In 2021, takeout is already king.
With temperatures plummeting and Covid-19 surging, restaurants are relying on takeout more heavily than ever. According to a report from Datassential, takeout remains the most predominant service restaurants are currently offering.
Today, we’re going to be examining a few easy ways that your restaurant can help increase takeout sales. Let’s take a look.
Promote Your Services
Just because there’s a pandemic going on doesn’t mean you should assume customers are going to think of your restaurant when it’s time to order takeout. To attract their business, you need to actively promote your offerings. Customers need to associate takeout with your restaurant so that when they decide to order takeout, your restaurant is one of the first that comes to mind. Let them know what you’re offering by updating social media, sending out emails, and posting about it on your website.
Go Contactless
To ensure your customers are as comfortable as possible, offer a 100% contactless solution. With proper food packaging and bagging, deliveries can be left at the door without any worry. When it comes to takeout, if you have a drive-through, make use of it. Otherwise, start offering curbside pickup. Minimizing the human-to-human interaction is the most important element you can maintain here.
Click here to learn more about implementing contactless solutions.
Think Conveniently
If you want to succeed with the takeout crowd, you need to be functioning on the customers’ schedules, not just your own. This means ensuring that you have the capacity to receive and prepare takeout orders from your kitchen in a timely manner. If you’re telling people that their food will be ready in fifteen minutes, it needs to be packed and ready-to-go by then, regardless of how busy you are.
Handhelds To-Go
You might want to even consider a takeout-specific menu. This can be particularly useful if not all of your meals are ideal for sending home. Furthermore, the Grab-and-Go market is becoming quite popular. Having a few ready-made selections prepared for walk-in customers (e.g. cold subs, packaged sushi, etc.) can help attract customers who don’t even have the time to order ahead.
Branded Packaging
Anytime you send something from your restaurant into the outside world, you’re going to want to make sure it’s got your branding slapped on it. The customer could be headed anywhere, and who knows who they’ll be eating with. Whether they’re going home, to work, or at a friend’s house, branded packaging presents a key opportunity to advertise your takeout services.
Takeout Specials
Another key part of any takeout business is providing a good value. Try introducing a set of daily specials to incentivize repeat visits throughout the week (e.g. $2 off sub combo on Monday). Provide a full meal for one neat price, including the main dish, a side, and a drink.
Due to the pandemic, many families are ordering in bulk. Consider how you can provide value to larger groups of customers.
Boost Takeout Sales With CoGoBuzz
Wish there was an easier way to build awareness for your takeout brand? As it turns out, there is, thanks to CoGoBuzz, our state-of-the-art digital marketing service. We’ll digitally promote your takeout services directly to customer mobile devices.
Leveraging state-of-the-art WiFi, SMS, and Email solutions, our service promotes your restaurant both in-store and out. Through a one-time login to your in-store HotSpot, CoGoBuzz displays an interactive landing page on customer mobile devices. For every single one of those logins, we create a full profile, integrating them with your favorite marketing list. Segment your audiences and selectively target customers to promote your takeout business!
On top of that, CoGoBuzz even comes packed with a fully digital text-based loyalty program for your restaurant. Send automated messages at specific times, run contests and polls, and promote your takeout services with just a simple text.
Click here to learn more about CoGoBuzz!
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What does your restaurant do to promote its takeout services? Let us know in the comments!