3 days of good sales, 4 days of no sales. How to cope when sales are not consistent!

Another headache that restaurant owners have to face is inconsistent sales. Some days, sales are very good, with customers coming into the shop all day, but some days, there are no customers, causing a total loss. This is not a good sign for a restaurant, because if it continues like this, there is a chance that customers will continue to disappear, to the point of having to close down. Therefore, you should quickly fix the problem by finding out what the cause is, and then gradually plugging the holes one by one. The first group of problems is Sales are not stable Because it is caused by internal factors of your restaurant, not by customers or competitors, which results in customers who have eaten before not coming back to eat again. Those problems include: • Food tastes worse or tastes inconsistent. Imagine if you ate at your usual restaurant, but suddenly the taste you experienced was not the same. Some days the taste was delicious, well-balanced, some days it was too salty, some days it was too sweet, and the next day it was too sour. Would you want to continue eating at that restaurant? Since there are so many delicious restaurants to choose from, I believe you will definitely say goodbye. Therefore, when you open a restaurant, you should control the taste of the food well. Try to develop recipes in a repeatable format, record the standard recipe, what to put in how much, along with the steps, and train your staff to cook food to the same standard. • Service is getting worse When eating in a restaurant, no one wants bad service. Otherwise, no matter how good the taste is, if the service is worse, customers will be ready to leave. I believe that your restaurant wants to serve customers well. But the problem often occurs when there are more customers, the service is not fast enough, the food is served slowly, the service quality drops. This must be solved in the restaurant management. We must find a way to cope. If there are many customers, how will we serve fast and maintain good quality? Are there enough staff? How are the service staff? Are they polite? What are the immediate solutions? We must teach the staff about these things, including checking the atmosphere and cleanliness of the restaurant regularly.

• Raise prices until customers see that it is not worth it. It is normal for restaurants to have to increase their prices somewhat because the cost of raw materials is more expensive due to inflation in the economic system, causing food prices to have to be adjusted accordingly in order to maintain the restaurant's profit base. But be very careful not to use this opportunity to increase prices too much until customers see that it is "not worth it" because do not forget that in this era there are many restaurants to choose from. Going to eat at another restaurant that has equal quality but is cheaper is "more worth it" in the eyes of customers. As for the second group of problems... is Sales are not stable Because it is caused by external factors, which are diverse, ranging from the economy, society, values, customer behavior, competitors, etc. But here we will only talk about factors that can be controlled and corrected, including: • Competing restaurants In the past, the problem of competitors was limited by space and location. They were usually competitors who were the same type of restaurants that opened in nearby areas. Simply put, they were stealing customers from that area. But these days, the problem of competitors is much wider because there are online channels, which make it even easier for customers to access restaurants. And now that customers choose restaurants based on reviews on the internet, the chances of customers running away from your restaurant are even higher. So, the first thing is that you have to keep up with the world. What is the standard for restaurants in the cyber world? You must have it. When other restaurants promote on Wongnai, partner with Line Man, and list their information on Google Search, you have no choice but to do it too. Next, you should make yourself different from your competitors. Instead of competing head-to-head, tooth-to-tooth, with only the price and taste of the food, for example, if your shop targets teenagers who like to take pictures to show off, you might try decorating the shop to be unique, creating a theme, creating a gimmick in the shop, creating beautiful photo corners, and creating a unique atmosphere, etc. • Customer behavior Many people may wonder why customers still don’t come back to eat again even though they have a favorite restaurant. There are many times when you choose to eat at a “new restaurant” even though you don’t know if that restaurant can compete with your favorite restaurant. Because eating the same food for a long time can get boring. Furthermore, since there are many restaurants to choose from and the reviews of restaurants on the internet in the previous topic, it is clear that customers these days have the behavior of “trying new things”. Even if your restaurant has consistent food taste and service, sales will still not be consistent. Creating a strategy to increase sales Therefore, it can be very helpful in cases like: Membership system creation, points collection When the points reach a certain amount, they can be exchanged for delicious food, desserts, or drinks. This method will attract customers to come back and eat more often, and it also helps collect customer data for further marketing. Lunch set menu arrangement It helps to increase sales throughout the day and also helps to manage raw materials very well. Increasing sales channels For example, delivery will help attract more customers who are not comfortable eating out or at work, and will help maintain sales during unfavorable weather conditions. Time-limited promotions In some cases, if you can identify a pattern, this can be very helpful. For example, if you have data showing that customers tend to be less frequent on Wednesdays, you might run a special promotion on that day, such as 20 percent off or free shipping on Wednesdays only.

The most important thing! Finally, solving the problem of inconsistent sales will not happen if you do not record and analyze sales regularly. Because if you do not measure the results, you will not know when sales drop, on which days, making it impossible to analyze the real cause, leading to the wrong problem solving. Therefore, the most important thing is that you should make a sales record table and analyze it regularly. MHA has created a course that teaches this specifically in a step-by-step manner, which is... Sales Projection and Analysis “The formula for analyzing sales to get more profit than expected” A course that will teach you to explore the back office, record and analyze sales to determine a strategy to increase sales accurately. For those who are interested, follow at https://makrohorecaacademy.com/courses/sales-projection-and-analysis/