Running a successful restaurant business is similar to conducting a symphony orchestra. There are a multitude of aspects that you need to orchestrate meticulously and make sure your entire staff is working in harmony. By no means is this an easy task to handle.

You might have a passion for the culinary world and enjoy the art of cooking, especially the satisfaction gained by feeding people good food. Diving head-on into the world of the restaurant business, equipped with just this passion, might not be enough for you to emerge back up to the surface and stay afloat. Setting goals (both short and long-term) is imperative for running a successful restaurant. Here are a few tips for doing so:

• First Things First – As a restaurant owner, you need to have your finger on the pulse of your establishment. You should be able to detect even the slightest signs of distress or irregularities in the daily operation of your restaurant, from the get-go.

You will be able to do so by keeping track of the performance metrics of your restaurant, which includes break-even point, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), overhead rate, gross profit, and employee turnover rate. In order to make informed decisions, make sure your goals are aligned with the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely).

• Increase Net Sales – In the highly volatile and competitive restaurant business ecosystem, maintaining constant sales numbers can be difficult. You need to be on your toes and make sure you go the extra mile to ensure your net sales keep increasing.

• Create your Google My Business page and fill it diligently. Getting the Google Bots to find your restaurant website will help boost your online as well as offline traffic. Your Google footprint will help build the credibility of your restaurant as well as familiarize potential diners to the restaurant timings, menu, address, and even book a reservation using Reserve with Google.

• In this hashtag age, a restaurant’s food and decor presentation has to appeal to the diners, especially the Insta-centric crowd. Every diner with a smartphone is a potential marketing executive for your brand, so you have to make sure your food and decor are Insta-worthy.

• Invest in an advanced Point Of Sale (POS) system as it is an absolute necessity for running your restaurant more efficiently and thereby increasing your revenue. Apart from taking order payment, managing food inventory, and cash flow, an advanced POS system can also take care of customer loyalty and upselling, sales reports, employee scheduling, and customization of menus. It also helps curb employee-theft.

• Using Snapchat’s Geofilter feature, you can create a customized Snapchat filter specific to your restaurant brand—maybe incorporate your logo. This filter can then be used by Snapchat users in your proximity to add to their content, thereby enhancing the visibility of your brand.

• Add New Items to the Menu – A dated menu can drive loyal and regular customers away from your restaurant. Make sure you keep refreshing your menu regularly, based on food trends and customer feedback. Don’t swap out your food listings just for the sake of changing; make sure you have done your research and cost analysis. Also, stay true to the theme and vision of your restaurant and make sure the new items align with the theme. Try incorporating more seasonal local vegetables and fresh produce in your menu and make sure you don’t end up spending a lot on incorporating these changes.

• Give Your Customers a New Way to Dine – Customers today highly convenience-centric; therefore, as restaurant owners, you must step up your game to grant them the convenience to order and dine as per their choice.
  • Implementing an infrastructure for digital ordering is one way to do so. According to a report, restaurant digital orders have grown at an average annual rate of 23 percent since 2013, and the rate is expected to triple in volume by the end of 2020. You can collaborate with third-party food delivery companies to receive orders via an app or website.
  • Setting up a drive-thru is another way to go, catering to customers who are in a hurry. A drive-thru can also serve as an effective marketing and advertising platform for your restaurant.
  • To set up a delivery infrastructure or even a drive-thru, you need to have specific pieces of equipment and hardware such as an advanced POS system, tablets that help take reservations, packaging equipment, and drive-thru intercom system that has automated messages.

Stay Hungry, Stay Humble

Running a profitable restaurant business requires more than just a passion for cooking. It involves strategy, hard work, planning, passion, vision, multi-tasking abilities, and leadership qualities. You have to ensure that you have well-defined and achievable goals for your restaurant. Keeping a clear head, focusing on your goals, steering clear of complacency, and staying humble will help you set the trajectory to success for your restaurant.

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Not only is successful marketing a demanding endeavor in itself, but you then need to act accordingly with all feedback, insights and changes which need to be implemented. It’s a long and time-consuming process, but it’s a crucial one, which is why it’s always important to seek ways to better manage your time and your campaigns when it comes to marketing.

Here’s how.

Define Your Goals

You can’t hope to produce excellent marketing campaigns if you’re not sure about what your goals are. Your business marketing goals should include long-term end goals as well as a specific goal for every piece of marketing content you produce. This will help you to shape campaigns in a more adequate fashion.

Create a Budget

You can easily manage your campaigns when you know how much money you have to utilize. Without a clear budget, your campaigns may suffer from either being less than they should be (such as having money you could have invested to make campaigns better, but failed to do so) or risk overspending and creating bigger campaigns completely out of budget.

Ensure your marketing budget is sound.

Seek Professional Partnerships for Marketing Purposes

In order to not only make campaigns better, but to also manage all your time in a better way and alleviate some of the pressure, you can always seek to partner with a professional service.

With an SEO reseller program, you get all the help you need with managing your marketing campaigns and receiving valuable insight, without it compromising your time.

Know Who is in Charge of Campaigns

You’re going to need either a clear designated individual to handle marketing campaigns, or a team of people, depending on your business and the amount of staff you have. You can only hope to have better focus and development with your marketing campaigns if you have a person, or people, entirely in charge of that area.

