How to Appeal to the Typical American Wine Drinker

Despite the fact that the U.S. has become the single-largest market for wine (passing France last year), American wine drinkers aren’t easy to understand. In part, this is due to the fact that there really isn’t any such thing as the “typical” American wine drinker. We come from diverse backgrounds with very different motivations for drinking wine. How then, as the restaurant owner, do you know which is the best wine to offer on the menu?

One way is to consider how customers make their choices when it comes to wine. Constellation Brands, a global wine, spirits and beer producer and marketer put out an interesting survey that breaks Americans into six groups—each with a different motivator behind their choices in wine. The results are telling, in terms of how to appeal to the American wine populace.

American Wine Drinkers Driven by Price and Habit

According to the study, price is the top consideration for 21% of American wine drinkers. The belief in this group is that a person can get great wine without paying a lot of money for it. The only way they are going to try something new on your wine menu is if it’s within the same price range as their standby favorites. These folk like to buy cheap good wine and drink a lot of it. In fact, wine accounts for 38% of their total consumption of alcoholic beverages. The other group who is unlikely to try anything new are the everyday loyals (20%) who drink wine as a regular part of their day to day routines. They know what they like and tend to stick to it. Appealing to these two groups is a matter of providing good, cost-effective wine and favorites they already know about.

Appealing to American Wine Enthusiasts and Image Seekers

Some Americans drink wine as a status symbol, others are genuine enthusiasts who love everything about the ritual and experience of wine. Both can be profitable groups for the enterprising restaurateur. For the image seekers (18%), the important thing is that the wine they are drinking makes them look good. They enjoy trendy labels and sweeter wines. The enthusiast group (12%) is more into food and wine pairings as well as new adventures in the wine tasting world. They tend toward bolder, more robust reds. Both groups appreciate knowing the back-story of the wine they drink and tend toward options on the classier “in-the-know” side of the menu.

Appealing to the American Wine Drinking Newbie and Those that Are Just Plain Overwhelmed

People’s reactions to the world of wine typically goes one of two ways—they’re either overwhelmed or intrigued. Those that are overwhelmed (19%) typically like to drink wine, but are intimidated by the complex array of options presented when trying to buy it. This group is going to get scared away from ordering wine if they don’t see something on your menu that they recognize. The group that is new to, and intrigued by, the world of wine (12%), has a different reaction. They still tend toward sweeter wines but are looking for authenticity and trying to learn about the beverages they are drinking. Like the enthusiasts, this group is going to be interested in the stories of the wine makers themselves, and are the segment most likely to buy organic and biodynamic wines.

Understanding these different groups of American wine drinkers helps the restaurateur make smart decisions about what to include on the wine list. Some restaurants will put a little something for everyone on the drink menu; others will cater to a specific type of wine drinker. What you choose for your menu is entirely dependent on who you’re trying to attract to your establishment.

Obtaining Useful Customer Feedback in Your Restaurant

Customer satisfaction means everything to a restaurant business. Fortunately, the easiest way to ensure that your customers are satisfied is to quite simply ask them for their feedback. Most people are happy to share their opinions—especially if they know that you will actually take action on the feedback they provide.

Asking people what you can do better before there is a reason to complain demonstrates your commitment to integrity and excellence. It makes your customers feel valued and underscores that you are committed to creating an enjoyable experience for them. Plus, you might be surprised at some of the good ideas your customers will offer! Here are the three main areas in which you can obtain useful customer feedback for your restaurant business.

Getting Feedback for Your Restaurant In-House

There’s no better time to ask for feedback on your customer’s experience with your restaurant than when they are right there on the premises and the experience is fresh in their minds. Ensure that you have feedback forms readily available, and train your servers to politely ask customers to fill them out to significantly increase your number of responses. Whether you use an old-school pen and paper, or include a digital feedback form in your point-of-sale system, don’t miss the opportunity to get fresh, in-the-moment feedback on how well you’re doing (or anything else you’re curious about, for that matter) right there, in-house.

Getting Feedback for Your Restaurant Through Online Mediums

The digital world offers another rich arena for you to gather feedback from your consumer base. Make sure that your restaurant’s website has a comment form and direct people’s attention to it by putting it on their receipts and sending your social media followers to it. You can also send your mailing list a survey via email. Ensure that the survey is easy to use and express how the feedback will be used to improve the restaurant. If you have an example of how you have taken positive action based on a customer comment, post it for everyone to see. People are more likely to take action if they know that you are really listening.

