It’s that time of year when we’re starting to enjoy longer evenings, pub gardens, and picnics in the park, which can only mean one thing — summer is just around the corner.
When the sun comes out, so do our wallets, as we spend less time at home and more time out lapping up the heat with our nearest and dearest.
The summer season presents an unparalleled opportunity for your restaurant to drive bookings and increase revenue, as more customers will be out and about looking for places to eat — particularly with crowd-drawing sporting events like the Euros and the Olympics rapidly approaching.
Here are five ways to maximise your restaurant’s success in summer 2024 with TheFork Manager.
1. Highlight your outdoor dining options
If your restaurant offers outdoor dining options, you have a major advantage in turning the increased footfall in the summer into more filled tables.
To attract diners who like to eat al fresco, make sure your listing on TheFork features high-quality, up-to-date pictures of your outdoor dining area in all its glory.
You can also advertise that you offer outdoor dining options by adding relevant tags to your profile, highlighting features such as a terrace or outdoor heaters for chilly nights.
If you don’t have an outdoor dining area but do have indoor air conditioning, you can instead add a tag for this and appeal to diners seeking some shade and respite from the heat.
2. Consider special menus
A new season is the perfect opportunity to craft a new menu. For summer, think fresh flavours, crisp salads, and ice-cold cocktails or mocktails.
You can even take things one step further and offer a special menu exclusive to outdoor diners to create a unique experience for al fresco fans.
TheFork Manager makes this as easy as pie, giving you the capability to assign your special menu to a specific bookable area of your restaurant, such as a terrace. This means you can not only attract customers looking for an outdoor dining experience but also tempt them with an offer they can’t get elsewhere in your establishment.
Make sure your special menu is clearly advertised on your TheFork listing — you can even add high-quality photos of its unique dishes to appeal to the senses of potential diners.
Empty tables and ever-increasing costs?
3. Be prepared for walk-ins
While many customers will pre-book meals out in the busy summer season, plenty of local revellers — and spontaneous tourists — will be on the lookout for last-minute tables for brunches, lunches, and dinners.
No restaurant owner likes to turn customers away, and that’s why we’ve added several features to TheFork Manager that you can use to get more walk-ins through the door.
Firstly, you can enable a virtual queue. When this feature is switched on, prospective diners who want a walk-in reservation can be added to your virtual queue, so they will be notified about the next available table without having to wait at your restaurant. This increases the likelihood of filling your tables and keeps customers happy as they don’t have to sacrifice the summer sunshine to stand in a queue.
If you want to allocate more space for walk-ins at specific hours — such as the lunchtime rush — you can easily do that with TheFork Manager by manually adjusting the number of bookable tables for those hours.
You can even choose to only accept walk-ins in particular periods by setting your booking status to offline, which you can pre-select for certain time slots or until you switch it back on again.
4. Make sure your floor plan is up-to-date
Now’s the time to check your floor plan is accurate — and optimised — so you can maximise your space for summer spenders.
On TheFork Manager, you can use the floor plan management feature to group tables by area, so you’ll want to check you’ve grouped these sections accurately. With more customers likely to choose outdoor dining options in the summer, it’s a great opportunity to see if you can rearrange your tables to accommodate more people outside.
TheFork Manager also gives you the option to manage your table priority so that certain tables are automatically booked before others. In the summer, you may decide to prioritise tables by the window or near any air conditioning units you may have.
Summer 2024 will be here before you know it, but by preparing now, you’ll stand in good stead to make this summer your most successful ever.
If you’re already all set up with TheFork Manager, chat with our team to find out what else you can do to drive bookings and increase revenue this summer. If you’re yet to join TheFork, get in touch so we can share more ideas with you.