Marketing campaigns shouldn’t be done as a side task or allotted to whoever has time to do it within the business.

Understand When Your Target Audience is Most Active

You want your campaigns to be timed in the best way. There is no point producing brilliant marketing content if you risk it not being seen, or if you’re going to publish content and make posts during those quiet times when nobody is going to be active to see it.

Take the time to understand when your target market is most active. Are they online first thing in the morning? Will they most likely be found browsing during the evening? Check your insights and analytics feedback for customer engagement and website clicks to see when activity is at its peak.

You can also use social media to your advantage; find your clients on social media and check their posting habits and comment timing. You will then be able to see the time of day when they are most active on social media, and can therefore time your marketing campaigns accordingly.

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The world of work occasionally goes through some pretty big changes. There was a gigantic shift during the industrial revolution, for instance, and then again during the digital revolution. These changes have a significant impact on the nature of work, both what is done and how it is done. We also see shifts in the workplace too. It used to be that office spaces were grey and uninspiring by design. Today, companies understand that it’s better to have a more relaxed, inspiring workspace. In this blog, we’ll take a look at a few ways this goal can be achieved.

Let There Be Light

Our surroundings have a huge impact on our mental state, energy, productivity, and just about everything else associated with working well. Studies have shown that people work much better when they’re working in a bright and spacious environment. So take a look at your space: is it all that it could be? If it’s overly dark, then look at making some changes. It’s often possible to make windows bigger (thus letting in more natural light). Alternatively, you can add mirrors so that the light that does enter can reverberate around the room.

Reduce the Clutter

A cluttered mind is not able to focus well. Did you know that cluttered surroundings can also have the same effect? When there’s too much going on around us, it can be difficult to concentrate on the task of hand. The good news is that there are always options for reducing the amount of clutter in your office. If it feels as if you’re overrun with paperwork, then find out more about switching to cloud storage. You’ll find it’s much easier to have a clutter-free office when there’s no need to keep physical copies of documents. Plus, it’ll make documents easier to find, which will reduce the stress levels even further.

Inspiring Decorations

Take a look at the offices of the past, and you’ll invariably find pretty uninspiring decor. Indeed, everything seems to be grey! For your office, take a look at making things a little more inspiring by adding decorations, plants, and other touches of color throughout the office. This will help to make the office feel less mechanical and solely work-focused. And on top of that, the knock-on effect will be that your employees will feel more inspired and creative since that’s what they are surrounded by each day. It’s a win-win situation.

Relaxing Spaces

It used to be that company owners wanted their staff to work as many hours in the day as possible, but now they’re beginning to understand that this isn’t realistic. The human mind will just eventually switch off, and work less effectively. A little break can do wonders for productivity, since it gives staff the chance to rest their minds. If you have space, look at dedicating a section of your work-space to nothing but relaxation. It’s a bold move, but one that will have a positive impact on productivity and the happiness of your staff.

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Cryptocurrency is an apt name for businesses. Not because it’s a form of payment that goes under the radar, but because companies never understand the pros of accepting it as a form of payment. Usually, this means it gets brushed under the carpet, never to be heard of or seen again. Unfortunately, this is a massive mistake for all businesses, but especially SMEs. Small and medium-sized enterprises sometimes have a superiority complex and don’t think they’re worthy. However, the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum can change the way you operate.

Here are the reasons why. After reading these, you’ll wonder why you didn’t embrace crypto sooner.

There Are Fewer Fees

Sadly, the rates of transaction fees that you incur from the bank are enough to drain your profits. What’s horrible about this is the fact that it’s out of your control. You did everything right, yet the bank took their cut for doing nothing. Well, cryptocurrencies are very different. Since there are no regulators to check a transaction, there is no need to charge fees. If you do have to pay, it’s because businesses decide to accept a small charge to speed up the processing of transactions. So, you can save yourself a fortune with crypto.

And No Borders

When you go abroad, or when you deal with a foreign company, do you get annoyed with international transaction fees and fluctuating currencies? You should because they have a considerable impact on your success, but they are unnecessary. Bitcoin has proved this time and time again. As long as clients and partners accept cryptocurrencies, you won’t have to put up with the usual waste of resources, and that’s a reference to time as well as money. Borders can result in blocks being put on transactions, yet this doesn’t happen when you deal with an international currency.

It’s An Investment

Once you have cryptocurrencies in your portfolio, you are likely to make a profit. Everybody knows about the value of Bitcoin, which is currently at around $800 per share, although it has gone above $1,200 in the past. Still, it’s not BC that’s enticing: it’s the other currencies. To buy now, ETH is worth $300+, and it continues to have the potential for growth. This is extraordinary considering it’s easily the second-largest platform in the industry. Of course, what this shows is that cryptocurrencies are solid investments that you can hold on to and cash in for a profit later.

Crypto Is Final

Customers are savvy and will attempt to get their money back even when they’ve enjoyed the product or service. For your business, this is a difficult situation as you don’t want to pay up unnecessarily, yet consumers are entitled and will go nuclear. The fantastic thing about accepting crypto payments is that there are no refund options after the transaction is finalized. Consumers make a purchase with the express understanding that there is no way to get their coins back, making disputes a thing of the past.

Are you ready to accept crypto payments now?

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