Increasing your customers' average transaction value (or average ticket) is a necessary part of running a restaurant, especially during the current health crisis, where restaurants are looking for ways to compensate for revenue losses related to closures.
So this question: if your customer is already in your establishment or on the ordering site, ready to spend, then how can you maximize that sale?
Discover in this article some tips that any restaurant or cafe can implement germany whatsapp number to increase spending from each customer – online or on-site.
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What is the average ticket (or basket) for a restaurant?
Your restaurant's average order size (or average ticket size), sometimes also called "average order value ," is the amount spent by your customers divided by the number of orders in a given period.
The formula for the average order ticket is as follows:
Average basket = Amount spent by customers ÷ Number of tickets (orders)
For example, if you want to calculate your average order ticket for the last seven days, during which you made 150,000 euros with 1,000 orders, then your average order ticket is 15 euros. (150,000 euros of weekly sales ÷ 1,000 orders = 15 euros of average order)
Once you’ve calculated your restaurant’s average order value , try implementing some of the upselling and cross-selling tips below. After a while, run the calculation again to test their effectiveness and adjust your tactics accordingly.
Why improve your restaurant’s average basket?
With the current crisis and the current closure of restaurants/limited reopening of terraces, it is difficult to grow your turnover by increasing footfall and the number of customers who visit you.
Improving the average basket can therefore be an ideal solution to compensate for this drop in traffic, especially since a majority of orders are now placed online.
8 Ways to Increase Your Restaurant's Average Ticket
According to Sumo, upselling and cross-selling can increase revenue by an average of 10% to 30% . Upselling and cross-selling are similar—they’re both ways to encourage customers to order more than they originally intended—but there are two distinct differences.
Upselling is when your servers encourage customers to buy a more expensive version of an item. This could be swapping out regular fries for sweet potato fries for an extra $1, or upgrading their cocktail from an alcoholic beverage to a premium one.
Cross-selling involves the server suggesting an additional item that pairs well with what the customer has already ordered, such as suggesting a wine to accompany their meal or recommending a dessert when the customer has just ordered coffee after their meal.
Both of these methods will help you increase your average order value, but the key to their success is to do it in a way that feels natural and not forced. Below are some tips on how to do this.
1. Train servers to spot customer behaviors
Understanding your customers is a critical part of increasing average order size . A customer who asks a lot of questions about wine may be drawn to your cheese board and offerings that pair best with their chosen wines. Someone who orders just ice water might be interested in your homemade lavender lemonade. Rather than making arbitrary suggestions, servers should be attentive to customers’ verbal and nonverbal cues when it comes to upselling or cross-selling.
Also, if a customer seems to be in a hurry, your servers won't want to waste time cross-selling desserts or appetizers; instead, they'll want to recommend a dish that comes out of the oven quickly (and has a higher profit margin than most other dishes).