About a year ago, our beverage director at The Aviary in Chicago wanted to hold a bespoke craft beer tasting in our private dining room on a Monday night — a night when we rarely ever have private dining booked. He has contacts from microbreweries around the world and imagined a beer tasting of super rare, unusual, and impossible-to-find brews. It would cost $395 per person.
At the Alinea Group, we’ve created a culture of “why not try”, so we created the event page and released it to the wild. And you know what happened? Almost no one bought it — it was just too niche, too unique, and too expensive. And so, we pulled it down, refunded the intrepid beer lovers who had booked, and sent them a mixed case of craft microbrews as a thank you.
“PEOPLE CAN’T BUY WHAT THEY CAN’T SEE. IT’S THAT SIMPLE.”
Before Tock, the complexity of creating and offering such an event meant that we would censor ourselves to only those ideas that were thought to be sure things. Of course, that also meant that we did not hit upon the unique, awesome events that help to define our brand. Now, we just go for it, knowing that the initial lift, marketing, and sales are easy and minimal.
Since adopting this new mentality, we’ve increased event revenue by 125% over the past two years. And we’re not alone. Restaurants using Tock increase their event sales by over 50% on average.
No doubt you spend marketing dollars and countless hours trying to get your private event offerings in front of the right audience. But people can’t buy what they can’t see. It’s that simple.
What if every time someone books an ordinary reservation they also see all of the unique experiences available at your restaurant? With Tock, ordinary free reservations are presented alongside chef’s tables, wine dinners, and anything else you can dream up. You can also offer add-ons, like a welcome cocktail, or merchandise. Cookbooks, packaged food, or swag is easy to offer and it drives incremental revenue.
And just like that, your simple reservation page is very quickly transformed into a full-fledged sales-engine.
It is incredibly easy to take that private dining room that goes unused on a Wednesday night, create an event, and start selling it. This drives revenue on the top line and profits to the bottom line. Don’t wait for events to happen, create them.
This proactive mindset is the new domain for event planners at restaurants around the world. Yes, booking the big money corporate clients is the core, but selling directly to end-consumers is now possible, and profitable.
What’s next?
Ready to transform your reservation page into a full-fledged sales engine?
