Have you always dreamed of owning your own restaurant? If you are an avid chef then you probably are pretty good at coming up with dishes and making them taste great. By opening up your own restaurant, you can showcase your dishes to others and make a living doing something that you love. Of course, setting up a new restaurant isn’t easy, and it will require a lot of funds to back up the process.
In this guide, we thought we would offer some of our best tips to help you successfully launch a new restaurant. Read on to find out what these are.
Find Your Concept
When it comes to restaurants, the concept is one of the most important parts. This is what will attract customers to your restaurant, its what you’ll base your menu around and its how you’ll make the decisions on the décor. So, if you don’t have a particular concept in mind, you are going to struggle to get your restaurant up and running. Is your restaurant going to be an American diner, or a Greek Mezze restaurant? With the right concept, you can really get those customers in the door.
Test Your Menu
While you might think that your menu is perfect, your customers might not agree. So, when you are hoping to launch your new restaurant successfully, you need to test your menu out on those who may be eating there. Why not invite some family or friends down to try out some of the dishes before you commit to getting the menus printed and ordering in the ingredients? They might spot something that you hadn’t noticed, and this feedback can save you a lot of time and money. The menu is arguably the most important part so if you don’t get it right, your launch won’t go as planned.
Spread The Word on Social Media
When it comes to restaurant marketing ideas, social media is one of the most valuable tools that restaurant owners can use in the lead up to the launch. With the right social media content, you can create some buzz around your launch and encourage customers to come along and try it out. When setting up your social channels, you need to make sure that you have the right creative content to back it up. This includes shots of the food, the logo and of course, video content if you can create some. Consider using Facebook and Instagram as your main channels as these are most effective for new restaurants in 2021. With the right social strategy, you can really pull this launch off.
Host a Big Launch Event
When it comes to the launch day of your restaurant, you are going to want to have as many people as possible come through the door – so why not host a launch event? In the same way that you might have a product launch party in another kind of business, a restaurant launch party can create a buzz around it. If you simply open the doors and hope that people will walk in, you might be bitterly disappointed. When hosting the launch event, make sure you invite the right people including the local press. Offer free samples of the food, ask for feedback and generally have a good night.
Invite Some Foodies
If you really want your new restaurant launch to get the publicity that it deserves, you need to think about how you will use influencers to your advantage. The foodie community can be a lifesaver when it comes to spreading the world about your new restaurant and getting photos of the food out there. Some foodies will probably already be excited to come along to your restaurant and so will be willing to post about it for free. Others with larger followings on social media might require a fee but this can be worthwhile if they have the right audience. Additionally, you can repost their content on your own social channels and save some money on hiring a photographer.
Use These Tips
If you are planning on setting up a new restaurant in 2021 then you probably have a lot of big tasks on your hands. It can be easy to ignore the importance of the launch but getting that first day right can be crucial to your success. Think carefully about how you will market your new restaurant and don’t be afraid to use free channels like social media.
The launch party will be a great way to get a feel for the local community and encourage them to come back for more. Use any feedback to iron out the wrinkles and you should have your new restaurant up and running in no time at all.
