How to sell more food & beverage
Conor Kenny & Associates hosts regular invitation-only Round Table events for members of the hospitality trade to pool knowledge and experience on various topics. Pat Nolan attends a typical example of one entitled 'How to sell more food an beverage'. He reports on proceedings here.
Print27 May 2013
The Killiney Castle Hotel in Dalkey is hosting this Conor Kenny & Associates discussion group on ‘How to sell more food & beverage’ for those involved in the hospitality industry: restrateurs, hoteliers and publicans.
The participants have been specially-invited by Conor Kenny & Associaties and are quickly broken up into table groups for the purposes of discussing various aspects of various topics and presenting a synopsis of their table’s conclusions to the rest of the room.
Throughout the discussion participants are asked to bear in mind the acronym MORE – Maximising Opportunities, Reducing Expenses – when bringing ideas and practices to the table.
Five areas emerge as being suitable for gaining leverage in selling more food & beverage:
1. Loyalty Schemes
2. Price Discounting
3. Destinatioun Venue
4. Upselling
5. Quality Branding
Loyalty schemes
There’s little doubt that loyalty schemes can generate extra sales, especially when they’ve got add-onability such as entitlement to a 10% discount on rooms, meals or drinks on production of the loyalty card.
There are other advantages. The loyalty card-holder will automatically think of the establishemnt in question if he or she’s thinking of where to book in a party (of wedding guests or visiting relatives etc) and wants to let them avail of a 10% discount through the loyalty card, for example.
A number of establishments make use of gift vouchers too. One establishment sells around €60,000-worth of these in one year.
Others make use of a ‘lucky dip’ for customers exiting the establishment. This offers a number of complimentary meals or bottles of wine on their next visit as well as a number of ‘better luck next time’ cards.
This results in 120 lunches per day Monday to Friday and 400 on a Sunday for one premises.
And finally a nice little touch by one participant who often gives his loyalty card customers a couple of extra stamps just for the Hell of it. The impressed guest never forgets the gesture, he says.
Price Discounting
“Price discouting” is considered a dirty word when “package” or “special package” would better couch the practice.
Having said that, consensus is reached fairly early on that as far as beverages are concerned, there’s not a great deal of price sensitivity when compared to the importance of the bar’s ambience coupled the service offered by its bar staff.
Some establishments offer a ‘two-for-one’ course meal deal from Monday to Thursday and one establishment can point to a 60% takeup of customers availing of it.
Some establishments offer a ‘two-for-one’ course meal deal from Monday to Thursday and one establishment can point to a 60% takeup of customers availing of it.
Price discounting can also be used to generate publicity as an alternative to advertising. One establishment offers a €5 quality lunch and not unnaturally, numbers have gone from 20 to 100 a day. On Sunday this rises to 200 and as a publicity stunt, the establishment does not regret the temporary unit price for the publicity it generates long after the offer has terminated.
Another establishment promotes a €6.95 special all-in local lunch offer to get customers to try out the place, whch has resulted in a food sales rise of nearly 20 per cent in the month of January.
Bearing MORE in mind, one hotel’s night porter has been instructed to offer bottled product only, thus cutting down on serve times and bar clutter.
It’s generally agreed that the value offer in terms of the add-on has to be one that’s significant, so the importance of partnership with suppliers here is stressed.
Destinatioun Venue
Every factor should be considered in making your establishment a destination venue. It dan be a destination venue for different reasons. One offers customers on their way to Thomond Park for the Heineken Cup a Park & Ride facility and enters into a supplier partnership with Heineken to further generate profits at the venue via a ‘free-bottle-of-Heineken-with-every-Roast-Beef-Roll-bought’ arrangement.
Other means of pulling in this particular crowd include competitions involving the customers predicting who’ll score the first try and a more substantial prize for the top three consistently successful customers.
One of the table participants, who describes himself as “a customer rather than being in the trade” pointed out that it’s important too to stock an attractive range of non-alcoholic beers for the not inconsiderable proportion of customers who’d be driving rather than paying out €20 for a taxi.
Upselling
This is not always easy for your staff to implement so it can be made a little easier through staff incentivisation schemes.
Bearing MORE in mind, there are many opportunities to upsell. One such opportunity arises from the Early Bird menu where customers can be open to add-ons such as specially matching wine for the food. But in order to smooth the staff’s path, the quality of the food has to be very good. This is where supplier partnerships can come into their own. It’s important to liaise with your supplier in order to ensure that they’re aware of what you’re trying to do.
It’s also felt that hotels must offer a ‘room rate only’ on their website where everyone else is doing so.
Here lies an opportunity to upsell through the receptionist (“… the front desk can be a ‘selling machine’…”) who can offer the arriving guest add-ons at the check-in stage such as breakfast, wine in room, dinner in the evening etc.
Without exception, all staff in another establishment are briefed every day on the status of each guest (‘room only’, ‘full board’, ‘half-board’ etc) and that includes the bar staff. In this way, all staff are incentivised and everyone knows the opportuities that exist for upselling to the guest concerned.
Quality branding
This can work both ways. It all depends on what the customer is looking for. Sometimes it’s good to be beside an establishment offering a higher or lower level of quality.
All-in-all, the half-day session proved of great benefit not only in generating new ideas for income but hearing how some ideas had worked out in practice through fellow delgates’ experiences.
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