Kounta POS Making it Big in Hospitality: Strategies for Growi | Page 18

With all the POS reporting you’ve done over
the first three chapters, you’ve probably
noticed right now that there are some hours
where you business is much slower than
others.
It’s one of those trends that will just reach out slap you in the
eyeballs as you look at sections of graphs where your charts
barely climb the Y axis. These are the hours where “increase
average check size” isn’t a suitable strategy. If, from 4pm to
6pm you get an average of 10 customers, adding a few bucks
to each bill isn’t going to make much difference. There’s safety in
numbers, and there’s one proven method to increase traffic in
your restaurant that’s been around for over a century. That’s an
paralleled test of time when it comes to marketing strategies, so
we need to make a big deal over. Give it a proper introduction.

“Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour That may give
furtherance to our expedition…”
- William Shakespeare
King Henry V: Act 1, Scene 2

Yes, Happy Hour. Who doesn’t have an hour to be happy?
Though it’s often associated only with bars, there’s no actual law
that says restaurants can’t play along. Remember, kids: you
don’t need alcohol to get happy.

You can always eat your feelings with half-price wings. But
alcohol helps, I’m not going to lie. As a restaurant owner,
though, you can pretty much count on happy hour to give
furtherance to your expeditions, as the Bard himself attested.
Sure, you’ll make less profit per item, but you’ll also increase
revenue—which raises profit overall.
The good thing about happy hour is that it isn’t only about the
immediate benefit of doing more business during business
hours. It’s also a way to get people to think about coming back.
Remember our two demographics in the previous chapter? Well,
any good happy hour is going to attract a decent number of
people from the second group, the
Hasn’t-Eaten-At-Your-Restaurant demographic. You’ll recognize
them instantly, because they’ll be the people you’ve never seen
before. Some time between entering and exiting, they switch
over to the Has-Eat-At-Your-Restaurant group—and it’s during
this jump from one demographic to the other that you can create
great customers. The nature of a happy hour food menu is that
you’re offering smaller sized, but economically priced portions of
items from your regular menu. Make it a habit of bringing free
samples of dishes that people didn’t order. Whether it’s to whet
their appetites for another round or another time, it’s good for
business to display some of the range of your menu. If your
menu and concept supports it, combination platters of your
most