- Recommend item which has a high profit margin
Upselling in a restaurant refers to recommending options for your customers to increase your profit. Firstly, in order to recommend the right food/beverages for your customers to add on to their orders, you have to know your menu well and determine which are the items that have a high profit margin. Definitely, you would want to use the upselling chance to maximise your profit to the maximum. Therefore, you should recommend your customer items that can make a significant profit to the overall revenue. Example, Main Courses and Wines etc. Importantly, the way to close the upselling is to explain the reason why you recommend the specific item. For instance, you can state the facts that that is the best-selling wine and the reason why many people like it. Your explanation will persuade the customers to order the item you recommended.
Cross-selling in a restaurant refers to recommending customers items that go well along with their order selections. For example, if a customer orders steak as their main course, you can suggest them having a wine to go along with their steak. Additionally, you can also recommend customers to add-on sides or for their main courses as well.
- Add-on Ingredients/ Upgrade to a large portion
Suggesting customers to add-on ingredients is another good upselling method too. You can recommend ingredients that are in their main courses, appetizers or sides that they can actually choose to have more portions of. Many customers who prefer their dish to be customized will tend to like the idea of adding extra ingredients to it. Hence, the upselling will lead to an increase in the overall restaurant revenue.
Should your restaurant have the portion options for customers to choose from such as: Regular and Large, you can suggest customers to upgrade to a large portion which is suitable for sharing. Do your maths and explain to them that it would be more valuable for them to order a large portion with just a little price difference.
- Recommend specific items
Sometimes, your opportunity to upsell is when recommending beverages for the customers who are still deciding on whether they want a drink or are looking through the drinks menu but have yet to decide or unsure which drinks to choose from. This is when you take the chance and suggest the drinks which they may like.
Firstly, you can ask them if they prefer coffee or tea, and proceed to recommend the all-time-favourite coffee or tea that you have. Check with them if they want additional syrups which are subject to charges. The upselling for additional top-ups adds to a significant value to the overall sales revenue in the long run.
Secondly, you can recommend your speciality drinks for the day and show them the
picture of it. Images are a good day to entice the customers to purchasing an item that they are considering or interested in.
- Be Genuine
Most important thing to take note during upselling/cross-selling or recommending items to customers, is to be enthusiastic and show customers that you are genuine and that the selected menu items that you suggest are definitely worth trying. You do not want them to have the mentality that you are believed to recommend stuff that are expensive and only want them to spend more. Therefore, the tone of your speech and the way you talk to customers is very important to show that you are genuine in your food or beverages recommendations.
Some pointers you may include while making your recommendation is to describe the food, the feedback of the particular dish by other customers, and how hot-selling the new dish is or all-time-favourite amongst many customers.
- Recommending Right Food at the Right Time
As soon as the customers sit down, check with the customers if they would like to start off with a cup of drink first while looking through the menu for their main courses. This is so as most customers like to sip on drinks while taking their own time and look through the menu for their food afterwards. If it is the morning, you should recommend something appropriate such as your breakfast menu or lunch menu that have no timing restrictions if customers insist. Refrain from suggesting desserts or wines for breakfast time as it is not a suitable dish to have or go with for breakfast. Likewise, during dinner time, you should recommend the main courses or wines instead of the breakfast menu. When it comes to recommending wines, you can take the chance to recommend the highest profitable wine for them to start off with which they are most likely to accept before looking through the menu.
- Do not hard-sell
It is important to not cross the line of being annoying when it comes to upselling or cross-selling. You should incorporate the upselling/cross-selling tactic in a normal conversation rather than bombarding the customers with all the options for them to consider at once. They might feel irritated and turned off. Who knows? They might not even hesitate to write in a complaint or walk out of the restaurant immediately if they feel uncomfortable with your hard-selling ways. Be careful not to let your upselling or cross-selling backfire, which may cause your restaurant to end up making a loss and lead to a bad reputation through word of mouth, reviews or feedback from customers who experienced a bad experience in your restaurant. Instead, you should let your upselling and cross-selling ways flow naturally in a conversational topic when taking their orders and it does not come across to them as such. If you managed to do so, it means you have done it the right way successfully.
- Check with customers if there is anything they would like to takeout
Some customers would like to purchase takeout after they have finished their food in the restaurant. These takeouts are most probably for their friends, family members at home or they would like to have it for themselves later.
For instance, they may be full now but they are able to purchase light bites to munch on (eg, tarts) for their desserts at home or office afterwards. Therefore, you should always recommend them desserts after completing their meal or additional food for takeaway. You will never know if you managed to influence their decisions to do so. They may actually have decided to purchase takeaways from other food outlets but decided to purchase at your restaurant instead since they are there at the moment and it saves them time and travelling as well. This would further help your restaurant to profit.
