How to Increase Restaurant Sales Without the Headaches

One thing determines your restaurant’s success: sales. 

Without sales, you don’t have a restaurant. That’s why it’s so important to make sure you have a steady flow of sales, consistent takeout orders, and customers.

If you want to increase restaurant sales, it’s crucial to determine what drives revenue and how you can improve it. Then, you can explore new ways to add revenue streams and decrease expenses for improved profit margins.

Learn how to increase sales and find out some strategies for making more money without added stress.

Understanding what drives restaurant sales

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Increasing restaurant revenue involves many different factors—and at first, that can be super stressful. Sales depend on how many customers order from you and whether you can take all those orders when they come flooding in. They also rely on whether customers decide to return for a repeat visit.

Some of these drivers can make an impact in improving your sales:

• Marketing strategy: Your restaurant should have a service or process that actively brings new customers to your restaurant. 
• Food quality: Your food should meet your high standards to encourage word-of-mouth marketing and to retain customers for repeat business. 
• Service quality: Customers should have a positive experience to continue ordering from you. 
• Order process: Your restaurant should be able to take every order and call to maximize potential sales.
• Decrease labor costs: Outsourcing can eliminate paying for team members to handle the phones or trying to balance rush hour with dead times when scheduling. 

If you don’t have a process for marketing or delivery, that’s OK. It doesn’t have to be stressful. Thanks to partners like Tarro, you can easily add these strategies to your restaurant. 

You can also improve all other areas that can make more sales. One key factor in increasing earnings is the customer experience. Getting new customers is expensive, time-consuming, and difficult, so you want to make sure that when you do get a new customer, you win them over so they return.

By increasing customer retention and loyalty, you can increase sales over time. While building a positive reputation for great service and food can take time, implementing technology can speed up the process by years.

Using technology to drive sales growth in the restaurant industry

Adopting technology that streamlines positive experiences can provide top-notch customer service and food that speeds up your improvement.

For example, if you outsource phone ordering and delivery orders with Tarro, customers immediately get a fast, reliable, and accurate takeout experience. Word spreads quickly, and you now have a restaurant with a partner that answers callers in three seconds or less, sends delivery drivers to pick up orders, and does it all with an astonishing 99.5% order accuracy.

Leveraged by AI, Tarro’s reps can answer multiple calls from the same line simultaneously, 24/7, 365 days a year.

These changes mean you can take more orders, provide a positive experience, and eliminate most errors. You save money not having to correct mistakes and make more money by capturing more sales and increasing customer retention.

You also don’t have to spend time trying to hire front desk staff only for them to leave a few weeks or months later from the pressure. All the headaches of these high turnovers and managing more people can be a part of the past, so you can focus on growth instead.

Back to delivery: If you don’t offer it or you juggle multiple third-party delivery platforms like Uber Eats and DoorDash, you can change course. Instead, you can offer delivery with Tarro. 

When Tarro handles it for you, you get complete confidence in the experience, a more organized process, and better profit margins. You save on the high commissions from other apps and the price increases they add that keep profit out of your pockets.

Outsourcing takeout orders helps increase sales and relieves stress for you and your team. Restaurant team members don’t have to answer many calls while dealing with customers at the front of the house. They also don’t need high English proficiency, so even hiring becomes easier for you. Instead, everyone can focus on their primary responsibilities with a lot less pressure and multitasking. 

Customers in the restaurant get full-focused quality customer service, too, when your team members don’t have to deal with the phone.

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Marketing strategies to attract and retain customers

Once you set up a foundation to receive more orders and streamline your process, it’s time to attract more customers from your target audience. Restaurant marketing includes reaching potential customers and encouraging current customers to return and make an order.

The best thing to do is to create targeted marketing campaigns based on these categories.

Set up a Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) and a Yelp profile so that users can find you when they search for food options. Encourage customers to publish reviews, too, which can help bolster your positive reputation. 

These listings include your address and phone number so customers can see where you’re located and easily call in an order. Plus, when you set up your Google Business Profile and Yelp profile, it improves your search engine optimization (SEO), which makes your restaurant more discoverable online.

You can also promote special events online by creating a consistent social media presence. You can post and engage with customers on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook and let them know when you have deals on appetizers, limited-time dishes, or even a happy hour special like half off egg rolls.

