Diners walk into a restaurant for a complete, satisfying dining experience. Oftentimes, they are willing to spend more especially when they are with a group of friends. This makes for a memorable dining experience. It’s now up to you and your service staff to entice diners to add more items to their order, instead of having it end up as a “main course and a glass of water”. These are some of our favourite add-ons that you can upsell to diners who are already in your restaurant.
Drinks
The opportunity to upsell alcohol (wine or beer) is best done at the beginning of service. Train your service staff so they make suitable pairing recommendations as diners order their main courses (especially meats). This is one category that you’ll want to get proficient at upselling, as alcohol sales are big revenue earners for many dining establishments.
Appetisers
Most appetisers pack healthy profit margins, which is great for your restaurant. They also happen to be one of the easier items on the menu to upsell. (Plus, you can sell them to any customer, young or old.) There’s a good chance that guests are already hungry when they arrive, so your front of house team can seize the opportunity to make these easy sales.
Side dishes
Whenever a diner orders anything that would go well with another food item, service staff should suggest appropriate side dishes. Train your servers to identify good food pairings, and teach them to offer enticing descriptions of each side dish to attract diners to make the right choice.
Desserts
Everyone loves desserts, they just need to be told what desserts your restaurant offers – preferably in mouth-watering detail. If a table seems hesitant to indulge, you can recommend that guests share a dessert, just to get a little taste.
Most profitable items
Your front of house team should be very aware of which menu items are most profitable, so they’ll know which items to promote first. For example, if servers know which main course brings in the most profits for the restaurant, they should recommend that dish over other similar choices. Usually when customers ask servers for a recommendation, there’s a good chance they’ll go with the recommended items.
Plan your upselling strategy
By keeping these categories in mind, you can design an upselling strategy that will bring in additional revenue while improving customer satisfaction levels.
