How To Boost Beverage Sales in a Restaurant
A restaurant has many areas it can improve in, including meals and beverages. While some courses on your menu fare well, it doesn’t seem like the drink menu is getting much action. That might happen because your menu is boring; there isn’t much to sell here except your basic brews, coffee, and fizzy drinks. Here is how to boost beverage sales in a restaurant.
Offer Customizable Drinks
Most restaurants have a secret menu; even if they don’t, they somehow find a way to create a customized drink for a customer. If you want to boost sales, that might be something to look into.
Customizable drinks get customers into your business. Consider hiring a bartender, barista, or other professional drink maker that can customize drinks to a customer’s liking. Customers also like watching the spectacle form; offer front-of-house service to allow guests to watch servers make their drinks.
Consider Creating a Happy Hour
A happy hour is a great idea. The greatest thing about it is you can make it any type of happy hour you want. If you want to serve different types of lemonade for an hour, then do it. A happy hour is the perfect event to host for everyone. It brings the community together to sample different drinks and spend time with each other.
Consider putting a theme on each happy hour. If your primary crowd is millennials, the ’90s or early 2000s-themed happy hour could be fun to put on with drinks inspired by different shows, fashion trends, and hairstyles.
Create a Limited-Time Menu
Seasonal menus need all the TLC they can get, especially since your menu is against stiff competition between corporate chains and other small businesses. If your restaurant serves mostly professionals who are heavy coffee drinkers, you can offer them honey instead of regular sugar. A sugary substitute like honey is better because it’s naturally sweet and has a longer shelf life.
Consider adding other limited-edition sweeteners to your menu, like molasses and fruit-flavored syrups. These items serve better because they’re not made with artificial ingredients.
Help Workers Memorize Menus
The other thing to do while learning how to boost beverage sales in a restaurant is to help your staff learn the menus. Besides dishes, there are various drink menus for servers to learn. You can test their knowledge and help them remember each one by sampling and learning the essential ingredients in each drink. Servers also learn what drinks pair well with each meal.
A drink has a big part in a restaurant. The drink a customer picks should pair well with their meal or be the thing that helps quench their thirst. Create better success in your restaurant by following these tips for successful beverage sales.
