10 Ways to Prepare Your Restaurant for Black Friday
Black Friday, the beginning of the holiday shopping season—and the best time for retailers to turn a profit—a also tremendous opportunity for restaurant owners to capture customers, increase volume and sales, and establish a loyal clientele for the slow winter months. Are you and your staff ready to handle the hungry shopping crowds?
Here are 10 tips to prepare your restaurant for Black Friday and make this a happier, more profitable time for your restaurant.
1. Devise a holiday plan with your chefs and managers. Get creative. Treat the five weeks between Thanksgiving and the New Year as though they were one long weekend.
2. Staff awareness and focus is critical. Have a full staff meeting before Thanksgiving outlining your plan, stressing the importance of customer care and service, and reminding the staff that tips increase during the holidays if service is smooth.
3. Establish a variety of holiday specials. Highlight them on your menu. Make sure the items can be prepped early, cooked quickly, and presented with celebratory flair.
4. Portion control equals profits. During the holidays portions can be smaller, as many people are more weight-conscious. This is a proven method to cut food costs and boost profits.
5. Serve up some holiday cheer. Customers love special holiday drinks. When preparing your restaurant for Black Friday, delve into a bar book or two and recreate a few retro holiday drinks to fit your demographic. It is a proven profit center.
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- How to Successfully Reopen a Restaurant After the Shutdown
6. Consider "catering for the table." Many businesses have opted for department Christmas parties rather than the huge corporate blowouts of old. Offer to prepare a special meal (a prix fixe) for a larger party. This not only takes some heat off the kitchen but allows for built-in profit.
7. Promote your restaurant. Just because the streets are busy doesn't mean your restaurant is top of mind. Social media, email newsletters, and that old-fashioned check holder insert are effective channel to let customers know about your holiday plans and offerings.
8. Make every trip into your restaurant an experience. Starbucks preaches "the customer's journey" to their managers and staff. The Starbucks experience begins when the door opens and doesn't end until the customer finishes his or her drink. Try to envision the ideal customer journey for your own customers—how can you offer it?
9. This too shall end. Five weeks, that's all you get. Then January knocks on the door. Waistlines have expanded, cash has diminished, and credit card bills come due. But people still need to eat. Holiday bounce-backs—those small incentives to keep customers coming in after the holidays—are vital to your cash flow momentum. Create a few specials, and give them out freely.
10. The customer holiday gift. These are important. Do not forget to give your best customers a gift certificate as a reward for their loyalty. Make it generous enough for two, but not generous enough for three or four. It will pay off. Don't be stingy, it's the holidays. And nothing succeeds like a busy restaurant—especially on a cold Tuesday in January.
