Three Ways Restaurants Can Stand Out From Their Neighbors

While the National Restaurant Association is optimistic that industry growth will continue through 2017, restaurant owners and operators are still feeling the pressures of a saturated and competitive landscape.

And for restaurants in airports, malls, and retail centers — where competitors co-exist in tight proximity — attracting foot traffic and sales is even more of a battle.

In some ways, restaurants in busy areas have it made. A shopping center or main street location provides access to new diners — especially during busy periods when there is overflow traffic — and gives lesser-known restaurants brand exposure to diners at neighboring restaurants. And of course, more people equals more opportunity — that’s why some chains make high-density locations a requirement of doing business.

On the other hand, a busy location means every walk-in comes with a competitive battle. And with the increasingly complex demands of the modern diner, traditional means of drawing diners are not enough. If you’re looking for new ways to stand out from the neighbors and drive revenue, here are three tips that will help you drive foot traffic and loyalty, while standing out from the neighbors.

Make Your Storefront Foot-Traffic Friendly

While busy areas benefit from a high-density population of diners, you can’t just wait for the business to come in.

Some diners know exactly what they’re looking for when they arrive to a busy food court, but what about the “window shoppers?” Left on their own, these undecided diners will make a restaurant selection based on a variety of factors — including wait times, group accommodation or proximity to the car. But restaurants that make an effort to attract this audience, by providing samples, providing live music or offering a promotion, will capture a larger percentage of revenue than their neighbors that do nothing.

And of course, you can’t overlook the role of technology in making restaurants walk-in friendly. As Nielson reports, 95 percent of smartphone users use their devices to search for restaurants; 90 percent of those mobile searchers convert within the day, and 64 percent convert within the hour. So while it may not seem intuitive, optimizing your website for mobile, and ensuring your business has positive reviews on sites like Yelp is actually a great way to drive that critical walk-in traffic.

In addition to leveraging technology, employees play an important role in driving foot traffic, engagement and sales. Whether they are fulfilling orders from mobile pre-ordering via mobile app, or encouraging passerbyers to download the latest mobile coupon, restaurants with well-trained, happy employees — who are empowered to use the latest advances in technology — see more efficient turnover, and goods sold in a given time period. And multiple studies have shown a correlation between employee happiness and consumer satisfaction, so there’s even more reasons to invest in onboarding, training and employee retention to drive traffic.

Experiment With Content

One of the biggest benefits of competing in a busy location is access to a wide variety of potential customers. This means you can test content and promotions much more quickly than you would be able to in a more low-density area, where you may need to wait days to get a large enough sample size of customers, or may not be able to reliably predict visitor trends.

In a busy location, you have access to a large cross-section of the population, with demographics that differ depending on the time of the day. For example, at an airport, there may be set periods that attract primarily business travelers, and other periods that draw the family crowds. Not only is it critical for you to understand this traffic, by either monitoring the types of people and sales generated for each time period of each day of the week, but to also tailor your products and promotions to meet the needs of that demographic.

For example, if you know that families will be out walking between 5pm and 7pm, it’s a better idea to provide free kids’ meals than it is to offer two-for-one shots. Once you understand your traffic, you can increasingly deliver personalized, innovative campaigns that appeal to each audience, and ensure you always have full seats.

And once you understand your audience, you can begin testing campaigns. It’s important to have a vehicle that allows you to rapidly switch out content. In a future post, we’ll talk about how restaurants are using innovations like VR and humanoid robots to drive content programs, A/B test promotions and capture demographic data.

Drive Loyalty with Technology

The truest way to ensure a cash-positive business is to ensure every customer is a repeat customer. In addition to faster service, consumers expect a personalized experience — this is where technology is key.

In the digital age, diners expect instant gratification — and conveniences like SMS reminders for waitlisted guests, mobile payment options or location-based promotions are par for the course. In fact, more than two-thirds of consumersthink businesses should use SMS and texting to communicate with them. For other companies, innovations like online ordering have proven ROI, like Taco bell, whose app-generated orders are 20% higher compared to the orders placed in-store due to adding toppings and group ordering.

Not only is it important to enhance the in-restaurant experience, but you can use technology to more effectively engage guests long after they have left. According to a recent study focused on quick service and fast casual restaurants, 70% of respondents are currently members of at least one loyalty or rewards program. These loyalty programs can often make the difference between diners rolling the dice, or making a conscious choice to visit your establishment.

While it used to be enough to capture a business card, most restaurants today are using the mobile phone as the avenue for capturing the all-important phone number, email or twitter handle. Think about it this way — every digital transaction you make is an opportunity to capture a phone number, a social profile, an email, or even information about a diner’s preferences. Once you can engage those customers online, they will be much more likely to choose you next time you’re in the neighborhood.

Conclusion

When you’re in close proximity with tough competition, delivering a high-quality experience is table stakes. But when you’re competing head-to-head with complementary — and sometimes directly competitive — establishments, high quality is not enough.