What are you doing to increase sales at your bar? Here’s some easy to implement tips.
Are your Bar sales luke-warm?
Okay, so today I want to talk about tips to maximize profits for your bar.
Sales people, not Servers
Tip 1: train staff to upsell. It’s very important that you think of your wait staff/your servers as sales people. They’re need to be really trying to sell your products. They’re not just there to be order takers, right? It’s very important that they upsell everything that they can. So these include profitable signature drinks, top-shelf liquors and pair of food items with those drinks. So ideally, they have a deep knowledge of the drinks that you offer and the food that you offer and they know how to pair those two together.
What do you have that’s non-alcoholic?
Tip 2: create mocktails. Mocktails are good for designated drivers. There’s gonna be people there that aren’t going to want to drink and so what are they gonna do? Everybody wants to have a drink in their hand. They want to look like they’re drinking. They’re kind of embarrassed because they’re not. And so mocktails are important. You want to make those fresh with local ingredients as signature mock-drinks themself. These shouldn’t be an after thought, you want them to be beautiful.
The Rule of Reciprocity
Tip 3: offer free samples. Now, this is kinda debate in the restaurant industry. A lot of restaurant owners, they will say “what if my patrons only come in and get the free stuff” or “what if I give away too much, I’m giving away too many profits.” That’s a good consideration.
Well, we’ve found in our research is that it doesn’t actually affect your profits. What we’re trying to do here with offering a free sample is to engage the rule of reciprocity. The rule of reciprocity is an ancient, human-nature technique that basically says that if I give you something, it’s almost impossible for you not to give me something back in return. So if you give something ahead of time, if you give something for free, then people are naturally inclined to want to pay you back somehow. That may be with a referral, it may be by ordering more drinks or more food while they’re there or maybe giving you a good Yelp review. So offer free samples. It will change everything.
Is all the fruit ending up in the garbage?
Tip 4: create a strong inventory management system. This is absolutely critical. A huge way that restaurants and bars lose profit and lose money is because of employee theft. Or it’s because they’re not keeping control of their inventory. You know, first in, first out. It’s not as important for drinks, but it is important for say the fruit that’s happening in drinks, right? Or the different condiments that go into drinks: olives, fruits, strawberries. Create a strong inventory management system to help boost your profits.
Regular Events Sell
Tip 5: create a theme or game night. Now, if you create a regular theme or game night, people are actually gonna put it on their calendar. They’re going to schedule it. They’re going to come in. And most importantly, they’re gonna stay longer. So, if you have a game night or a theme night and people come in and they’re playing games, they’re gonna stay longer. They’re gonna drink more. They’re gonna hang out with their friends. They’re gonna bring in more people.
So if you want to maximize your bar profits, create a theme or game night. I hope that’s useful.