Since the inception of Restaurant Group in the early 1990’s the most commonly asked question is “what can I do to increase my sales”. There is a “simple” yet complex answer to this:
- Develop a plan with goals & objectives,
- Create a timeline for goals & objectives being met,
- Delineate & assign tasks with accountabilities and a timeline
- Develop a budget,
- Implement/Follow Through, (note: the largest cause for success is in the FOLLOW THROUGH)
- Measure results
- Adjust as needed
Further Discussions on Planning, Implementing, Coaching and Success
- Firstly, create An internal marketing “team” vs just the GM or the Owner.
- The Key people need to be intimately involved
- We separate past history of each daypart and then determine what are goals and objectives are for that daypart
- Breakfast/Brunch
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Happy Hour
- Private Dining/Catering
- To Go
- Retail
- Other
- What are the opportunities that could exist for one daypart (do one daypart at a time)
- What is the “low hanging fruit”? Go after this one first.
- Flesh out this one opportunity paying attention to every last detail. In other words, be thorough & complete.
- Decide who is going to do what (assign tasks).
- Who is going to take charge of holding everyone accountable?
- The Team should meet weekly to discuss the program, how it is doing, what adjustments may need to be made, etc.
- Measure and publish daily/weekly
Notes on what we have experienced………don’t be particularly surprised if you see these things happening:
- Plan is not well laid out. Lay it out again so it is more succinct.
- The leader does not hold people accountable-Recognize this and adjust.
- The leader does not coach the team to success-there is no magic solution but to continue to discuss what needs to happen.
- The Team may get discouraged and lose interest if big results are not there-Celebrate any results-Continue coaching it up.
- More than likely you will need to make some course corrections-don’t be afraid to do so but get team buy into any changes.