Another way to increase sales through marketing is with customer loyalty programs and rewards. You can reward customers based on how often they order. 

Restaurants usually manage these programs based on a point system with their POS or an old-fashioned punch card that can be punched or stamped based on visits. This encourages customers to build up their points and get rewards, such as a free side or dessert or a percentage off their meal after the tenth visit.

Outsourcing promotions is also a great marketing strategy. You can partner with a service like Tarro to handle your campaigns, such as SMS marketing (text messages) and print materials.

These marketing ideas get the word out for your restaurant on deals and promotions and remind customers to buy from you.

But you don’t have to put all this marketing on yourself. You’re already running a complex small business. Outsourcing can help you take more orders, offer a positive experience, and market your restaurant without burning out.

How do I know outsourcing restaurant phone ordering is for me?

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If you want to increase sales and decrease expenses, restaurant answering services can get you there. It’s not just an idea. Follow along with one restaurant owner’s thought process for choosing outsourcing.

Xiu Xiu and her husband own a restaurant in Atlanta serving American Chinese food. In her translated remarks with Tarro, she shares her journey during a business period marked by inflation, rising costs, and a challenging economy.

Xiu says that after the COVID-19 pandemic, when government aid ran out, people spent less at restaurants around her. She says, “I think it’s hard for restaurants to do business now because of inflation, which has caused everything to go up in price […] ingredients go up, [labor goes up], all kinds of insurance [and] costs go up.”

Xiu focuses on the present problem and says, “What we can do now is increase income and reduce expenses.” She does that by streamlining the menu and removing uncommon dishes and menu items, such as black fungus and straw mushrooms. Then, she controls the cost of goods and reduces labor expenses. But ultimately, restaurants like Xiu’s need to increase sales prices.

But how do you raise the price without causing an uproar?

Xiu says, “The attitude is critical, like front desk service. When I face a new guest, the guest will tell me it’s their first time here, and I say, ‘You’ve come to the right place.’ We don’t have a lot of new customers, but when they come, we make them our repeat customers.”

Part of a better experience starts with streamlining orders. Xiu knew that having front desk staff to handle phone calls could cost thousands of dollars each month. To avoid that cost, she would sometimes answer the phone herself. But that kept her too busy and made managing much more stressful. She also missed sales when there were missed calls.

Xiu knows pickups and delivery are a significant part of her business, and it’s what the customer base wants.

“We don’t have a lot of new customers, but when they come, we make them our repeat customers.”

In a conversation with Xiu, Tarro explained how her restaurant, which gets about 50 orders per day, could get 10 more each day by outsourcing phone orders and delivery. It seems like a small number but added up over an entire year, it could result in $60,000 more in revenue. That’s not a small number anymore, and it’s a great win. Those numbers made Xiu consider outsourcing so she could grow her restaurant. Outsourcing also reduces stress for owners and team members.

Outsourcing your phone orders, delivering orders, and even marketing frees you up as a restaurant manager. You can provide better service and high-quality food and increase customer satisfaction. These factors can help you raise prices and sales volume while lowering expenses, letting you improve your profit margin.

Choosing Tarro to boost restaurant sales

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Increasing sales should be simple. Restaurants just need to:

1. Get the word out
2. Capture more orders and increase call and delivery availability
3. Provide high-quality experiences and food

In theory, outsourcing is not complicated. But when it comes to actually doing it, it feels impossible. Outsourcing, however, changes your entire narrative.

You CAN let more people know about your restaurant. You CAN take more orders, no matter how busy you are, and even deliver them. And you CAN provide the best quality customer experience and food in your community.

It starts with choosing the right partner.

Tarro takes care of your phone and food delivery orders, and all of your marketing as well. You can choose one service or all of them.

Tarro works with your budget—you only pay when its representatives process an order.

Tarro is a service co-founded by two brothers whose parents owned a Chinese restaurant. They grew up working in the restaurant and have first-hand experience with how stressful running a restaurant can be. They understand your needs and focus on bringing you more sales. When you use an outsourcing service like Tarro, you can reduce stress and minimize your hiring needs—all while boosting sales.

Book a meeting today to learn how to use Tarro for streamlined restaurant operations and an improved bottom line.

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