The food and beverage inventory in your restaurant or bar is your biggest asset. Yet so many kitchens and bars are loaded with products that are never used in recipes or never sold - that’s liquid cash that’s eating into your profitability.
It’s money that’s simply sitting on your shelf, instead of your bank account.
A to-go station or takeout strategy is the perfect way for your restaurant or bar to upsell and sell more products, outside of the typical table revenue you earn from guests visiting your establishment.
With that in mind, Sculpture Hospitality has listed a few tips that will help your restaurant or bar set up the perfect to-go station that will boost your organization’s profitability.
Think about how your space works for takeout
One of the most critical aspects of building a takeout strategy is thinking about how your space works for greater demand. A lot of the franchise quick-service restaurants have nailed this, restructuring their entire kitchens to enable a more efficient service for both dine-in and takeout customers.
Consider a dedicated team, for both customer service and your kitchen, in a separate area of your facility focused on takeout. This will ensure you can successfully offer takeout and increased demand, without letting it disrupt your normal guest experience.
Also, think about the delivery drivers who will be coming to your restaurant. You’ll want to build some kind of staging area where they are out of the way from your guests, and they don’t negatively impact that experience.
Don’t let it damage your dine-in experience
Now is the opportunity to really capitalize on takeout, but you shouldn’t let it be at the expense of your dine-in experience. You need to think about how you’ll create an environment where you can do quick service, without it crippling your ticket times.
We’ve all seen it firsthand when the guest experience has suffered and the restaurant has pinned it down to being “overwhelmed with takeout orders”. While that’s a good problem to have, it needs to be solved.
Make sure you have the internal processes in place to make both your dine-in and takeout services a success.
Choose a takeout container that enhances the customer’s entire experience
It’s easy to go into a takeout strategy with the mindset that “only the food matters”. While the food you deliver is the most important aspect of your to-go offering, the entire guest experience is what truly drives more business and loyal customers.
You want customers to get home, or receive their food from a delivery company, and enjoy every aspect of that experience. Think carefully about how you’ll package up their food. Will you separate the food so that specific dishes don’t get soggy? Will you offer fancy paper bags instead of the cheap plastic bags you get at the grocery store?
All of these aspects of a takeout impact a customers’ overall experience with your brand. The better the experience, the more likely they’ll spend money with you in the future.
Build a convenient and accessible experience
Takeout is all about convenience for your customers. This is more important than ever before in a world where customers are increasingly interacting with brands through their cellphones and other smart devices.
Whether you offer your takeout through collection, in-house delivery or third-party delivery service, takeout is a fantastic way to not only increase revenues but also meet customer expectations. Customers would rather stay at home with their family and have the same hot, tasty food delivered from their restaurant than wait in a line for 30-40 minutes to get sat at a table
With takeout, your business now has the opportunity to not only have full capacity in your restaurant, but also the opportunity to feed even more customers at the same time. Want to learn more about creating a successful takeout or to-go strategy for your restaurant? Get in touch with Sculpture Hospitality today. We would love to help you do just that!
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