Useful Feedback Is Already Available in Your Restaurant’s Data

Whether or not you’re actively asking for it, your customers are always giving you useful feedback; you’ll find it in the numbers when you analyze your restaurant’s data. By doing this, you’ll be able to see not only which items you are selling the most (and least), but will also be able to discover trends in the sale of your products that you can take advantage of. Keeping a regular eye on these numbers is particularly easy if you’re running a digital or online ordering system.

The type of feedback you ask for is up to you. You should certainly try to gauge your customer’s satisfaction, but you can also gather feedback on anything else you might be curious about, such as that new menu item or latest change in décor. Some restaurants offer some form of incentive to customers in exchange for providing feedback, and if you’re comfortable giving something away, it will most likely increase your number of responses. That said, you also need to be careful not to undermine your brand’s reputation. Making customers feel that their feedback can really lead to change in the restaurant can be incentive enough in and of itself. However you do it, make sure you are doing it. Gathering customer feedback provides you with invaluable information that can help you run a better and more successful restaurant business.

Transforming Your Good Restaurant into a Successful Business

One of the most common occupational hazards for restaurant owners is getting so caught up in the day to day minutiae of operating their restaurants that they lose sight of the big picture—which should be turning their restaurants into successful businesses. The skills that are required to run a successful business are not the same as those required to run a good restaurant, and it’s for that reason alone that many new restaurant businesses fail. They may have a great idea, but lack the business skills to transform that good restaurant idea into a great business.

Being the “CEO” Vs. the “Employee” Restaurant Owner

One of the biggest reasons that restaurants fail to thrive is that the owner is too busy doing the tasks of an employee to make the strategic decisions required to move the business forward. While the “employee”owner is likely working right alongside his or her staff in the daily restaurant operations, the CEO owner is spending his or her time analyzing data, looking for opportunities to improve efficiency and profitability and implementing operational standards and procedures to ensure that an excellent result can be replicated, every time. What’s more, the employee owner is so intimately involved in the daily decisions and details of the restaurant that its successful operation is dependent on the owner’s presence on premises. The CEO owner strives to use the systems created to allow the restaurant to run independently of his presence without a hitch. Daily operational details are in the hands of capable employees and the owner is free to keep his eye on the big picture of growing a successful business.

Aside from the obvious benefit of being able devote more of your attention to the business aspect of your restaurant when you take the position of being a “CEO Owner,”setting up a self-sustaining system also ensures that your restaurant won’t be totally dependent on you to be there all the time. Translation—you’ll be able to have a life outside the restaurant!

Get to Work “On” the Restaurant, Not “In” It!

There are three main areas that the strategic restaurant owner focuses on to ensure a successful business: operations, financial and marketing. Operations includes all the functions necessary to prep and serve your products to your customers and all of the activities that occur every day in the restaurant. The goal here is to set up systems for standards and procedures that will allow the ordinary people you hire to produce excellent results by having very good systems to follow. Without a system, it’s challenging for staff to create a consistent and predictable experience for your guests over and over again. Consistency and predictability go a long way in the eyes of the public. The benefit of setting up operational standards and procedures that can be replicated perfectly time and again can not be overstated.

The financial area includes dealing with accounting, cash management, cost control and both operational and financial reporting. Marketing and advertising includes general marketing and promotional campaigns, positioning your brand, public relations, community involvement and projecting the right image.

The Possibilities for Growing Your Restaurant Business Are Unending

Again, the point is not to be involved in the day to day operations of these operational areas; the owner’s job needs to be “strategic overlook.” Instead, focus on analyzing your data, looking for opportunities for greater efficiency and profitability and developing systems that will allow those great results to be replicated again and again. With more time to plan the success of your business, you’ll have the opportunity to explore new marketing initiatives, new lines of business, the development of multiple locations, or whatever it is that you want to do to grow your restaurant into a successful and profitable business.

3 Key Steps to Operational Excellence in the Restaurant

When you consider how much time you spend correcting or minimizing the repercussions of mistakes made in your restaurant, finding a way to guarantee that processes can be run correctly 100% of the time is appealing indeed. Just think what it would do for your business in terms of profitability, reduced cost and hassle, repeat business and customer delight if your patrons could expect to get the same high quality product or service every single time they visit.

The value of operational excellence, or providing the product or service right every time, cannot be underestimated. Same-store sales increase over businesses whose operational excellence is merely average. Even better, increases in operational excellence can often be achieved with little or no capital or ongoing investment, which makes striving for it a no-brainer. Here are three key steps you can employ in your restaurant to achieve the best standard of operational excellence possible.

