You might think restaurant revenue streams are straightforward. You cook good food, customers buy it, and you make a profit. What more is there? Well, you can expand your horizons and uncover additional revenue streams that can help you boost profits by selling more than just food.
Here are a couple of new restaurant revenue streams you can explore. But first, a quick breakdown of the main causes of fluctuating restaurant sales.
5 Factors Affecting Restaurant Business Success
1. Seasonality
You’ve probably already noticed that restaurant profitability fluctuates with the seasons. From the weather to the hard-to-find ingredients, holiday craziness, and tourism, your restaurant won’t remain unaffected.
Whether it’s too cold for people to adventure outside to restaurants or their favorite dishes are out of stock because you’re missing vital ingredients, seasonality is a key factor that will affect the success of your restaurant.
January and February are typically slower months for restaurants, so you need to find additional restaurant revenue streams to pick up the slack.
2. Location
We can’t overstate this: location matters for a restaurant. The easier your restaurant is to access and the more visibility you have, the more likely it is for customers to pay you a visit.
Competition around the restaurant also affects profitability, as do neighborhood safety, easy parking, and demographics.
3. Capacity
Not everyone can afford to lease a big space for their restaurant. Limited seating means fewer customers per day, which will affect your overall revenue.
If you have limited space and you can’t serve a lot of tables daily, you need an alternative revenue stream such as online ordering.
4. Table turnover
Especially if you don’t have many tables available, but even if you do, the amount of time a party occupies a table (also known as table turnover) matters.
The more time they spend without ordering something, the more time you lose for other potential customers.
You can streamline the dine-in order-taking process by replacing your physical menu with a QR code menu that enables customers to order on their phones without having to wait for a server to bring the menu, take their order, and so on.
Similarly, you can enable order ahead whenever someone books a table, so the food is already waiting for them as they arrive.
That way, you will serve more tables daily, boosting end-of-day profits.
5. Pricing and quality
Naturally, your revenue will also be affected by the quality of your food and service, as well as the pricing compared to other similar restaurants in the area.
Study menu pricing to come up with a formula that works for your restaurant, and train your staff to ensure they know your business inside out and are able to assist customers with anything.
7 Restaurant Revenue Streams for Driving Restaurant Sales
1. Delivery and pickup
One of the simplest strategies to increase sales in a restaurant is to enable takeaway so you can stop relying on your dine-in sales alone.
Allow customers to order your delicious dishes at home, whether they pick them up from the restaurant on their way home or get them delivered to their doorstep when they’re not in the mood to go out.
Luckily, with the right online ordering system, you don’t have to spend a fortune trying to make more money. In fact, you can start accepting orders online on your website or Facebook page for free with GloriaFood. Here’s how:
2. Meal kits
Meal kits are excellent restaurant revenue streams because they enable customers to spend quality time cooking, while still enjoying restaurant-quality ingredients and their favorite recipes.
Offer different types of meal kits on different holidays such as a date night meal kit for Valentine’s Day or a family turkey day meal kit for Thanksgiving.
Capitalizing on special occasions and holidays will allow you to tap into a new market of people who love to cook at home while spending time with their families and friends.
3. Meal subscription boxes
Loyal customers who dine with you often are the perfect target audience for food subscriptions. You know they already love your food, so why not give them the chance to savor it every day?
Offer weekly or monthly subscription boxes made up of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Target a larger audience by offering a variety of meal plans, such as:
- Meat lover’s box
- Sport box
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Keto
Even a couple of meal box subscribers will provide you with a consistent revenue flow that you can rely on day in and day out.
4. Catering
Another alternative restaurant revenue stream is catering for birthdays, corporate events, and other types of celebrations.
Catering events will help you attract a wider audience that might have not even heard of your restaurant before. By impressing them with the quality of your food, you can get new dine-in or takeaway customers.
5. Events
Hosting events at your restaurant can increase footfall and give you a boost during typically slow days or times.
From organizing your own events like karaoke night, sports viewing party, quiz night, or costume party, to renting the space to people who want to organize their own personal or work events, use your restaurant as a gathering space for the community.
6. Cooking classes
Speaking of community outreach, what better way to establish yourself as a fixture of the community than to share your knowledge and expertise?
Brainstorm cooking class ideas with your chef, whether that’s cooking 101 or even a tutorial of your most popular recipes.
People are willing to pay good money for a talented, experienced chef who has been in the industry for years to teach them cooking secrets.
7. Merchandise
Finally, your restaurant is more than an eatery. It’s a brand. To increase brand recognition and profits, consider selling merchandise with your logo and/or slogan.
From reusable travel mugs to tote bags, coasters, napkins, stickers, keychains, aprons, or t-shirts, these will be free advertisement for your restaurant.
You can even take it one step further and release a cookbook in collaboration with your head chef. Customers who love your dishes will be thrilled to have the option to recreate them at home.
Summing It up
If you want to attract more customers to your restaurant and increase profits, look beyond standard restaurant revenue streams. Consider expanding your business with these additional ventures and become the talk of the neighborhood.
