A customer base matters enormously to a restaurant, because a solid one makes the business steady and lifts sales. So you should always be looking for chances to build a new customer base while looking after the customers you already have. A long holiday such as Songkran is a good chance to do exactly that, being a stretch everybody knows and watches for. And if you own a small or mid-sized restaurant, you can choose whether to open or close as suits you.
If your restaurant sits in a tourist area, you should open to welcome the people out enjoying themselves. Or you may see the fact that others are closed as a good opening to trade and take their customers. On the other hand, if the customers around your restaurant have all gone away, there is no particular need for you to open either.
Open or closed, you still have a chance to promote the restaurant, find new customers and lift sales — by making the atmosphere of the long holiday work for you.
If you are open, this is your chance to win over a new group of customers
If your restaurant is open over the Songkran holiday, new customers have a chance to eat with you — because the places they usually go are closed, or because they happened to be passing. But however good your food and however impressive your service, once their usual place reopens they may well forget the experience they had with you.
To stop that happening, work at keeping hold of those customers, using various tactics to turn the new faces into regulars at your restaurant.
Build a membership scheme to keep new customers close
When a new customer eats at your restaurant for the first time, try inviting them to sign up as a member so their details come into your database. You might offer new members a promotion to make signing up worth their while — "15% off for new members", say, or "a free drink on your next visit" — or you could set up a points scheme to improve the odds of them coming back to your restaurant again.
And even when a new customer who once signed up starts drifting away with time, you can still bring them back with a newsletter or a message introducing promotions, offers or new dishes on the way.
If your restaurant has never had a membership scheme, you may worry that all of this is more trouble than it is worth. But there is help to be had, such as a restaurant management POS from Qashier, with features that make running a membership scheme genuinely easy. You can add a new customer to the database straight from the restaurant POS terminal, which makes the whole thing quick and simple.
A new customer base is no reason to forget the old one — that is what a membership scheme is for
You do need to find new groups of customers, but do not let that lead you into neglecting the customers you already have. If you already hold data on them, you can check what they like and offer them a promotion that fits. And if you have never held any data on your regulars, you might invite them to sign up as members before the coming holiday so they get something out of it — and you could offer them a special promotion one to one, to impress them even more.
Having your existing customers on a membership scheme is plainly better, because you can gather their details and put special promotions to them through various channels — buy a dish and get a free drink, say, for existing members only. And it need not be a promotion at all: a holiday greeting such as "Happy Songkran" does the job too.
Even when you close, do not let your regulars fall out of love with you
While your restaurant is closed, your regulars have every chance of finding a new favourite. If you have a restaurant POS system, you can use the membership scheme (CRM) to see who your regulars are, then send them a message or an email over Songkran so they come back to you after the holiday. Something as simple as "see you after Songkran" is enough to put a smile on a customer's face.
You can send them a promotion as a gift as well — a voucher, or a package for members. Promotions like these are easy to set up with Qashier, the POS system for restaurants.
Turn your receipts into a way of reaching every group of customers
Whether a customer pays cash or by QR PromptPay, if your restaurant issues a receipt you can open another channel between you and them by adding a social media QR code at the bottom of it — so your customers can follow your news and new promotions whenever they like. And if what you post is interesting, they will share it with their friends too.
The Songkran holiday is a good chance to promote your restaurant to new groups of customers, and one you should not miss — and you can hold on to your regulars at the same time. Do not pass up the chance to grow and keep your regular customers, because that means a better chance of your restaurant turning a profit.
None of this is difficult if you have an effective POS terminal for restaurants from Qashier. Beyond helping you look after customers effectively, there are benefits to a POS terminal across a great many other features useful to your restaurant.
Get in touch for more information. We at Qashier are ready to support shops and restaurants alike, with a restaurant POS terminal and an effective restaurant POS system, plus support from our team seven days a week. Talk to us about how Qashier can answer what your business needs. For more details, reach us on Line Official: @qashier.th or call 02-544-0267