Trained Your Staff To Increase Your Restaurant Sales

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Know you've been there; sat at the end of the month crunching the numbers and wondering how on earth you can increase your restaurant sales without spending a fortune to do it.  No matter what type of restaurant you own, boosting sales has got to be at the top of your 'to do' list; you didn't intend this business to be a charity after all!

From the items on your menu to your marketing strategy every step you take is geared towards increasing profits, decreasing costs and pleasing your customers along the way!  Now, there are a number of things that will impact your sales (and therefore your profits) but there is one that stands above all others; how well you've trained your staff.

You might have been expecting me to talk about increasing the sale of low cost items, or up-selling your customers or even implementing a new marketing strategy, but in a way that's exactly what I'm doing; allow me to clarify:

You could have the worlds greatest menu, cleanest toilets (it matters more than you know!) or best value for money, if your staff don't know how best to present these attributes to your customers, they loose all value.

The real problem with staff training is that it takes time, and unless you're still in your pre-opening phase that time is hard to find which is why most restaurants have an 'I'll get to it eventually' approach to staff training, however it's not something you can afford to put on the back burner and here's why:

Well Trained Staff Increase Your Restaurant Sales

Train your staff to do the following, and you'll see an increase in your sales almost immediately:

Speak like an owner - when a customer is faced with someone who lives and breathes the restaurant, knows all there is to know about everything from the concept to the provenance of each ingredient on the menu, it puts them at ease; "This person knows what they're doing so I'll trust them", which leads us to...

Sell with profit in mind - once your staff have the customers trust, they can guide their decisions; on every restaurant menu there are items that cost you far less to produce than the others, and it makes sense for these items to be a priority when it comes to sales.  Untrained staff will always sell the most expensive items on your menu (expensive must be better is the psychological response of 99% of people), the problem is these items are expensive for a reason; they cost you far more to make and your profit margin is therefore lower as a rule.  Educate your staff to know that selling the chicken as opposed to the fillet steak is of benefit to the restaurant (and therefore their livelihood), and you'll see your profits rise.

Bookend the meal - your customers come to your restaurant for the experience as well as the food, and training your staff to always offer pre-dinner drinks and post-dinner coffees, teas and liqueurs has two benefits; it enhances the customers experience and it makes you more money.  Coffee and tea are the cheapest items to produce on any menu and other beverages come a close second, yet wait staff are often so keen to keep tables moving along that they don't take the time to sell them, loosing you money in the process.

Bookend the experience - much as above, this has to do with enhancing the customer’s experience.  The general consensus is that customers will remember two things above all others when they visit a restaurant; the greeting they received when they arrived and the way they were treated as they left.  Now training your staff in this area won't increase your sales on this visit, but if you make your customers feel valued when they arrive and leave, you'll leave them with a (positive) lasting impression which will make them come back, and repeat business is something everybody wants!

So if you're wondering how you could be increasing your restaurant sales this month, put aside the expensive ad campaign you were going to launch and dedicate a little time to coaching your staff;  make them feel a part of the restaurant and it's success and see the impact it has on your sales!

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