Design for Quality in Your Restaurant Processes from the Start

The first and most important factor in improving operational excellence is to ensure that the products and services you create delight your customers. This may seem obvious, but all too often businesses start tweaking their procedures for efficiency without taking the time to ensure that those processes first meet customer requirements. Without ensuring that what you are offering is above and beyond a customer’s expectation, you risk too many “me-too” products which do nothing to set your brand apart from the crowd and appeal to your customer base. Once you’re sure you know how to delight your customers, designing quality into your processes is the next step.

The most significant difference between ordinary restaurants and high performers is that quality is designed into their processes from the get-go. These restaurants strive for implementing processes that create 100% success, every single time. For example, if you design a recipe and its instructions for excellence, the final product should always have the same great taste, regardless of who is in the back of the house.

Strive for the Perfect Process in Your Restaurant’s Procedures

Once you’ve designed your process for excellence, it’s time to run pilot tests and refine the procedures based on the results of that data. Test the procedure against multiple equipment configurations, a full range of employees’ and customers’ demands, to ensure that the process is as close to perfect as possible. Once you’ve got a process that can be replicated perfectly every time, document the steps in detail and develop your training materials.

Replicate and Refine the Restaurant Processes that Near Perfection

If your data shows that the process can be operated properly 100% of the time and is an improvement over an existing process, it’s time to mandate implementation throughout your organization. Standardization in the quality of products and services you offer is a critical factor to the overall success of your business. Effectiveness is always ahead of efficiency. Is it truly possible to make your processes so flawless that they can produce perfect products and services every time? Maybe not. But, if you focus on quality; carefully design your procedures so that they can be replicated as perfectly as possible, and have a goal of achieving outstanding operational excellence, you will get as close to perfect as possible.

3 Restaurant Marketing Trends to Watch in 2014

Marketing in today’s world can feel like a fragmented endeavor, what with all of the various options that are available. Traditional media marketing through television, radio and print remain important cornerstones of successful restaurant campaigns, but modern marketing options through social networks and digital and mobile platforms are equally critical. Rather than despairing over the fragmented nature of all of these options however, restaurant operators should embrace them as an opportunity to shine in multiple avenues and look for ways to implement integrated marketing and branding plans that build consumer awareness in new ways. Here are three restaurant marketing trends you will see a lot more in 2014.

Utilizing Restaurant Industry Applications and Refining Social Media Interactions

Smart phones now account for some 64% of all mobile phones in the U.S. and that figure grows steadily year by year. Consumers increasingly expect to be able to use their phones to interact with your business. Restaurants around the country are rolling out mobile-coupon and mobile-loyalty platforms with great success. Along with payment, loyalty, ordering and reservation functions, several restaurants are also developing games that align with brand messages or give food rewards to players to entertain and engage users. There is as much fragmentation within the type of device on which an application runs as there is in marketing avenue options. So, until there is an ‘ultimate device’ that everyone uses, it’s best for restaurant operators to keep versatility as top priority when developing and improving their applications. 

On the social media front, restaurant operators need to be more mindful than ever about how they look in the eyes of the public, and be prepared to deal with crisis should it arise. Previous years have shown us how quickly a brand’s reputation can get damaged through social media by careless responses from moderators regarding customer concerns. With a number of hot topics, such as minimum wage, poised to make headlines in 2014, restaurant operators should have a response plan of action or think about adjusting their cultural identities to best turn politics to their advantage. 

Old-Fashioned Restaurant Marketing Still Works, Especially on T.V.

With the rise of digital and social marketing, it can be easy think that you can let traditional media marketing fall by the wayside. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Despite the increasing popularity of digital and social marketing, television, in particular, remains a highly influential form of advertising. In fact, 68% of consumers surveyed in September of last year said they take action at least some of the time after viewing a TV commercial. The only thing that inspires a higher action rate than that is recommendations from friends and opinions posted online.  This underscores the folly of neglecting traditional forms of media marketing. 

Restaurants Co-Brand for Greater Reach

There is one final trend to watch in 2014 that we’ll discuss here. That trend is the potential that can be unlocked by partnering with the right companies and getting your research and development teams to collaborate. Such unions can be wildly successful for both businesses. Think of Taco Bell’s Dorito Locos Tacos, Cinnabon lending its signature flavor to Burger King’s breakfast products, as well as bottles of vodka, and McDonald’s and Kraft’s McCafe-branded coffee scheduled to hit grocery stores this year. Looking for ways to partner up and collaborate with other businesses in your area is a smart way to create a win-win situation for everyone, and you can count on seeing more such unions in the upcoming year.

