One of the main challenges you face as a restaurant owner is the big number of competitors. How can you stand out and get potential customers to choose your business when there are so many other options?
The answer is simple: by offering customers something more than delicious food and great service! In this article, you will find a variety of restaurant attraction ideas you can use to tempt your target audience to visit your establishment.
10 efficient restaurant attraction ideas
Sometimes, clients need a small push to make a reservation or place an online order. Moreover, the attractions you implement at your restaurant may turn your business into a viral sensation, skyrocketing your online presence.
Exclusive tastings
Have you heard of the phenomenon fear-of-missing-out? In short, the more exclusive an event or happening is, the more people will want to participate. Therefore, if you want to have people battling to book a table, organize exclusive tasting events.
For the first event, you can have your chef create a special menu and invite influencers. They will then post about the food and promote your restaurant to their followers who trust their opinion.
Read more: Restaurant Influencer Marketing Guide: Tips for a Successful Collaboration
Photo-worthy décor
Eating out isn’t just about satisfying hunger, clients are looking for an experience. And in this digital age, people are looking for places that will make a good photo background for when they post on their wall and stories.
If you want to encourage more user generated content, you need to make restaurant Instagramable. Here are some ideas:
- Dedicated photo corner, especially created for taking photos;
- Interesting art decorating your restaurant;
- A remarkable restaurant entrance;
- Exquisite restaurant plating.
Secret menus
Many restaurants already employ this marketing tactic, including Chipotle, McDonalds and In-N-Out. Having a secret menu is a great way to get regulars to come back because it makes them feel like they are part of an exclusive club.
You can start by creating three secret menu items that you only reveal to selected loyal customers. You can even expand this online by sending them coupon codes that will help them redeem the secret menu.
In time, you will see a whisper campaign forming, where people talk about your not-so-secret-secret and encourage others to discover your exclusive menu items.
Read more: What Is a Secret Menu & How to Implement One in 5 Easy Steps
Limited-time promotions
When prices are soaring for almost everything, customers are always on the look-out for a great deal. This is why one of the best restaurant attraction ideas is to implement restaurant promotions.
To go a step further and get indecisive clients to click on Order Now, you can make the offers only available for a limited amount of time.
Here are some examples:
- Free dessert for orders over $60 between 1 and 4 p.m;
- Free delivery only available on Friday;
- Combo menu that you can order only during happy hours.
If you are looking for an easy way to set up the above promotions and more, look no further than the Promotions module from GloriaFood. You only need a few seconds to add irresistible offers to the top of your online menu:
Seasonal menus
To have a thriving restaurant, you must focus on restaurant attraction ideas that work both for new customers and for regulars. Your goal should be to get every customer to return and continue to patronize your business.
To this end, you must give them some variety when it comes to food. Even if your dishes are delicious, clients may get bored eating the same thing and you don’t want them to go to your competitors to find something new.
You can freshen up your menu with seasonal menu items only available for a certain time. Moreover, using seasonal ingredients will help you cut food costs as ingredients that are in season tend to be cheaper.
Read more: The Benefits of a Seasonal Restaurant Menu & How to Implement One
Simple and fast on-premise ordering
Sometimes, the most efficient restaurant attraction ideas are not the flashy ones, but the ones that create a satisfying dining experience. The perfect example of this is enabling on-premise ordering via QR code.
During rush hours, it can be hard to provide all client with the same quality of service. Some clients may even end up waiting over fifteen minutes trying to get the attention of a server. After such a long waiting time, they will surely not be back.
To prevent this problem, you can have a QR code waiting on every table. Once clients are seated, they can scan it, browse the menu, order, and pay, all using their phone. This way, clients can enjoy short waiting times and servers can focus on providing excellent service.
Live music
Fill your seats by marrying two things that go very well together: food and music. You can invite local artists to play at your restaurant and make it a recurring event so all interested clients get to participate.
To make the organizing process easier, make it clear that people need to make a reservation to participate. Furthermore, enable customers to reserve a table directly on your website, in just a few clicks, without unnecessary phone calls.
You can use the free table reservation system from GloriaFood which you can even set up for pre-ordering so clients can order their food when they make a reservation.
Alcohol tastings
Have you considered implementing restaurant attraction ideas that also help you build stronger links with your community? Do some research and find out what interesting wineries, spirit makers and craft breweries are in your area.
Then invite them for a collaboration where they get to showcase their alcohol at your restaurant. Make it an event where you teach people about food and beverage pairing with examples of your menu items.
Cooking classes
If your restaurant is not open all day, why not take advantage of the hours when you don’t serve customers to organize some cooking classes?
You can have your serve teach interested customers about the principles of cooking in a professional kitchen, give some interesting tips, and show how to cook some of your most popular dishes.
Comedy nights
This is one of the best restaurant attraction ideas to help fill seats during a slow night. Do you know when your restaurant is most busy and when it is practically empty?
If you want to find out, you can use the reports module included in the GloriaFood POS system. You will be able when you are making most of your sales, what your best-selling dishes are, and much more.
Afterward, you can select one of the usually empty nights to invite comedy artists to entertain clients.
Final words
Try out the above restaurant attraction ideas to have a constantly busy restaurant. Don’t forget to also employ useful technology, like the GloriaFood POS system with built in online ordering so you can back up the experiences with great and speedy service.
Do you want to see more event ideas? Check out our dedicated article:
15 Restaurant Event Ideas to Get Customers Through the Door
