5 Ideas To Attract New Customers To Your Restaurant

You have a beautiful restaurant with a regular cliental, but things seem to be at a bit of a standstill. Without new business your restaurant won’t grow and prosper. Sure it will hold it’s own but isn’t it every entrepreneurs dream to grow and make more profit? To grow you will need to attract new customers to your restaurant which only takes a little bit of creativity. Here are 5 ideas to try.

1. Gift Certificates One easy way to bring in new customers is to offer gift certificates. Your regular cliental will quickly purchase a gift certificate for a friend or relative.

This means when their friend or relative visits your restaurant you have the potential for building a new long term customer. It’s rather like a referral. Remember when a customer arrives bearing a gift certificate give them that little extra to convert them to a regular.

2. Happy Hour Happy hour is no longer a rich and famous activity. Many workers likes to unwind after a busy day before heading home and the best way to do this is by popping into your favorite restaurant for happy hour.

Besides cocktails you’ll want to serve plenty of finger foods to munch on. Veggies and dip, chicken fingers, chips, nachos, are all great foods to serve at happy hour.

You may also want to offer a special meal discount for those that have come for happy hours. Remember lots of happy hour participants don’t have a family to go home to and may take you up on that discount just to save having to go home and cook. Happy hour is a great way to build a long term customer.

3. Hotel and Attractions If your restaurant is near a holiday or inn that does not have its own restaurant cut a business deal with the hotel owner to drive business to your location. Discount coupons work well. You can also do some cross marketing with nearby attractions. In fact cross market with hotels, inns, motels, and attractions that are within a 5 mile radius.

If there is tour bus that covers your neighborhood market through them. A ferry that brings people to your part of the woods, make sure your market aboard it. The tourism office is also a good place to promote your restaurant.

4. Contests People love free things and they love contests. It’s a great way to get some media coverage and draw in new faces. Run your contest so that there is no obligation to purchase anything but that it encourages them to come check out your establishment.

You could also run a contest to get their meal for free or win a gift certificate. Choose prizes that have them coming back. Become a sponsor in a contest that a media outlet is running to get free advertising and exposure, or participate in trade shows or exhibitions. Get as much exposure as possible.

5. Customer Service The easiest and most often looked way to draw new customers is with customer service. So often these days the customer service is horrid. The business that recognized the power of customer service is one step above the competition.

Customer service goes beyond friendly and helpful staff although this is very important. It means having a comfortable place for your guests to wait for a table rather than jammed in an entrance. Perhaps a table at the bar with nappies to munch on or a nicely laid out sitting area away from the door. It means proper lighting, ambiance, and atmosphere. It means not having your customer waiting forever for a table. It means not rushing a customer.

Have a look at your overall customer service and see what improvements you can make. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results when the word gets out there.

Follow these 5 tips and watch your cliental grow and your restaurant prosper.

Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory. This means that as a publisher you may reprint the articles that are included in our site, as long as the article is unedited and the author box is included with it's live hyperlinks.