When the restaurant business is not doing well, we may think about whether we should reduce prices, conduct promotions for the store, or simply change the dishes.

These business methods we often use often fail to achieve satisfactory results, so what should we do?

Okubo Kazuhiko is known as the number one consultant in the Japanese catering industry. He once joined the Japanese Green Kitchen Catering Group and made significant contributions to the multi-store establishment of the Shinjuku fried pork restaurant "Sho Hakuden". He inspected more than 10,000 stores, including well-known restaurants in Japan, France and other countries. During this period, he accumulated rich experience and knowledge and helped many restaurants that were poorly managed and facing bankruptcy come back to life.

Facing restaurants with sluggish business, Okubo Kazuhiko told us that restaurant owners can find countermeasures from the following 10 ideas.

1. Don’t think about making money, be “willing to do it”

When business is not doing well, it is easy to rush to make money, but Okubo Kazuhiko said that the worse the business, the less anxious to make money. . It is difficult for most caterers to do this. If you can do this, half the battle will be won from a psychological strategic perspective! He said that if you only pursue economic interests, you will easily lose the essence of the catering industry. This is the fundamental reason why many restaurants are in trouble.

When business is not going well, the easiest cycle to fall into is: just thinking about using inferior raw materials instead of high-quality raw materials, just thinking about how to sell the smallest dishes at the highest price, and just thinking about how to streamline employees. , Reducing services. This approach does "save expenditures", but it directly kills "open source" and directly pushes restaurants that originally had hope of survival into a state of death. On the contrary, if you want a restaurant whose business has declined to reverse, it is often because the owner has a strong psychological endurance: the greater the decline, the more willing he is to invest, the more he makes the product better, and the more he pays attention to quality. Even if a customer comes, Make him promise to come again next time. This is the first of the final conclusions reached by Kazuhiko Okubo after inspecting 10,000 stores.

2. Eliminate the aura of "bad business"

The better the business, the more customers will trust you - this is a silent "endorsement". There is an aura about bad business. Only by completely eliminating the aura of "bad business" can a restaurant come back to life. What is the aura of "bad business"?

For example, it is cold when you enter in the winter and very hot when you enter in the summer. The front door is unsanitary, the waiters are listless, the lights are dim, the dining chairs are not neat, the table is not clean, the kitchen is dirty and messy, and the waiters cannot communicate with customers. Cold... These are enough to stop customers from entering the store. In addition, and most importantly, the contact points with customers (menus, posters, posters) are filled with promotional advertisements and discount information. The sooner these "urgent ideas" are conveyed to customers, the worse the customer's feeling will be.

3. Don’t lower prices. Only by “raising prices” can you save the store.

When business is not good, the first choice of restaurant owners is: lower prices! Okubo Kazuhiko said: He has studied countless dead restaurants, and they all died on this one! On the contrary, almost all the stores that have come back to life choose to either maintain the price or raise the price! Many restaurants with poor business are constrained by their gross profit margins. They compete step by step and fall into the whirlpool of low-price competition.

Out of their need to control gross profits, the quality of the food cannot be guaranteed. Poor food quality leads to worse business, and they enter a vicious cycle step by step. Only by raising prices can we get rid of low-level competition. While raising the price, introduce better quality products so that customers will come to your doorstep, and let customers get rid of their inherent impression and look at you with admiration. Nothing is more important than making your customers feel the shock of your dish.

4. Be clear about “what I want to sell”

There are many small restaurants open on the roadside. They look shabby and old, and the prices are extremely expensive, but every day Queue up, so that the store is a target worthy of learning from catering people. Now, more and more restaurants are spending money on decoration. As a result, when people pay for their meals, they feel as if they are paying venue fees. Therefore, for non-chain individual restaurants, even if they have insufficient funds, they can turn their weaknesses into strengths and pursue "delicious, high-priced, and shabby".

Today’s chain restaurants are gradually losing the support of customers due to standardization and single taste. Now is a great opportunity for individual restaurants to win!

5. Moving customers depends on "performance"

Customers have too many choices, and it is impossible to completely conquer customers simply by relying on products. Only good management can show your differences. The catering industry has entered the "theater era", which requires "coordination" of various roles and must find ways to impress customers. The staff, the interior decoration, and the coordination of various tasks will create a restaurant atmosphere. The smallest bit of care can move people.

Therefore, today’s restaurants can no longer win by relying solely on the “experts” in the front office or the “masters” in the kitchen. More importantly, they must have a “director” who can be picky every day. Use your eyes to discover the lack or incompleteness of a certain part, making this drama more exciting.

6. Consider providing customers with a rich experience

Many specifications and standards in the industry, such as standard recipes, operation manuals, etc., are only minimum standards and are not intended to provide Formulated to bring joy and happiness to customers. Now, if you want your business to improve, you must forget about industry standards and set your own standards for customer satisfaction.

Treat yourself as the protagonist and convey your personal values, beliefs, and grand dreams to customers. These are the key words of the "post-catering popularization era"!

7. Our biggest opponent is ourselves

We are used to investigating our competitors, and when we find some good aspects of our competitors, we begin to imitate them. By appropriating "things and things" as existing ones, instead of increasing the charm of your own restaurant, on the contrary, it will kill the unique charm of your own restaurant. Many restaurants immediately ask chefs to change dishes as soon as business is bad. This is absolutely unacceptable. Stick to cooking your best dishes, upgrade your most signature dishes, and the dishes that customers are most familiar with. This is the foundation.

Although new dishes bring new customers, when customers come to you, they want your original taste! It's stupid to imitate the other party's formal things! Whether you can be welcomed by customers is a battle between yourself and yourself. Making customers who come to the store always like you is also a battle between yourself and yourself. If you don't understand this, you can't really make customers like you, so it's better to pay attention to other people's stores than to pay attention to customers.

8. Don’t rely on savings to maintain balance.

According to surveys, successful restaurant owners participate in more than twice as many study tours as unsuccessful shop owners. The same goes for money, and the same goes for time. Owners of successful restaurants don’t save too much. It can even be said that they seem to be actively “wasting” time. The time and money spent by a restaurant can be divided into two parts: the current work needs and the future impact on customers.

All successful store owners have one thing in common, that is: anything that makes customers happy, whether it is work needs at the time or the impact on customers in the future, they will not hesitate to spend money and labor to complete them.

9. Rather than sticking to the rules, it is better to restore the human touch

Many of the company's regulations, manuals and disciplines were developed to ensure continuous growth and standardization of services. These rules and regulations were once very It is important, but nowadays, when treating customers, we can no longer adopt static and formatted services, because customers are, after all, living, individual people, and their service requirements are constantly changing.

Now, let’s abolish the regulations and start a people-centered business! This is no longer an era where products are easy to sell based on the premise of market expansion, nor is it an era where hundreds or thousands of chain stores are opened across the country while being controlled by management systems. Paying attention to the fate between people is the "king way" of business. The human touch must be preserved.

10. Try your best to impress customers

When business is not good, even if the boss stays in the store all day long, it will not help. Kazuhiko Okubo suggested: When business is bad, you must not repeat the previous practices, but look for how to impress customers. Only by constantly providing small surprises to customers can restaurants regain their vitality.