Think about this for a second…when you remove a sponge from a sink full of water, the first thing that happens is about 80% of the water drains out instantly. Then you usually give it one light squeeze to get some more water out before using it clean. But there is still a good amount of water trapped the sponge. In order to get the rest out, you need to really twist and squeeze it tight.

Your restaurant’s profits are very similar.

“The first 80% is easy, the next 10% just takes a bit of planning and strategy, but it’s that last 10% that will make a huge difference.”

The best part about the last 10% is that there is no last 10% because there are always ways to get more and more profits.  Here is just one of those ways.

If you could take home an extra $1,000 a month it would make all the difference. If you could lower your food cost by 2% or 3% that would be the difference between a stressful end of month and a day off to play a round of golf or go fishing.

Likely, this is where you are in your restaurant.

So I have a question:  How many customers do you serve in a year?

Imagine for a moment, if you could get just $1 more from each of those customers, what would that mean to your stress level, profits and revenue 365 days from now?

Example:

Your Restaurant Servers 120 guests per day, 360 days per year.

120 x $1 = $120 x 360 = $43,200

Would that help much???

The issue is that getting $1 more from each customer may not be easy as it sounds. So let me offer this different way to think about it…

Try getting $7 more from every seven people!

For some of you that is a as easy as a bottle of sparkling water on every other table.

Or getting work toward getting $4 more from every 4 top with an appetizer when the table was not planning on ordering one.  If you operate a counter service restaurant, this can be as easy and adding on a salad, a larger soda or onion rings instead of french fries?

Here are 2 of the fastest ways to increase revenue by $1 per person.

1. Up selling and Down selling
2. Menu Engineering

But, no matter what you plan for getting this extra $1 per person, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail…

Develop a plan, then break it down and track it daily.  

I work with a client that owns a wine bar and he admitted that his bottled water sales sucked.  “We just stopped focusing on it” he said.  So instead of just telling his staff to sell more, we determined how many they sell on an average week.  We doubled the goal for the next week and then he created a spread sheet with how many per day they needed to sell to reach their goal.  He shared some selling techniques he wanted to use with his staff and managers, then set a company reward if they exceeded the goal.  (this can be as small as ordering pizza for shift meal one day or even a 6 pack of beer to one person who is selected at random…just something to celebrate with).

Every day throughout the shift he was checking on on the goal and marking off boxes.  Did they hit the goal, oh yes they did, they actually exceeded it which means they nearly tripled bottled water sales for that week.  Do this with one product for 2-3 weeks and it becomes a habit, then switch to something else as the focus, but continue to track the bottled water.

If you have some other ideas, questions or wish to share your plan for increasing your per person average by $1 in the next 30 days, please comments below. I will reply to your questions and look forward to great conversations.

Also be sure to check out some of my additional Free Resources below

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