How to Drive Traffic to your Restaurant Website that gets Customers Through the Door

Your website is a virtual business card and it holds far more information about your business than a piece of paper or small card. In addition it can be accessed from any country, city or household in the world with an internet connection and computer.
Getting customers to your website is a little harder than handing out business cards. The best way of driving traffic to your site, and ultimately through the door, is to use the following multiple proven methods:

1) Print it

Perhaps, the simplest way to drive traffic to your restaurant’s website is through a printed card placed at each table. List your site and encourage visitors to go to it. Every piece of your marketing material should include your website address.

2) Social Media

Drive traffic to your website with social media. This can be achieved in multiple ways. For example, you can use social media to attract attention to a ‘scavenger hunt’ on your website to find the latest entree your restaurant will serve. You can jump on Twitter trending topics. If they like what you have to say, they may follow you and even visit your website. Moreover, social media promotion is only limited by your imagination. There are many ways to promote businesses and their products that have yet to be discovered.

3) Coupons

Coupons are an immensely successful tool to drive traffic to your restaurant’s website. Everyone loves free stuff! Coupons can be used for a free appetizer or dollars off. They do not have to have a high value amount. They only need to be high enough to encourage your customers to visit your restaurant instead of your competitors. Restaurants can make use of a PDF file or image placed on their website or a service, like coupons.com to make the coupons printable. Always place the coupon on your website to make that the first stop for prospective diners.

4) Giveaways

Giveaways do not need to be elaborate. A fabulous prize and an entry form is all that’s required. Make your website the only place where customers can enter. Combine social media marketing and print to make the giveaway more successful.

5) Blog About It

A restaurant’s website should utilize the blogosphere with a blog on their site and guest posting. A blog on your website keeps your site updated which satisfies the rules of search engines to maintain the site’s ranking in the search results. It also establishes the restaurant as an expert in its field and provides a reason for site visitors to keep coming back. Guest posting is when your restaurant (or a freelancer writer/ghostwriter hired by you) creates a blog post for another blog that promotes your business and establishes the restaurant further as an expert. Guest posts include a link back to the website, so readers can learn more about your restaurant.

6) Fill Your Site with Information

While filling your site with relevant and detailed information sounds a bit elementary, many restaurants forget that all sites need the basics; a detailed menu, ‘About Us’ page, promotions, and other personal details, for customers to read and obtain a better sense of your business. Without these, what exactly is the intent of getting people to your restaurant’s website? A website is a restaurant’s virtual business card and it should reflect the business’s image.

Driving traffic to your website begins with a good website and a marketing plan. A combination of the above methods will bring customers to your website and hook them into coming back. Continue with these efforts to keep traffic at optimal levels.

What methods do you use to get traffic to your website and subsequently through the door of your restaurant?

7 Tips for Selecting the Best Wines for your Restaurant

Offering a wine menu means you must weigh several elements, including your overall concept, your clientele, your food menu, and whether your staff will be able to sell the wine you select.  Get these elements wrong, and you may be stuck with a costly, slow-moving inventory.  Get them right, however, and that jovial clinking of wine glasses will sound like an old-fashioned cash register.

Here are seven tips to think about when creating your wine list:

1) Know Your Concept

What is your theme and who are you trying to serve? If you run a casual burger joint, a wine list may be unnecessary.  But if you offer gourmet burgers as part of an upscale menu, then a wine list may be not only be appropriate, but vital. Do some research of the restaurants in your area to get an idea of what they are offering and what they are charging?

2) Choose Your Supplier Carefully

Ask any contacts in the beverage industry whom they use, and how successfully they compete on conceptual fit, price, and variety. Meet with distributors at your restaurant so they can understand your concept. Ask about their best sellers, but don’t be afraid to offer lesser-known labels that may better fit your theme. Your prospective vendors will want a mutually beneficial sale, so they’ll typically make good suggestions. Make sure that you use at least two distributors.

3) Involve Your Staff

If you have a separate chef or wine steward, include them in the decision, or even delegate them to make recommendations for your approval. Enlist your servers help as well. Your staff will drive your wine sales, so if they don’t like the wine they taste, you will have trouble selling it.

4) Offer Variety

Although a list of 15 wines may be sufficient, try and offer several varieties, even a few which may be new to most customers. Offering recognizable wines with new ones will not only give the guest the comfort of familiarity but also position your establishment as a place where they can experiment. Ensure that you include light, medium and full bodied white and red wines, as well as sweet and sparkling wines.

5) Create Value for Yourself and your Customers

Purchasing wine will obviously affect cash flow; so if you choose expensive wines, make sure they offer something for which customers will pay a premium. Unlike your food, to which your chef and servers add value, customers know the retail cost of your wine, to which you add no value. Remember: not all expensive wines will fit your concept, few of your customers will appreciate the difference, and some of your best-selling wines may be the most affordable, especially those from places such as Australia, Chile, New Zealand and South Africa, etc.

