8 tips for additional business for your restaurant
With additional business, restaurateurs can not only increase their turnover. It is also highly useful to have a supplementary business alongside your core business in order to be prepared for exceptional situations like that of the last two years.
We’ll tell you what options there are, what’s important, what makes sense and what doesn’t!
In this article you will receive 8 tips for successful additional business:
To Go - food to take away
Offer dishes from your menu to take away. This is a relatively quick way to add business to your regular restaurant business. Because sometimes customers don’t have much time and want to pick up their lunch quickly from their favourite restaurant during their lunch break and perhaps enjoy it in the park if the weather is good.
You should make sure that you only offer selected dishes that can be prepared quickly and mean little waiting time for the customer. It’s best to use recyclable or reusable packaging for the food, and of course the dish needs to be visually appealing even in a paper bowl.
Delivery service
Many customers like the convenience of having food delivered to their homes. Here, too, you should pay attention to what you are offering. Check which dishes are most deliverable. Maybe it makes sense to think about “delivery only” products.
If you have enough capacity, having your own delivery service is the best choice, as it saves you the high commission charged by delivery portals. You should therefore calculate which delivery option is best for you. The market is growing steadily and offers restaurateurs excellent opportunities to build up a lucrative additional business with a delivery service.
Web shop
With your own web shop you can also control your own delivery service. But that’s not all: you can also offer other products in the web shop, such as vouchers, tickets for special menus or home made specialities – thus generating higher turnover.
Delicacies
A selection of home-made delicacies and specialities from your restaurant offer your customers a very special experience. You should make sure that the gourmet items on offer fit in with the concept of your restaurant. Of course, home made sauces, spreads, spice mixtures or stews are especially good.
You should also choose attractive packaging, e.g. mason jars with your logo. It is very important to label the products with details such as ingredients, nutritional values, best before dates, etc., as this information is mandatory.
Cooking classes
Watching the chef and learning how to create a delicious menu is a unique and special experience for many customers. Courses where the professional chef shows how to prepare her dishes and reveals, for example, which combination of spices brings out their flavour, is an offer which is also perfect as a gift.
At the end, the group can enjoy their creations together, perhaps with the accompaniment of a nice wine, offered during the course. Fun should therefore always come first and foremost. Of course, the customers want to learn how to cook, but they also want to be entertained.
Cooking boxes
Gourmet menu boxes are a great way for amateur cooks to prepare their food in the style of a restaurant. You should make sure that the cooking boxes are beautifully designed and contain a recipe with step-by-step instructions that customers can then follow.
The ingredients should be pre-cooked as much as possible and packed in jars or vacuum bags to be finished in a water bath or oven. This allows customers to act like a star chef at home and bring a touch of restaurant atmosphere to their own dining room.
Rent out the restaurant kitchen
On days when your business is closed or the kitchen space is unused, you can use this empty time to rent out your kitchen. There are now dedicated platforms where kitchens for rent are offered.
Often it is street food vendors or restaurants without a prep kitchen that are on the hunt for such an offer. It is a great source of income if you can hire out your unused kitchen for this service.
Catering
A catering offer also gives your business the opportunity to better utilise the kitchen and brings a lot of additional turnover potential. When you want to provide a delivery service exclusively for your food, you should offer it as a party service.
Depending on your target group and resources, it may make sense to specialise in private parties, corporate events or mobile catering.
To sum up
We hope that this article has given you some ideas for generating additional business. It is important that you calculate everything in advance and think about the increased need for staff so that your core business does not suffer.
It is important that your extended offer fits in with the concept of your restaurant and that it is well coordinated with it.
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