Media marketing strategies will continue to evolve with technology and consumer demand. To be successful in the coming years, restaurant operators should focus on building integrated marketing plans and recognize that multiple media avenues are opportunities for creatively reaching and engaging customers.

What Restaurants should know about Appealing to Generational Differences

Most restaurants hope to attract customers of every age and generation. That said, appealing to people of all ages requires appealing to a vast variety of different values and expectations. Given that the restaurant industry is only expected to grow some 4% over the course of the next ten years, it’s critical to reexamine generational differences and shift your marketing tactics accordingly in order to find opportunities for growth.

What Restaurants should know about Appealing to the Millennial Generation

Millennials are born between 1977 and 1992. As of 2013, they are between 20-35 years old. Numbering more than 68 million people, this is the group that has been hardest hit by the recession with more than 16% of those under the age of 25 unemployed. As a result, more than 40% reported cutting back on eating out due to financial reasons. Given that this group was historically one of the strongest patrons of the restaurant industry, this represents a significant loss and finding ways to bring them back into your establishment is crucial.

Fortunately, appealing to the Millennial generation can be done fairly easily. Not surprisingly, they are drawn to deals, coupons, and discounts more than any other group. They also respond very well to happy hours and home delivery options and are more likely to choose locally-owned, independent, sit-down restaurants than any other age group. They grew up with the Internet and are most likely to use all forms of technology to research and connect with restaurants.

What Restaurants need to know about Appealing to Generation X

Gen-Xers were born between 1966 and 1976 and as of 2013, are between 36-46 years old. Nearly 90% of this generation is employed. This is the group that is most likely to have children at home and be squarely in the midst of trying to balance work and family life. As a result, they now frequent restaurants more than Millennials and are big users of take-out food.

Time and efficiency is important to this group, as is spending quality time with their kids. As a result, providing easy, convenient, kid-friendly options in your restaurant with minimal wait times is what is going to appeal to this generation the most. The hallmark of Generation X is pragmatism and practicality, so marketing messages that are straight-forward and direct are what will resonate with this generation.

What Restaurants should know about Appealing to the Baby Boomer Generation

Baby Boomers are those individuals born between 1946-1965, and will be between the ages of 47-66 as of 2013. With over 82 million people, this is the largest generation with the biggest buying power. Consumers in this generation tend to spend more per visit than younger generations and have a much higher per capita visit rate. This group tends to place a larger emphasis on having healthy eating options, and they don’t think they should have to pay more for those options. Value to the Boomer generation means things like fresh, high-quality ingredients and the ability to have choices such as portion size, substitutions, etc.

Baby Boomers are more tech-savvy than they often get credit for, and are more than capable of utilizing the web to research and evaluate restaurants prior to visiting, so it’s important to keep your website up to date with your most current specials and promotions.

While there are similarities between the values of the different generations, there are key differences as well that are important to keep in mind when designing your marketing messages. The ideal is to find the sweet spot between catering to the values of the individual group while still meeting the needs of every generation who might walk through your door.

Why Breakfast Options on the Menu Increase Your Bottom Line

As a savvy restaurant owner, you’re always looking for new tactics to draw traffic into your establishment. If you’re not doing so already, offering breakfast items can be a very smart and cost-effective way to do just that.

In fact, breakfast items accounted for nearly 60 percent of the restaurant industry’s traffic growth between 2005-2010 (the last time at which a breakfast study for the restaurant industry was conducted). Breakfast sales have also steadily grown by +2 percent per year over the course of the last decade, as opposed to a -2 percent decline in dinner time traffic during that same time.

What does all of this tell us? That what mom always said is the truth – breakfast IS important.

Offering Breakfast on the Menu Serves Many Needs

In a day and age when our hectic lifestyles create demanding schedules, many of us end up skipping breakfast because we don’t have the time or the energy to make something for ourselves. On the other hand, if you had someone hand you something small and portable as you ran out the door, wouldn’t you take it?

Restaurants with breakfast items on the menu offer people a quick, convenient way to jump start their day by grabbing breakfast on the go. Since breakfast orders usually consist of only one or two items, they are typically cheaper than other options on the menu which makes eating out feel more affordable.

