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Pair your offerings with education
Today’s guests are looking for experiential offerings. Interactive classes, tastings, and demos are not only a great way to meet this demand, but it can also engage your staff and showcase their expertise.
Chicago cheese shop and restaurant Beautiful Rind offers a variety of cheese-centric pairing classes. Their most popular, Orange Wines and Orange Rinds, is a casual, guided tasting of skin-contact wines and pungent washed-rind cheeses. According to the description, “Orange wines are some of the best wines for cheese and some of the most misunderstood from a wine-making perspective. This is echoed with orange rinds, aka washed rind cheeses, which are some of the most delicious and misunderstood cheeses.”
Taking the lead with education can allow your business to drive revenue while cultivating a more knowledgeable customer base, resulting in greater guest loyalty and stronger sales in the long run. Consider what your business is known for—sourdough baking, craft cocktails, handmade pasta—and go from there.
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Diversify and differentiate
Guests have plenty of options when choosing where to dine. It’s key to diversify your offerings and differentiate your experiences so your business rises to the top.
Manhattan’s Bodai is the first Chinese vegetarian restaurant to offer a 9-course tasting menu. The concept, which is nestled within Chef Guo, highlights rare plant-based ingredients with a signature combination of contemporary cuisine and traditional Chinese cooking. Bodai’s vegetable-centric experience has a much lower price point than Chef Guo’s 19-course tasting menu. By diversifying offerings and experiences, the business is able to draw a wider range of guests. And with traditional Chinese music, a selection of welcome teas, and a scroll inscribed with the tasting menu in both Chinese and English, guests are sure to get a thoughtful experience no matter the price point.
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Don’t treat Wednesday like Saturday
Creating value doesn’t need to mean discounting your product or running another lackluster happy hour. You can get creative on weeknights and during shoulder times with unique experiences that highlight value.
YumCha, a family-friendly dumpling restaurant in Denver, attracts guests on Wednesday nights with bottomless soup dumplings. Starting at 5 PM, guests can enjoy all-you-can-eat soup dumplings at $30 per person. The experience is complete with Kung Fu Panda on the big screen. This experience is an easy yes for busy families eager for a break from cooking.
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Lean into the season
Harsh winter weather can put a damper on bookings, especially after the holidays. With a little creativity, this challenge can become an opportunity for revenue-driving experiences.
The Cheese Barge, a floating restaurant on London’s Regent’s Canal, responds to winter weather with a weekly incentive that brings guests in, even on the chilliest of nights. Fondue Thursdays, held from November through March, offers a reservation-only set menu of hot, melty cheese. Guests can choose from creative takes on fondue featuring British cheeses or pay a small upcharge for collaborative dishes created with a rotating selection of local makers.
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Pop up in your own private dining space
Private dining can be a lifeline for restaurants, offering advance bookings and guaranteed seatings months in advance. Using this space to host an exclusive experience can bring in revenue in the off season and get regular guests excited about what’s new.
In Philadelphia, the owners of French bistro, Good King Tavern, have already seen the benefits that monetizing space can create. Their upstairs wine bar, Le Caveau, offers guests a different style of experience with the same rustic elegance. Now, they’re making the most of Le Caveau’s private dining space with BISTRO CUT, a steak frites pop-up. Inspired by classic Parisian cuisine, this micro-concept is only available one night a week for a limited time. It’s a smart way to keep longtime regulars engaged without changing too much about what they love about Good King’s menu.
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Experiment with themes
The constraints of a theme might be what your team needs to get creative in a new way. Themed experiences can help communicate what’s special about your brand while keeping things fresh and exciting for guests.
At Merchant Roots in San Francisco, chef Ryan Shelton plays mad scientist with immersive, thematic tasting menus. The Color Theory experience guides guests through 10 monochromatic courses that explore the ways color inspires meaning and emotion, while the playful Humpty Dumpty menu ties together 15 courses with riffs on the theme of “broken”—whether bread, eggshells, or traditions. Approaching themes with openness and agility allows staff the space to be creative while keeping guests coming back to experience the menu as it evolves.
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Consider curated takeout packages
Takeout can be a great way to drive incremental business, but you don’t have to match your in-house offerings. Go the extra mile with specialty items and curated packages.
London’s Stickyfish specializes in jubako, the Japanese culinary tradition of creating beautiful multi-tiered bento boxes full of delicacies, often for special occasions. Partnering with high-end sushi restaurants, the company works on a preorder-only model, selling hand-painted, furoshiki fabric-wrapped jubako packed with premium fish for occasions like New Year’s Eve. In between drops, they always offer their Unique Butter, a whipped uni butter made from organic, heritage breed cow’s milk infused with sea urchin roe, for pickup at a partner restaurant.
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Request a demo to learn more about switching to Tock. If you’re already a customer, talk to hospitality about launching an experience today.
