Owning a restaurant often entails a level of creativity when it comes to maximizing the revenue you earn from each aspect of your business. And takeout orders happen to be a rich area for increasing revenue if you manage them properly. Discover some simple methods that can help you maximize profits through your takeout service.
Evaluate Your Menu and POS
Before you can start seeing an actual difference in your takeout revenue, it’s crucial to evaluate your menu and current restaurant point of sale equipment. First, it’s wise to review the items offered on your regular menu. Specifically, consider whether to keep the items on your dine-in and takeout menus precisely the same or switch up a few things on each.
Doing this will help you build a better organization system when evaluating and potentially modifying your POS. With so many different orders flying through your POS every day, it’s prudent to assess whether you’re keeping everything on them as neat and organized as possible, especially if you hope to take on more to-go orders each day.
For instance, suppose you find that the items on your takeout and dine-in menus differ quite a bit. In this case, it would be beneficial to have a designated platform for your takeout and another for managing your dine-in orders. Doing these types of evaluations can help you better organize your to-go services, so you can handle more takeout orders without becoming overwhelmed.
Offer Online Ordering
Something else that can help you figure out how to maximize takeout revenue for restaurants is offering your customers online ordering options. It’s not enough to provide takeout anymore. This is especially true when you consider that more customers desire safety and convenience when picking up their food.
Online ordering provides a quick, easy-to-use platform where customers can review your menu, select their items, and pay their bill within minutes. Inherently, this leads to takeout orders being processed and delivered more efficiently.
Plus, with online ordering systems, orders go straight to the POS and then to the kitchen to be completed. So, their food will likely be ready for pick-up the moment a customer arrives. To add, this ordering option will make your entire system more convenient for customers and staff members alike. And this can only be a positive when it comes to drawing in more revenue from takeout orders.
Partner With Delivery Services
There’s no doubt that establishing a delivery service from the ground up is a challenge. After all, you have to hire, train, and pay your own staff. And while a delivery service might be something worth looking into down the line, it isn’t always best when you’re at the beginning stages of deciding how to maximize takeout revenue for restaurants.
Instead, try forging a partnership with a popular delivery service. There are numerous options to choose from. They’ll typically provide you with trained drivers, an online ordering platform, and unique features that make it easy to connect online orders to your POS systems.
It’s worth noting that these delivery services do expect a percentage of your profits, so you'll want to evaluate that against the cost of providing your own delivery service. But it is an excellent way to reach new customers with a preference for takeout.
