Q4 starts today.
Everyone wants to maximize Q4 through the holiday spend.
When you see that Christmas and New Year’s Day occur on Wednesdays this year, you know that 2024 provides the optimal set up for making money in Period 13.
Many of my clients experienced a flattish year.
Others take action and have increased revenue all the way to the high single digits.
A few others have seen their flaws or procrastination exposed with declining revenue and as a result have devised bold action.
Not one of them are rich enough to ignore the importance of holiday spending.
Make Sure People Celebrate With You
Three areas to focus on.
- Marketing. Be ready to send the message of celebrating the end of the year in your restaurants through conversations with your regulars, email marketing and especially social media campaigns where you already have the attention of your true believers. If you want someone to book a party, go old school and call them on the phone and remind them what fantastic things you can do for them.
- Sales. Sales people play in their Olympics right now and budget for their personal holiday purchases using those big commissions. If you don’t have dedicated sales people, deploy managers to identify your most loyal and passionate guests. Either way, don’t just take orders. People remain busy, they do not wake up in the morning wondering if you look like the best choice for holiday entertaining. Tell them what you can do for them. If you have built the right kind of guest relationships, they will thank you.
- Gift Cards. Restaurant gift cards used to be a way to give someone a gift without putting a whole lot of thought into it. Now they turn out to be the gift that people really want in a world where experiences have more value than buying more stuff. The best place to sell them remains an actual restaurant populated by a great vibe and happy guests. A robust gift card program, physical and digital, makes your CFO happy and your bank balance grow. Set goals, talk at pre-shift, add this to your steps of service. The 2024 gift card campaign discussion at your weekly store level operations starts now.
My wish for you? That you run a healthy company set up to adapt to whatever conditions you encounter. A resilient organization gives owners peace of mind.
If you think, “we are just not flexible or strong enough to be as successful as we want to be” face that fact and ask yourself how long you are willing to let that go on. Improvement identifies as my wheelhouse .