6) Maximise Your Food Pairings

Select wines that enhance the widest variety of menu items. Many guests choose wine based on their choice of entrées. Consider listing appropriate pairings on your menu and train your servers to make suggestions when possible.

7) Manage Your Inventory

Before creating your inventory, you will need to budget for your initial order’s cash flow impact. You will need enough climate-controlled storage to house your wine, without spoiling, until poured.

We end off this blog post with a quote:  “I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.” –  W.C Fields

Now it’s your turn. Any more tips? How do you choose your best wines? Share with us below.

For more info on Ideal Software’s Inventory Management system for controlling food cost IdealStockControl

Ideal Software Named Constant Contact All Star Winner

We are delighted to announce the news that Ideal Software has been named a Constant Contact© 2012 All Star winner. We are thrilled to know that our efforts in reaching and engaging our customers via eMail and other online marketing tools has been successful. We would like to express our gratitude to you, our loyal customers and fans, for receiving this honour. Our emails are made with our customers and supporters in mind, and so to this end we thank you for engaging and interacting with us.

How Do You Become a Winner?

Any Constant Contact customer can be chosen as an Allstar. Criteria Include:

1) Having been a customer in 2012

2) Consistently high open rates (greater than 25%), click through rates, and low bounce rates

3) Regular contact with your audience, or publishing at least 2 events

4) Completing two of the following Constant Contact activities:

- Adding list growth tool Join My Mailing List to your website

- Adding Join My Mailing List to your business Facebook page

- Regularly viewing your reports to see how you’re doing

- Sharing your emails or events on social media using social share

- Adding social media Follow Me links to your emails or events

We welcome your feedback, in our continuous effort to improve on our emails, on how we can better tailor information to your foodservice needs.

8 Tips for Getting the Most out of Restaurant Design

Owning a restaurant can be a stressful job, let alone facing the prospect of restaurant design. In an effort to help lighten the burden, we’ve developed eight tips to assist you in getting the most out of restaurant design.

1) Design your Concept Around Three Words

By taking the concept for your restaurant design and breaking it down into three easily digestible words, you give yourself some room to explore ideas while at the same time giving your design focus towards a set of specific goals. Words like fresh, fast, affordable, or fancy are all evocative phrases that can help give your amorphous idea a solid structure to build upon.

2) Separate Personal Preferences from Customer Preferences

Unless your restaurant is themed around you, it’s a good idea to leave any personal preferences behind when constructing your dream restaurant. You want the design to be reflective of your personality, but ultimately be about the consumer’s wants and needs.

3) Don't be Afraid to Seek Outside Help

As previously mentioned, owning and managing a restaurant can be stressful enough on its own. Having to work at the restaurant’s design as well can be a daunting task. With that in mind, don’t be afraid to hire a professional restaurant designer to help take care of aspects that you can’t be bothered with. Aside from some of the more inconsequential details, professional designers can also help with the important parts that you might otherwise not be knowledgeable in, such as the materials and specs for restaurant spaces.

4) Search for Inspirational Images

The internet is an unlimited resource for finding images online that you find to be representative of your restaurant’s design. Don’t just look for other restaurants to imitate though, be open about the type of images you find inspirational and collect them into a collage to provide your restaurant designer. This will help immensely when it comes to them turning your vision into a reality.

5) Be Specific and Communicative

Along a similar vein, be sure to keep constant communication with your restaurant designer to ensure they’re always on the right path. Don’t make them guess at your goals as that will only result in disappointment on either or both ends.

6) Keep an Open Mind

While it’s a good idea to be vocal about what you do and don’t want from your restaurant design, keep in mind that any professionals you hire are considered professional for a reason. Before rejecting any ideas, take a step back and try to see the problem from your restaurant designer’s point of view.

7) Pay Attention to Your Budget

Attempting to design a restaurant without setting up a budget in advance is a surefire recipe for future disaster. Always keep your budgets in the back of your mind when making decisions concerning the look of your restaurant. This way, you avoid any future disappointments when you realize the dream restaurant your building can’t be completed due to a lack of funds.

8) Study Available Timelines

Product delays and reselection can seriously impact the construction stage of restaurant design. Know the timelines for the furniture and other details you wish to include in the restaurant to avoid these inefficient and preventable costs from piling up.

Now it’s your turn. Any more design tips? Leave a comment below.

For more info on Ideal Software’s Inventory Management system for controlling food cost IdealStockControl

Is Your Restaurant Website Mobile Friendly?

Consider the needs of the consumer, and your product will generate strong brand loyalty. This bit of solid advice finds application in every aspect of business, but especially in a restaurant’s website. The Internet has unarguably replaced the telephone directory as the primary source of commonly sought information. Customers visiting a restaurant’s website are seeking specific information. The customer needs you to tell them what they want to know without having to hunt for it. You need to reward your customer for taking the time to visit your restaurant’s website.

