservations – let them know that you’re going to run out of lasagna if they don’t pre-order it during their reservation.

A local restaurant serves up scarcity all the time with a Sunday supper where they only offer one entree and they always run out. What do my wife and I do? We walk in for dinner at 4:30pm on Sunday and the first thing we ask is, “What’s the entree tonight?” If we like it, we order it right there at the hostess stand because we know they’re going to run out.

If you can combine urgency AND scarcity into a dish, you’ll certainly have a winning combination.