Today, the restaurant industry is characterised by cut-throat competition. Hence, it has become a challenge for restaurant owners to ensure an edge over others while maximising sales through innovation.
Both upselling and cross-selling have emerged as powerful techniques in boosting sales and revenue in your business.
Whether you already own coffee shops, a chain of pizzerias or a flagship fine-dining restaurant, this blog can help you enhance sales of your food business with some handy tips on cross-selling.
Before we move into ?discussing how cross-selling can be an advantage, let’s begin by understanding what is meant by cross-sales and why you should consider integrating this sales technique into your business.
What is Cross-Selling and How Does it Work?
Like several other techniques that enhance your sales, cross-selling is a marketing practice that can enable increased sales for your restaurant. Higher sales indicate better revenue and profits for your business.
Cross-selling involves the sale of additional products or services to customers. With this technique, you can encourage customers to buy more items than your immediate offering.
So, if a customer visits your restaurant or orders from your online shop, your sales team representative can recommend products that supplement the customer’s original purchase needs. For instance, you may encourage your customer to add a special beverage or a dessert to their meal.
With cross-selling, you will be able to increase the value of your overall sales.
Is Your Restaurant Missing Any Opportunity Without Cross-Selling?
Well, if you seek to make your restaurant service increasingly efficient while ensuring customer satisfaction, not considering cross-selling could result in lost opportunities. Suggesting a brand of wine as a cross-selling strategy may encourage your customer to order an extra appetiser. So not just the wine but that additional dish would also add to the value of your sale.
Without cross-selling, you also limit the growth of your relationship with customers, impacting loyalty and customer satisfaction. Sometimes, adding a side dish to pair with the item chosen by the customer can ensure a satisfying experience.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss what cross-selling is cross selling and how it works in the restaurant industry. We’ll also provide some tips on using cross-selling tactics to maximise your restaurant’s success.
How Can You Cross-Sell?
If you are new to cross-selling and not sure how to go about it, here are ways to strategise it.
- Offer complimentary dishes such as sauces, condiments, etc., to go with the main course.
- Recommend pairing of meals with exquisite beverages or other dishes, as it will also increase sales of other items from the menu.
- Encourage dessert indulgence as it will add to the orders customers place at your restaurant.
Advantages of Cross-Selling
Here’s how you can benefit from cross-selling at your restaurant.
1. An increase in revenue and profitability
A restaurant that cross-sells items is likelier to experience improved sales, giving way to higher revenue generation as customers add more items to their order. Better revenue means better scope for making profits, as you can promote and sell items that have a higher margin through the cross-selling strategy.
2. Improved visibility of the menu
When your sales representatives at the restaurant suggest additional items, customers get to take a closer look at the extensive menu that they may not have considered while placing an order. After all, better visibility can influence the popularity of certain items on the menu, making them an instant hit among customers.
3. Better relationship with customers
Cross-selling may bring increased opportunities to interact with customers. With personalised recommendations of the menu to enhance their dining experience, restaurants can show how they care about customers’ needs and preferences. Such relationships can enhance customer loyalty and create repeat business opportunities.
4. Enhanced customer satisfaction
When you offer complementary items or services to customers visiting your in-room dining outlet or those placing takeout orders, you offer them a bespoke experience. Such specialised treatment can improve customers’ overall satisfaction, enhancing chances of recommending and returning to your dining hideout.
Potential Shortcoming of Cross-Selling
Despite several benefits of cross-selling, there are certain drawbacks of this marketing technique that may emerge, especially when it is not handled efficiently.
Here are a few reasons that may not get you the expected results from cross-selling. Understanding the drawbacks can enable you to approach cross-selling in an appropriate manner.
- Cross-selling done way too aggressively can appear as a desperate or manipulative move to sell products. In extreme cases, it could appear deceptive and misleading to many customers.
- Cross-selling products that don’t line up with the business’s brand identity or its values can confuse customers or even lead to loss of brand equity in the long run.
- Customers feeling pressured to buy extra items may often question the authenticity of the restaurant and its offerings. This could lead to reduced trust and declining customer loyalty.
- Inappropriately timed cross-selling efforts or the choice of products that don’t align with customer preferences or needs can limit sales conversion.
Cross-Selling Approach and Techniques
Effective cross-selling may require you to consider this approach as follows.
Identifying the needs and preferences of customers
Every customer comes with their unique needs, and it is the restaurant to identify the specific wants of different customers to be able to suggest items that meet their needs.
Analysing customer data
Customer data has become a reliable source of information for restaurants. Order management software that records the history of customers’ previous orders can help in analysing customers’ previous preferences and spending habits. This can enable planning your cross-selling strategies to cater to the personalised needs of customers.
Maintaining contact through follow-up
Following up with your customers via emails, text messages, or calls to notify them about your restaurant’s latest offers can be an effective way to introduce products that you may want to cross-sell. However, this initiative shouldn’t appear coercive.
Tracking results
Once you’ve implemented the strategies and steps of cross-selling, it is time to monitor the results of your initiatives. This way, you can make necessary amendments in your strategy and approach to ensure improved efforts in the future.
You can use the following techniques to strengthen your cross-selling results.
1. Train your staff to make appropriate recommendations on additional food or beverages to customers. For instance, if your restaurant offers a curbside service, you can suggest a quenching drink with an ordered meal.
2. Create menus with meal deals that are both attractive to the customers and include profitable items for the restaurant. You can also engineer the menu in a manner that depicts balanced pricing. If your customers don’t feel the pinch, they may readily accept a suggestion.
3. Send promos that motivate your customers to try new items from your restaurant’s menu. You could offer a free side dish or beverage to your customers who purchase a new item.
4. Don’t miss out on offering incentives to your loyal customers. Adding a free starter or a discount coupon on their next visit can increase the chances of your customers returning to the restaurant.
5. You can use your social media presence to reach your target audience with posts on the latest events, seasonal menu updates and promotional offers. Social media visibility can keep your restaurant searchable on various relevant platforms, improving cross-selling opportunities.
Concluding Thoughts
When executed in an unobtrusive manner, cross-selling can reap expected results. Train your staff so that their suggestions on ordering additional items appear seamless and not pressurizing customers. The above techniques, tweaked to your business goals and values, can prove advantageous in increasing sales and customer satisfaction at your restaurant.
To start selling more, you can check out OrderEm’s digital solution platform that can support your cross-selling initiatives. Their platform provides customised solutions to create cross-sells compatible across multiple sales channels, including fine dining restaurants, kiosks, bakeries and other platforms.