Hi everybody my name is Ryan Gromfin and I’m with www.TheRestaurantBoss.com as well as www.RestaurantProfitandPerformance.com. I’m an author, speaker, chef, restaurateur and I help restaurant owners make more money as well as enjoy more freedom in their lives. And like I said earlier today I want to teach you how to increase your sales by up to 17% percent in one week. Using a very simple six step method that I have for PROPERLY UP SELLING AND INCREASING YOUR CHECK AVERAGE in your restaurant.

Now, most people are not even properly measuring their check average. We use that word check average a lot. But what I mean when I say check average is really your per person average. When I say I don’t really care about your check average, that’s not true… In some restaurant situations I do, but there’s not one restaurant in the world—I don’t care what style or where you are that I am NOT mostly interested in your per person average. To calculate your per person average:

How to Calculate and Increase your Restaurant Check Average

Amount of people you serve in a day / total sales for that day = Per Person Average

it’s quite simple and what you’re going to end up with is a number that ranges anywhere from two or three dollars per person up to seventy, eighty or a hundred dollars per person. Depending on the kind of restaurant that you operate and where you are in the world, obviously the value of your currency will affect this.

How Do I Increase Sales

Now before I get into exactly what those six steps are it’s important to remember that there’s only three ways to increase the sales in your restaurant. (Hyperlink to double your profits video)…

• One of those ways is to get more customers to come through your front door.
• Another way is to get your current customers to come back more often.
• And a third way is to increase the amount that each customer spends.

Knowing that there’s only three ways to increase the revenues it’s really important to focus in on one of those three. I think it’s very hard for your average independent restaurant owner to be focused on all three at the same time. So one of the first places that I suggest restaurants start to boost revenue,is to start with the customers that you already have. Just encourage them to spend a little bit more…

Now this word upsell is thrown around a lot. You know, “would you like to add guacamole”,  “would you like to supersize it”, “would you like to make it a combo?”

Well, I use the word upsell because everybody understands it, but I really hate that word. I like to think of this as adding value to your customers experience.

We’re not in the business of upselling.  We’re not in the business of selling our customers anything they don’t want. Because then they’re not going to come back.

Improving your Guests Experience

What we are in the business of, is improving your guest experience.

Giving them an experience that they love and that they want to come back for again and again and again…

Part of that experience, part of giving them something that they love, is getting them to spend a little bit more money. Usually you’re better products are more expensive but your guests are going to like them more. So I want to switch the way that we think about upselling as a ‘bad thing’. It’s actually a good thing.

If you can get your customers to buy an extra appetizer that they love, or in the case of the guacamole. If they do add guacamole to their tacos or their burrito… it’s going be a better burrito because of it! So let’s not shy away and step back from upselling.  Let’s step into it and get excited about it.  Let’s shift the way we think of it to adding value and making the customers experience better.

6 Steps to Properly Upsell and Increase your Restaurant Check Average 

1) FOCUS ON ONE CATEGORY OR ITEM AT A TIME.

It’s really hard to just say, “We’re going to increase our check average today.” But it’s a lot easier to say, “We’re going to increase our check average today by focusing on selling more bottled water, selling more wine, selling more beer or even selling a particular type of beer today. That’s going to be our number one focus.” So the first thing is to pick a category or even an item that you’re going to focus on for the next whole week.

2) POST THE BENCHMARK.

Meaning, how many of that category or item did you sell last week and what was the dollar value? Did you sell a hundred beers last week at six hundred dollars in revenue, whatever that is, post that, so your whole staff knows and let them know this is the benchmark and you’re going to beat it by ‘this’ much. And here’s exactly how we’re going to do it.

3) SEED THE ITEM IN YOUR CUSTOMER’S HEAD AT THE FIRST POINT OF CONTACT.

So if you have a sit-down restaurant where customers get greeted by a host and then are brought to their table. I like to seed the item that you’re encouraging your customers to order right at the host stand. So as your host is walking the guests to their table, have him or her say,  “Jessica is going to be taking care of you today. If you’ve not had this brand new beer that we just put on tap from Coronado brewery (or whatever it is) I think you’re going to really love it.” And then he or she walks away.   

4) SEED THAT IN THE GUESTS HEAD ON THE SECOND POINT OF CONTACT.

So now, when your server walks up to the table and says, “Hi my name is Jessica, I’ll be taking care of you today. Have you guys tried our brand new beer from Coronado brewery?” By now your guest is like huh—I’ve heard this twice, that sounds really good. “Yeah let me try one of those.”

5) TRACK THE GOAL.

So whether it’s by the day, or by the period. However you decide to track it. I like to just use a simply tally system. So let’s assume that you sold 12 of those beers in the last period, and you want to sell 18 in this period. Every time someone sells a beer they go up to a piece of paper and they just do one of those little lines. You know, the one two three four and then the horizontal five system.

That way they know throughout the shift where the goal is at and you can motivate your staff by showing progress. You can stay on top of them.

I can’t even begin to share with you all the experiences I had with customers who have done this. Whether it be for increasing bottled water sales, increasing wine by the glass, beer, appetizers, guacamole or desserts. Whatever it is that you want to focus on. This system works.

6) CELEBRATE.

Set a goal ahead of time to tell your staff if we all hit this we’re going to have a pizza party. Or if we hit these four goals over the next four weeks, we’re going to all go out to dinner one night after work and it’s on me.  I’m going to buy everyone a case of beer, or a bottle of wine or something. Whatever it is for you, whatever you decide to do, however you decide celebrate, just make sure you reward your staff, make them a part of this and celebrate it for everybody.

You guys are going to see a huge boost in your check average if you follow this system.