How to raise your average check by 40% or more

A restaurant's profit depends directly on its sales. Restaurateurs, managers and marketers often try to bring in as many people as they can and spend big budgets on attracting new guests. But new guests do not always like everything at your place, so your marketing spend may not pay off. You need to measure and analyze how well you work and whether you attract the right audience. As a rule, this is very hard. To make it easier, we suggest you work with people who have already been to your place and liked it. Then you will not have to spend extra money to attract them. For this, we suggest you pay attention to one important metric: your venue's average check. It is very important to track a number like the average check. General managers and marketers analyze it to see how the restaurant's results change and to understand how many guests the venue needs to earn the income you want. This metric also matters because it helps you grow sales without even attracting new guests.

The average check helps you grow your venue's sales without even attracting new guests.

Imagine your restaurant's average check is ₽2,000, and you have about 900 checks a month. Then raising the average check by just ₽300 gives you ₽270,000 more in sales. Your main costs have not grown, so you can count all of it as profit, except the cost of the dishes.

So how do you work with the average check?

It is important to note that raising the average check is a team effort of marketing and the restaurant staff. First, let's look at how marketing and the loyalty program can work. On the marketing side, you can run different promotions and send them to your regular guests through the loyalty system. These promotions push guests to order more expensive items or extra dishes to get special points (here we always advise you to be careful with points and never give more points than your expected profit). Follow this logic: the total of such an order should be higher than your restaurant's average check. Here are some examples of promotions that help raise the average check:

• Order two portions of mussels and get two glasses of sparkling wine as a gift.
• A big crab set for ₽7,000, only at certain hours.

You can come up with many promotions like these and offer them to your regular guests. This way, you encourage them to come more often and spend more.

Exclusivity works very well. If the offer is private and only for loyal guests, say so in your campaign and watch the results.

What can the general manager and restaurant staff do to raise the average check?

If a guest has a loyalty card, it means they have been to your restaurant at least once and came back, so they liked it. Very often staff ask for the loyalty card only when the guest pays, but asking for it at the start is a great move.

If your waiters know who the guest is, they can call them by name. What is more, they also know the guest's past orders, how much money they have spent at your restaurant, and most important, their favorite dishes.

Believe us: just calling a guest by name already makes them more willing to spend more. And if the waiter also suggests dishes based on the guest's tastes, that will be simply amazing!

In the Top products section of the Loona.ai platform, you can see the dishes your guest orders most often. So now, even if you have a new waiter who does not know all the guests yet, they can always check the favorite dishes or drinks and offer exactly what your guests love. Of course, to raise the average check you can also use standard sales methods, such as: setting a target and giving your staff a bonus when they reach it; using sales techniques that raise the average check; and simply doing good work. After launching the loyalty program, our clients got great results in raising their average check.

Case study: Primebeef

In the "Primebeef" restaurant chain, the average check was ₽1,587 before the Loona.ai loyalty program. After the launch, the company was able to work with each guest personally, know their tastes and keep them in mind. In the end, this raised the average check to ₽2,231 (40.6% growth)

"When we learned about a digital solution for our loyalty program, we decided right away to forget about plastic cards and keep up with the times. And we have never regretted it! Guests really like it: they show their cards with every purchase and enjoy the benefits. And we are happy with our results!"

Ralina, marketer at the Primebeef chain, Moscow

Case study: PAPA BARVILLAGE

In the PAPA BARVILLAGE project, the main work was aimed at raising the average check and giving regular guests more personal service. The Loona.ai program does more than track the average check of all guests in the loyalty program. As we wrote above, it also shows how to give your guests the most personalized service. BEFORE working with Loona.ai:

• Average check: ₽2,100
• No sales analytics system
• Not enough resources for guest retention

AFTER working with Loona.ai:

• Average check: ₽3,590 (70.9% growth)
• Conversion to purchase: 11.7%
• Cards added: 1,248

The company actively used the marketing tools in the admin portal, and also worked closely with guests' tastes and personalized offers.

"As soon as our team joined the project, we decided to follow the digital trend and went straight to Loona.ai. The service gave us a really great tool to work out our marketing strategy and define our target audience. Now we can really see how our guests' loyalty grows. Thank you, Loona.ai, for solving issues fast and for great management!"

Daniil, Art Director of PAPA BARVILLAGE, Moscow

As you can see, a loyalty program helps you greatly improve your business's financial results without extra marketing costs. If you have not started using this tool yet, sign up for a free consultation. We will tell you how the Loona.ai loyalty program can help your business and grow your company's sales. You can also try our software for free 💎