11 Recommendations for Restaurant Improvement in 2024

Owning a restaurant isn't a one-and-done type of deal. From the moment you open it, you must always be on the lookout for ways to better your business if you want to always stay on top of the competition and have a constant stream of clients.

If you’re searching for recommendations for restaurant improvement, look no further. We’ve compiled a list of tips you can use to make your business the most attractive choice for potential customers.

Tips to enhance restaurant service

While service, operations, and sales are intertwined, we’ve separated them into categories to make the recommendations for restaurant improvement easier to follow.

1. Train your staff regularly

Your employees are the ones who directly interact with your clients, so their training can significantly improve client service. Training is not just for new employees. You can make it a regular part of your business’s culture because your team will do their jobs better if the information is fresh in their minds.

Here are a few topics you must cover:

• How to greet a customer
• How to make menu recommendations, including drink pairings and specific diet advice
• How to work as a team to solve problems, such as a customer complaint
• How to ask customers for positive reviews

2. Ask and implement customer feedback

If you’re looking for recommendations for restaurant improvement, why not get them directly from your clients? When you listen to and implement their feedback, you show that you care about their input and you persuade them to come back.

Here are some easy ways to encourage customer feedback:

• Have servers ask the customers for a review at the end of the meal
• Ask followers on social media how you can make your restaurant more to their liking
• Add a flyer with a QR code to the review platform you have a profile on
• Use an anonymous restaurant feedback form

Read more: Creative Restaurant Feedback Form Templates + Free Examples

3. Prioritize cleanliness

Cleanliness is one of the first things a customer notices in a restaurant. It is also the reason many restaurants fail. After all, a single case of food poisoning is enough to attract bad reviews and fines that will be hard to overcome.

That’s why, you must make it a priority to maintain cleanliness in all aspects of the restaurant, from the kitchen to the serving area. It will help you to:

• Have a firm cleaning schedule
• Have an employee responsible for checking all areas are clean before opening
• Have a deep clean once a month for areas that are usually forgotten such as the backside of the table or behind countertops

Recommendations for restaurant sales improvement

There is always room for improvement when it comes to a restaurant’s sales. We’ve prepared a variety of tips to help you attract more new and return clients:

4. Become a master of online sales

You have a limited number of seats in your restaurant and, if you only serve clients in the location, you can only make a limited profit. If you want to sell more, you must expand online, where there is a big audience waiting for you.

Here are our recommendations for restaurant improvement:

• Get an SEO-optimized restaurant website: to attract orders, you first need to increase your online visibility. A sales and SEO-optimized restaurant website will help you rank high in Google searches and will make it easier for clients to order in just a few clicks;
• Install an online ordering system: don’t waste money on third-party apps when you can keep the profit for yourself. Use the online ordering system from GloriaFood to make online ordering a breeze both for you and your clients. What’s more, you only need 10 free minutes to install it:
• Start selling through social media: get more orders by making the ordering process as easy as possible. When clients see a mouth-watering picture of your food on social media, they are just one click away from ordering. Add the smart link provided by GloriaFood to your social media bio and posts to sell more food.
  Increase your sales by expanding your business online Install an online ordering system to your website for free Start Now

Read more: How to Increase Restaurant Sales through Social Media: 7 Compelling Tips

5. Offer different payment methods

Hunger can strike at any moment. Sometimes clients only have cash and sometimes they can only pay by card. If you want to attract more clients, you need to allow clients to pay using a variety of methods, such as cash, card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay.

Check out this video to see how easy it is to enable online payment if you use the online ordering system from GloriaFood:

6. Implement irresistible promotions

Sometimes, the difference between a browsing potential customer and a paying client is just a simple promotion. Deals can convince undecided clients to take the big step and click the send order button.

One of the best recommendations for restaurant improvement is to experiment with different promotions such as free delivery, 2+1 deals, free items, a 10% discount on the cart, or a meal deal.

You can add all of the above to the top of your online menu in a matter of seconds. Find out how:

Read more: Implement these 10 best restaurant promotions right now to increase your sales

7. Reward client loyalty

To increase restaurant sales, you don’t need just new clients, you also need loyal clients who often visit your place and recommend it to others. To encourage loyalty, you must reward customers who buy your food multiple times.

You can set up a simple loyalty system using the Promotions module from GloriaFood. For example, you can reward customers who had three delivery orders with a free item.

Read more: 9 Factors Affecting Customer Satisfaction in Restaurants and How to Use Them to Increase Loyalty

8. Merchandise your menu

If you want recommendations for restaurant improvement, consider fine-tuning your menu to both attract new clients and increase your profit margin. Check out these tips:

• Keep it short: don’t give your clients choice paralysis with a big menu. A small menu also builds trust because it makes it obvious that you prize quality over quantity;
• Provide customization options: toppings are one of the menu items with the highest profit margin. Allow people to create the perfect dish for them while you also increase your sales;
• Illustrate your menu items with images: while your menu descriptions may be tempting, a mouth-watering picture can really seal the deal. Consider hiring a professional photographer or learning more about restaurant food photography.

Read more: What Is Menu Merchandising and How to Use It to Increase Your Restaurant’s Sales

How to better restaurant operations

To be able to fulfill a bigger number of orders, your restaurant must work like a well-oiled machine. Check out these recommendations for restaurant improvement that will help you be on top of your business’s operations:

9. Take advantage of technology

Your employees are just human and sometimes prone to mistakes. If you want to keep the number of problems at the minimum, implement pieces of technology that will make their job easier, such as:

• A kitchen display system: so, the staff don’t have to run around with printed receipts. If you install one, the orders will be automatically transmitted from the ordering system to the kitchen;
• A point-of-sale system: to make it easier to keep track of all transactions when you audit your sales at the end of the month;
• An inventory management system: it is easy to lose sight of ingredients and they often go bad. Or, in other cases, you order too little and don’t have enough to prepare the orders. An inventory system will make managing food stock easier, alerting you when you need to buy new stuff.

10. Implement restaurant KPIs

Restaurant KPIs (key performance indicators) are metrics that help you measure how your business is evolving. Practically, you set a goal – a KPI and you monitor to see if you achieve it in the proposed time frame.

This way, you can quickly identify any problems and find areas where you can improve. Here are some of the most common KPIs restaurants use:

• Costs of Goods Sold
• Net profit margin
• Gross profit
• Average table occupancy
• Returning customer percentage

Read more: 20 Essential Restaurant KPIs You Should Be Tracking and How to Measure Them

11. Have restaurant standard operating procedures in place

What should a server do when a customer complains about the food? What should a kitchen worker do when a piece of equipment breaks? How often and who is responsible for cleaning the kitchen?

These are all matters that must be addressed in the restaurant's standard operating procedures. Think of them as a restaurant guide every employee can defer to when they encounter a problem.

If you use restaurant SOPs, you will notice an increase in your business’s efficiency because every employee will know their role and their responsibilities.

Final Words

If you want your business to evolve, always be on the lookout for recommendations for restaurant improvement, and never become compliant. What's more, keep an eye on your competition, you may find inspiration to better your restaurant there.

You might also like:

• How to Grow a Restaurant Business: 5 Easy and Cost-Effective Ways to Increase Your Revenue
• How to Take Advantage of an Online Menu Builder to Increase Restaurant Sales
• How to Improve Restaurant Business: Tips for Restaurant Owners