Optimizing your restaurant

In the current context, restaurants are continually seeking to optimize their performance. Regardless of the financial health of your establishment, it’s natural to want to increase sales or simply make the most of your resources, all while maintaining favorable working conditions. DUCASSE Conseil offers tailored support to provide you with all the tools you need to optimize your restaurant’s performance.

How to optimize your restaurant ?

There’s no need to tell you that the French love dining out. Nearly two-thirds of them visit a restaurant at least once a month. However, in a sector with around 220,000 restaurants in France, attracting customers while generating revenue to ensure profitability is crucial. So, what do you do when your activity slows down, or your establishment gets lost among the competition? Indeed, optimizing a restaurant’s performance is not incompatible with a well-thought-out and implemented upgrade to a higher level.

Our good practices

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Purchase management

To improve the profitability of a restaurant, you need to start with effective management of your restaurant’s purchases. Depending on the size of your establishment, this task may fall to the chef, a purchasing manager, or a dedicated purchasing department. This person will handle orders for ingredients and beverages, serving as the direct contact with suppliers and working to develop strong relationships with them.

Who better to take charge and discuss the raw materials used daily in preparing dishes than the chef themselves? This allows them to negotiate the best prices and terms for supplies, which will have a direct impact on the restaurant’s profitability when combined with effective stock management.

Once this initial step is established, it is essential that the chef ensures their team follows the guidelines, particularly regarding ingredient quantities.

As a tip, we recommend creating and using technical sheets to closely align with theoretical food cost ratios. Adjustments to menu prices might be necessary to address the actual food cost.

Slider – Conceptualisation et élaboration des reco

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The management of cash receipts

In a second step, we recommend, if possible, using a cash register system that will help you manage your restaurant and increase sales by better analyzing the figures.

Your cash register software should provide you with all the information about what is happening in your establishment. You should be able to understand and analyze these figures whether you are physically present or not! With detailed reports of all your sales, dishes (the best sellers and those that are less successful), you can consult with the chef and make necessary changes to your menu.

Finally, it is advisable to secure the restaurant’s cellar and storeroom to better control the inflow and outflow of goods. Beyond good cost management, it is crucial for a restaurant to generate revenue and develop its business to optimize its operations.

This revenue development can also be achieved more traditionally by hiring a commercial manager responsible for B2B business development, including privatizations and events.

©Bertille Chabrolle_Tartare de boeuf, scamorza fumée et câpre_01

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Managing your E-reputation

We couldn’t wrap up these best practices without mentioning your establishment’s digital presence: it’s increasingly linked to customer traffic. This is why we see more and more establishments turning to a marketing manager or an external agency for digital management. If you choose to handle communication in-house, you absolutely need to:

Ensure Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimize your presence on Google and Google My Business to increase your visibility and attract more visitors.
Maintain an Updated Website: Keep your website current with all necessary information and relevant media, such as photos of dishes, videos, events, press clippings, contact details, and menu.
Regularly Engage on Social Media: Actively manage your social media presence with consistent updates and community engagement. You don’t need to be on every platform, just those that are most relevant to your type of establishment. Instagram, for instance, can offer great visibility and build recognition.
Diligently Manage E-Reputation: Monitor and respond to reviews on various review and booking sites like The Fork, TripAdvisor, and Google Pages. Responding to both positive and negative reviews shows that you value customer feedback and maintains your establishment’s reputation.

The support we offer

We will work alongside you, starting with an observation period in your establishment through an audit. Once this is completed, we will provide you with concrete solutions to help improve your restaurant’s profitability and create new offerings such as :

Daily specials
Weekend menu
Happy hour offer
Brunch (which has become very popular in recent years)
Tea time (an underutilized offer that can maximize your establishment’s profitability)
Private events (such as birthday parties, weddings, etc.) and also broader events based on seasonal calendar events (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc.)
Click & Collect “to-go” (even if you’re not keen on this area, you could be missing out on potential customers: you can’t increase revenue if your restaurant’s capacity is full)

A well-trained front-of-house team can drive additional sales by recommending drinks, wine pairings, or house cocktails to customers. We also advise maintaining transparent communication with your staff, who act as a bridge between you and your customers. Keep them informed about changes, new offerings, etc. This will ensure you always have a reliable and coherent perspective, and benefit from their insights as they interact daily with customers. Soliciting and considering their feedback will make them feel valued and important, fostering a trustful relationship that enhances the customer experience.

For an even more comprehensive approach, we recommend organizing “open house” days, perhaps once a quarter. This allows you to gather feedback directly from your customers, hear their suggestions, and better understand their expectations, behaviors, and needs. Whether you already have an establishment or are planning to create one, we believe we can work together to maximize the potential of your restaurant. We look forward to meeting with you to discuss your future strategy.

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