Factors to Consider:

Restaurant websites rank among the top categories visited on a mobile device. Customers want to know where, when, and how to find a restaurant. Mobile site design needs to bear these factors in mind, and give the customer clear information as quickly and efficiently as possible. Mobile browsing applications don’t always correctly render complex formatting or animated objects; simple designs load more quickly and accurately, allowing the customer direct access to information. Frequently accessed information should be placed prominently on the page; customers should never have to search for the restaurant’s operating hours, telephone number for reservations or carry-out orders, or location. It’s okay to put complex information like maps and menus behind a link, but make those links prominent. Menu imagery and visual presentation is important, but search engines cannot index image files that aren’t correctly tagged with metadata.

Content to Consider:

Customers browsing the restaurant website have placed themselves in an ideal position from which to be reached by the marketer. This is the best time to provide the customer with information immediately relevant to their decision but which they didn’t even know they needed. Specific restaurant ads such as featured menu items, limited-time offers, and specialty services must be actively brought to the customer’s attention. Customers who have taken the time to visit your restaurant’s website want to know about you; they just don’t always know which questions to ask. The best design practices place these important but secondary elements of the site either behind a prominent link or “below the fold” where the customer has to scroll to see them.

After the customer has discovered new information about your restaurant it’s time to reward him for taking time to visit. Website-exclusive promotions can result in immediate conversion of undecided consumers. A mobile reservation system can cut wait times or deter customers when a restaurant is in the weeds;  helping the customer avoid a negative experience is just as important as generating a positive one. Customers can browse the menu while they travel, and discover related businesses. Every restaurant exists within a community of businesses; taking time to direct interested consumers to them builds consumer rapport and can generate back-links. An interactive feedback option lets a restaurant gather valuable information about the customer’s experience.

In Conclusion:

Mobile website design requirements share many commonalities, which may be customized to the needs of a restaurant. Visual designs should use high-contrast text areas and be vertically aligned. Large images present loading and display problems; animated and interactive objects require specific software support not always available for mobile displays. The site should be easy to navigate, present the customer with important information not commonly sought, and reward the customer for time spent visiting.

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below.

For more info on Ideal Software’s Inventory Management system for controlling food cost IdealStockControl

March 2013 Issue of Ideal Software's Niche Notes, our FoodService industry newsletter.

IDEALSOFTWARENICHENOTESMARCH2013

Less Is More: A Case for Fewer Menu Items

While it may be tempting to offer your customers a large selection of menu items, it is actually far more profitable for your business to limit your menu. Read on for insight into why less is more when it comes to menus.

Fewer Items, Fresher Food

By reducing the number of items on your menu, you can focus on sourcing fewer ingredients. This guarantess fresher items for your customers, especially if you focus on getting in-season, local ingredients to guide your menu items. Consider reducing your menu to a small stable of easily sourced items, then allow for a number of rotating items informed by whatever is available in your area during that season. This will give your menu the benefit of appearing current, whilst still offering customer favourites to inspire loyalty and repeat visits.

Rethink Specials

One way to reduce the number of menu items while still offering your customers variety is to begin using daily or weekly specials. Look critically at the menu items that are ordered most frequently. These are the dishes that should make up your regular menu because they have been proven to be successful. Frequent orders means less waste and less loss of profit. Once you’ve narrowed down your menu to the sure-fire winners, take a look at some of the higher-priced menu items. Consider offering these more expensive, exotic items on an occasional basis. This allows you to order a very small quantity of a more expensive ingredient, like lobster, and simply list it as a special until you sell every portion. Train your service staff to highlight the scarcity of these special menu items, which should increase their value in the customer’s eye and lead to higher sales and swifter movement of your inventory.

Consider the Price

As you work to limit the number of items available on your menu, take a hard look at your menu pricing. Are you charging a reasonable price for the items presented? Pricing too low means you may risk your own profits at the sake of high turnover. Pricing too high means alienating potential repeat customers. Strive to offer a range of dishes on your menu to allow customers the chance to splurge or eat within their budget. A good time to reassess your pricing is after a full menu overhaul, including a redesign of the physical menus. This way your repeat customers will see that you are working to improve your service and inventory, not just raise prices.

Portion Variety

One way to add variety to a small menu and cut costs is to offer variety in the portion size of your dishes. Many restaurants offer small and large versions of each dish, which allows customers to pay for only what they know they’ll be able to consume. This can help you better manage your portion control in the kitchen by giving you an opportunity to think about what you’re offering on the plate per dollar spent. Portion variety is a great way to have a menu with several different choices without going overboard on a huge inventory. You can even offer combinations with several small portions of a few dishes for customers looking to sample new dishes, while still offering traditional sizes for repeat customers craving their favorite meals.

What are your thoughts on fewer menu items? Leave a comment below.

For more info on Ideal Software’s Inventory Management system for controlling food cost IdealStockControl