Offering Breakfast Items Builds Customer Loyalty

It’s important to recognize how important the morning meal can be in both capturing a market share as well as building customer loyalty. It’s been shown that customers who visit an establishment for more than one day return more often, become more loyal, contribute more volume, and are far more likely to recommend your eatery to the people in their networks.

In sum, restaurants that serve breakfast end up being more memorable, and are, therefore, frequented more often. After all, who doesn’t make a mental note of a great place to swing in and grab some nourishment before they start their day?

Keep Your Breakfast Options Short and Sweet

Want to take a guess at the two most popular breakfast items? No surprise that it’s coffee and breakfast sandwiches. This is great news for you as it means that meeting the peoples’ demands for morning food can be a simple endeavor. Now granted, it’s technically specialty coffee that is all the rave, but that’s not too tough of an acquiescence to make, is it? Who doesn’t love a really great cup of brew?

When you consider all the benefits, serving at least a few breakfast options only makes sense. It is even more compelling when you consider the shift toward offering breakfast that many chains have undergone over the course of the last few years. It almost feels like a person could expect breakfast anywhere they go, which is all the more reason to get your restaurant on the boat if it isn’t there already.

Essential Email Metrics for Effective Marketing Campaigns

One of the factors that make email marketing campaigns so valuable is the fact that it is one of the easiest forms of marketing to get clear, concise measurements on whether or not your campaign is working. The more concise your measurements, the more able you are to fine tune your marketing efforts, which increases the return on your investment. Here are the essential email metrics you need to pay attention to in order to determine how well your email campaign is serving its intended purpose.

How Deliverable are Your Emails? Are They Getting Bounced or Junked?

The first essential email metric to examine is your deliverability. If a good percentage of your messages are getting blocked, bounced, or worse, thrown in the spam folder, it’s time to change your tactics. There are a variety of reasons that this could be happening, and the first place to look is the email service providers that your email contacts are using. (Email service providers are companies like Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, MSN, etc.)

An easy way to check to see if there is a problem with a particular email service provider is to create ‘seed’ email address accounts at each of them. Then, the next time you send out a newsletter, include your seeds to each of the email service providers and log in after the send out to see if your message made it safely to the inbox.

If your message was blocked or bounced, it’s not a bad idea to contact that email service provider to ask why. In some instances, you can even get a ‘Certified Sender’ status directly from the email service provider which will guarantee that your messages get safely through. If your newsletter is getting thrown in the spam folder, it might have more to do with your content than the email provider. We’ll talk more about that in the spam section.

How Often Are Your Emails Getting Opened? How Many People Unsubscribe?

The next two telling metrics are your open rate and your unsubscribe rate. Now, the fact that someone opened your email doesn’t necessarily guarantee that they actually read it, but it does give you other valuable insights. How well your subject line is working is one such example, and it can be very helpful to compare open rates between different versions of the same newsletter to see which converts more customers.

The type of people who are unsubscribing from your list can provide you with valuable insight as well and it’s important to pay attention to who is removing themselves from your list. Is it your most valuable subscribers? All women? Are they all from one demographic? Try to pinpoint trends and see if you can shift your email marketing campaigns accordingly.

Help! I’m Getting Spam Complaints and My Emails Are Getting Junked!

If your emails are ending up in the spam folder more often than not, there are a variety of factors that could be coming into play. The first no-no is buying purchased email lists – this is almost a surefire way to land in the spam folder AND lose your money. Emails also get junked if they contain too many risky words like ‘buy’, ‘free’, ‘purchase’, ‘order’, etc., which trigger the spam filter. Emails that contain only one image often land in spam country, as do emails with too many exclamation points in the title.

Bottom line: keep your emails small in size and rich with content, and don’t go overboard with the gimmicks. Using a trusted email service provider to send out messages goes a long way as well.

All in all, the metrics you get out of running email campaigns can provide you with really valuable insight about how to best make your next move. Keeping an eye on these essential statistics will give you a clear picture of your revenue and profitability, as well as a better understanding of what is truly affecting your bottom line.

What Today’s Consumer Wants to See in a Restaurant

As consumers become more conscientious about their costs, their health, and their sources of food, restaurants have to adapt accordingly or suffer the consequences. Today’s consumer expects far more from restaurants in terms of quality and value as compared to earlier eras. While a desire for lower cost remains the number one area where consumers would like to see improvements in restaurants, there are several other features today’s customer looks for in a dining establishment.

