Implementing effective upselling techniques in restaurants is an essential part of business management in the restaurant industry. These techniques can help you boost profits by encouraging your diners to order more expensive items or try new menu items with higher profit margins.
But when you’re upselling in a restaurant, it’s also vital that you don’t detract from the customer experience. Nobody dining out wants to deal with an overly pushy server recommending all the most expensive things on the menu.
If you want to learn more about upselling techniques in restaurants, you’ve come to the right place. In this essential guide, we’ll give you and your restaurant management team the tools you need to upsell with gentle suggestions and savvy menu engineering.
Restaurant upselling means persuading customers to purchase additional items or place more expensive orders — whether that’s a bottle of wine instead of a glass, extra food items, or a more expensive entree. The aim is to get larger customer orders to increase your check averages and ensure a higher revenue per customer.
Effective upselling techniques in restaurants are all about subtlety — think suggestive selling rather than a full-blown sales pitch. You want to encourage diners to opt for add-ons and extras without sounding too “salesy” or disingenuous. There’s a big difference between suggesting somebody add cheese to their burger for $0.50 and recommending a porterhouse steak instead.
Learning the right upselling techniques in restaurants can help you boost your restaurant sales and increase your bottom line, particularly if you focus on ways to upsell items with high profit margins. Increasing the average order size means you’ll have more money coming in during each shift.
Upselling well can also lead to a better dining experience. Train your staff to recommend the right items for each diner and deliver a more personal guest experience rather than just highlighting specific items on your menu for everyone. This type of upselling could boost customer reviews, which could, in turn, lead to more new customers coming in and increased customer loyalty.
The main benefit of upselling is that you can see larger orders and higher profits — but what are the best upselling techniques? Here are six of the top ways to promote larger orders in your restaurant business.
One of the most effective techniques is to train your waitstaff to look for upselling opportunities.
Your front-of-house (FOH) staffers are well placed to ask simple questions without seeming intrusive. When a customer orders an entree, they can ask if the guest wants to add a side dish or a sauce to go with it. Alternatively, if a group wants to order three glasses of red wine, the server can suggest a bottle instead.
Just remember it’s essential not to overdo it. Instruct your serving team to upsell only when it feels appropriate. When a customer asks for a recommendation, your team should ask what type of food that diner likes before giving their answer. If the server says the most expensive item on the menu is the best without giving any thought to the diner’s preferences, it won’t seem like a genuine recommendation.
Menu engineering can be another effective way to upsell. It’s all about designing your restaurant menu in an appealing and eye-catching way, using subtle psychological tricks to boost sales of higher-value items. Even simple changes like removing the currency symbols on your menu can encourage diners to buy more expensive dishes.
You can also use your menu layout to upsell. If a particular dish doesn’t come with a side dish but would go well with fries, write “Add fries for $2.99” under the dish to convince your guests to add them to their order.
If you run a more high-end restaurant, you could include wine pairings on the menu for each dish. This is an easy way to encourage customers to order wine instead of water and perhaps order multiple glasses of wine over the course of their meal.
Self-service devices can also help you upsell in your restaurant. You can adjust the interface to suggest optional extras or add-ons for each dish.
With KioskBuddy, for example, you can enable the modifiers for each dish on your Square POS system, which pulls the content through to the customer-facing display. KioskBuddy lets you customize the text on the display to ask diners whether they want to add something in a friendly, polite way.
Self-service devices can be excellent solutions for restaurant owners who want to boost sales; research suggests that customers place larger orders on self-service devices as they don’t feel judged for ordering more food.
Done right, your restaurant loyalty program can also work as an upselling strategy.
Instead of collecting points to redeem with a cash-equivalent value, you can offer rewards like a free side, dessert, or drink with your loyalty program. It’s unlikely that a customer would come to your restaurant just to order a side or a drink. Instead, they’ll likely redeem their loyalty reward as part of a larger meal. You can even set this as part of your reward program’s terms and conditions — add a disclaimer to explain how it works when your diners sign up.
By offering freebies as a reward for customer loyalty, you’ll encourage diners to come back for another visit while also ensuring they spend money, even when claiming rewards.
Similarly, coupons and vouchers can be excellent incentives to encourage customers to order more. Let’s say you run a coupon that gives a free appetizer when a customer orders an entree. That customer will pay for an entree — but it’s also likely they’ll come in with friends or family, so you’ll probably earn money on at least two main dishes.
Many restaurant-goers spend more when they have a coupon or money-off voucher — one survey suggests that up to 54% of diners spend more money when they have a coupon. You could even end up seeing larger check averages by offering freebies or a discount.
Use your existing restaurant marketing strategies to ensure your coupons reach a wide audience of new and repeat customers. For example, you can give printed coupons to customers with the check to entice them back in. Additionally, you could send digital vouchers to your mailing list or post them on your social media channels.
Another easy upselling technique in restaurants is to offer additional items for takeout.
Suppose a server is waiting on a family of four. They’ve had a filling main course and aren’t hungry enough for a dessert — no problem! Your staffer can suggest they order one to go to enjoy later when their appetite returns.
Suggesting a takeout box for sweet treats is a fantastic upselling technique — but it should be done cautiously. If the customers don’t want anything, don’t push it; only offer when a diner says they’d like a dessert but can’t manage one. That way, it comes across as a handy solution rather than a pushy sales method.
Restaurant upselling can let business owners see their profits rise and their customer loyalty increase. By using the right upselling techniques, you can ensure you’re encouraging diners to place larger orders without being too pushy.
If you’re a restaurant owner looking for an easy self-service solution, KioskBuddy is an excellent choice. It’s quick and easy to set up and lets customers place and pay for orders in just a few taps. You only need a tablet and Square Kiosk hardware to get started.
Sign up for KioskBuddy today and begin your self-service restaurant journey.