Build Loyalty, Not The Check Average

Build Loyalty, Not The Check Average Let’s say your typical guest comes in twice a month and your average check per person is ten dollars. Let’s also say that you would like a 50% sales increase (who wouldn’t?) What are your options? Option 1: Increase the Check Average You could try to increase your average check to $15 and hope that people would still come in as often as they did before. You might be able to pull this off but I would not want to bet on it. Most operators tell me their guests have a certain amount they are comfortable spending in any given situation. Pressure to increase the per person expenditure could result in lowered guest counts. Raising the average check is not likely to work. Option 2: Invest in Promotion You could invest heavily in promotion but promotion can also be expensive. Every cost you add raises the sales required to net out a 50% increase. Besides, the odds of coming up with a campaign that would produce a consistent 50% sales increase are also pretty slim. Promotion is usually not the answer. Option 3: Increase Frequency What are the odds that you could treat your guests in such a way that instead of coming in twice a month, they would come in three times a month? Pretty good, I’ll bet. Just one more visit a month would provide that 50% sales increase…without any increase in average check and without any increased pressure on the guests or your service staff! If you can give your guests such a good experience that they come to you instead of patronizing your competition, you cannot help but increase your volume. The secret is frequency You see how it works? A 50% sales increase seems impossible, but getting guests to come back one more time a month seems pretty reasonable. And it is. After all, your guests are eating somewhere, why shouldn’t it be with you? Even if guests come in twice a week, one more visit a month is still a 12.5% sales increase, again without any pressure to increase the average check. Focus on delight So the safest way to achieve sales growth is to have your guests return more often. In this mode, your goal is to delight your guests, win their trust and earn their loyalty rather than simply trying to increase the average per person sale. Don’t get me wrong - if a guest wants to spend more money, I have no problem in taking it with gratitude and a smile! But it is about time we stopped having such a Fixation on how much our guests spend on each visit and started putting our energies toward Higher checks are OK, but.. . Now the two are not necessarily incompatible - it is possible to build both repeat patronage and the check average. However, I place the focus on the human side of the equation because foodservice is a business based on personal relationships. I do not believe that success in building the average per person sale will guarantee guest loyalty or repeat patronage nor will it necessarily sustain long term sales growth. On the other hand, 1 firmly believe that success in building guest loyalty and repeat patronage will always increase total revenue and sustain it over the long term. This article was adapted with permission from the book GBM/Guest-Based Marketing by Bill Marvin, The Restaurant Doctor.