Greater Variety of Healthier Items

As understanding of how diet affects lifestyle grows, people are naturally looking for healthier ways to eat, and this includes the selections they make when eating out. As a restaurant there are several easy ways to accommodate this desire. Start by adding a section to your menu which features healthy items and provide some information about what makes it healthy (under X calories, heart smart, low-carb, etc.).  It can be difficult to know what to eat when you’re trying to change your diet, and customers really appreciate being able to choose from a ready-made list of options.

Another way to accommodate the healthy aspirations of your customers is to allow healthier substitutions for menu items – salad instead of fries, wheat or wholegrain bread instead of white, steamed vegetables instead of mashed potatoes – you get the idea. If you can do this without having to charge the customer for it, all the better.

Smaller Portions, Higher Quality Food and Ingredients

The next two areas that consumers would like to see restaurants improve have to do with the quality of the foods, ingredients used, and the ability to have the option for smaller portions. While the desire to have higher quality food and ingredients could be a result of the general move toward healthier eating we just discussed, it also has to do with the desire to experience a higher quality meal than what one might cook at home.

Higher quality food is generally also higher in nutrient value, which further appeals to the healthy eating crowd. Plus, customers are generally willing to pay more for a meal if they know that what they are getting is of high quality.

The ability to choose smaller portion sizes is another common area consumers would like to see restaurants improve. Fortunately, this one is fairly easy to implement (it’s no more difficult to load a plate with two scoops of pasta than it is three and charge less accordingly), and the customer responds well to having this choice available.

More Locally Sourced and Local Food Options

Featuring local food options is always well received, even more so if those options were cooked using locally sourced ingredients. Getting your produce locally is an excellent way to reduce the cost of transport and support the local community while offering fresher goods. People’s environmental conscientiousness has risen in tandem with their awareness of healthier choices, and taking a ‘local approach’ can be a powerful way to appeal to this consciousness.

While some of these changes will take some effort, others can be implemented today with little or no cost. With consumers eating out less and being more deliberate in their choices when they do, recognizing and adapting to their changing needs is critical to your restaurant’s success.

Leveraging Holidays and Special Occasions to Boost Sales

Holidays and special occasions such as graduation parties, birthdays, and weddings represent special opportunities for restaurants to significantly boost their sales. Whether you offer full-scale, private party catering or simply provide easily available digital gift cards, offering promotions that parallel with holidays and special occasions is a savvy marketing technique worthy of pursuit.

In-House Catering for Large Groups

One method many restaurants use to diversify their revenue streams and tap into the holiday cash flow is to cater to and host large groups of people in-house. This can be done either by sectioning off a portion of your establishment or by making it available off-hours for private rental.

While it’s true that space for meeting and eating is popular any time of year, it is especially sought after during the holidays. Businesses and individuals alike are looking for a place to host their holiday functions, and it would be folly not to market to those groups if it is within your capability to do so.

Cater for Private Parties, Offer Extended Holiday Delivery Hours

As more and more people entertain at home, restaurants have to shift the way that they offer service. In-home, private catering is in high demand, especially during holidays and special occasions. One method of increasing sales for private catering is to station a catering representative at the door of your establishment to greet guests, hand out menus and promotional materials, and gather business cards. Encourage guests to sign up for catering service early by offering discounts and incentives for doing so.

Extending your holiday delivery hours is another method of tapping into increased holiday sales.  Many people who may not be interested in full-scale catering might instead be interested in having food for their holiday feast delivered right to their door. Extending your delivery hours during the holidays can be a simple way to accommodate that desire.

Gift Cards Mean Business

Gift cards are an additional way to tap into holiday sales and are especially appealing to last-minute shoppers. It is estimated that approximately 5 billion dollars was loaded onto restaurant gift cards across all sectors in 2011. Since gift cards are one of the most requested holiday gifts, creating a holiday gift card incentive program is a smart way for restaurants to tap into that market.

Further illustrating the viability of using gift cards to leverage holiday sales is the fact that gift cards can now be offered digitally. This means that customers can instantly receive the gift through their mobile phones, email, or social media creating the perfect last minute gift. Digital gift cards are also nice because they can be promoted long after the window for booking holiday parties or buying the physical gift cards has closed.

All of these techniques can help diversify your income stream and leverage an increase in holiday sales. Offering carefully timed holiday promotions along with compelling incentives that encourage customers to buy or book in advance is a smart way to ensure that  your business receives a piece of the proverbial holiday pie.