How to Increase Lunch Sales in a Restaurant: 6 Must-Know Tips

Did you notice that you sell more during dinner time while your restaurant is sitting empty during lunch? It can be frustrating to have employees scheduled and ready to work, but nobody around to serve.

The good news is there is an audience interested in having lunch at your restaurant. You just have to find ways to persuade them to choose your business when the hunger strikes.

We’ll show you how to increase lunch sales in a restaurant, the easy way:

Who is your lunch audience?

The most efficient way to get more customers is to cater to their needs. To do so, you must first identify your target lunch audience. Who are they and what do they want and expect from your restaurant?

Start by doing the following:

• Research the area around your restaurant and your delivery zone to identify how many universities, offices, and living spaces there are;
• Visit your competition to notice how many clients they have, what their ages are, and what they are ordering;
• Ask your followers on social media what will motivate them to visit your restaurant at lunchtime.

After you identify your target market for lunch, you can create a strategy that will be the perfect answer to “How to increase lunch sales in a restaurant?”. For example, if you notice there are many offices around you and the workers are mainly millennials, you can adapt your menu and promotions to their taste.

How to increase lunch sales in a restaurant

To ensure your restaurant’s long-term success, it is not enough to sell a lot during dinner and weekends. You must maximize the number of orders you prepare in each hour you are open. Learn how to increase lunch sales in a restaurant by implementing the following tips:

1. Expand your sales online

The truth is not many people have the free time to go to a restaurant at lunch unless they work or live close to your place. But they still have to eat. And, often, they can’t take time out of their day to cook a meal while working.

The obvious solution? They order food online! If you allow customers to place online orders at your restaurant, you will increase your sales during lunch even if your restaurant isn’t packed.

Forget about third-party delivery apps that charge a big commission and your restaurant gets lost among many other options. Give clients the option to order directly from you, on your website, from your social media profiles, or using a native app.

You can do all of the above by installing the online ordering system from GloriaFood. It will only take 10 minutes to give clients the convenience they desire.

Moreover, it also makes it easy for you because it streamlines your ordering process, and you can manage all your orders from the order-taking app. Check out this video to see how fast you can expand your business online:

2. Try lunch promotions for restaurants

When deciding on a place to eat at lunch, people are usually confronted with a lot of choices. Persuade people to choose your restaurant over other options by adding attractive promotions to your menu.

Here are a few ideas according to the two main types of lunch customers:

• Office workers: Free delivery can be a great incentive for the office to come together and place a big order. Or you can offer 5% or 10% off for an order of a minimum of $70.
• Students: it is a known fact that students are always on the hunt for a bargain due to their limited budget. You can offer a free drink for any order over $30 or a 2+1 deal so they and their friends can eat for cheaper.

Setting up promotions shouldn’t be a chore. With our online ordering system, you can set up a variety of tried and tested restaurant deals in seconds. We’ll show you how:

What's more, you have the option to have the chosen restaurant promotions only visible at lunchtime. In the screen where you set up the deal, select "Limited showtime" under Display Time, and choose the days and hours when the offer will be available.

3. Offer easy restaurant lunch specials

Have you heard of choice paralysis? It happens when people have too many items to choose from. For example, when people have to choose what they have to eat for lunch during a busy day. They don’t have time to look over the whole menu, they would much rather have only a few options.

Therefore, you should add some easy restaurant lunch specials to your menu that are only available during lunch hours.

If you use the menu editor embedded in our online ordering system, you can update the menu as many times as you want, free of charge.

For your lunch specials, create a new category and make it obvious from the title that it contains special lunch menus. You can then select the visibility of the category, which you can customize for the preferred lunch hours.

4. Promote your table booking feature

Time is of the essence during lunch. People can’t afford to be hopping from one restaurant to another until they find a free seat. That’s why you should let people know they can easily book a table at your restaurant.

You can generate your free table booking system from within our online ordering system. All you have to do is copy the code we give you on your website to get the table booking button up.

Moreover, if you want to serve more clients during clients, you can enable the pre-order feature. Clients will be able to also choose what they want to eat and pay online when they book a table. This way, they will be served immediately after being seated, with no wasted time.

5. Market your lunch menus on social media

Many of your potential clients spend a lot of their time on social media. When they are hungrily scrolling while on their break and see a mouth-watering picture of your lunch menu, they will be tempted to order it.

Ensure your social media posts include photos of your lunch options and lunch promotions that will persuade potential clients to order and visit your restaurant.

Also, create a bit of FOMO (Fear of missing out) by mentioning the lunch offers are only available from 11.30 – 14.30, so people should hurry to take advantage of them.

6. Send flyers to local businesses

Don’t limit yourself to conventional solutions for “How to increase lunch sales in a restaurant?”, think outside of the box! Don’t just wait for clients to come to you, go to where you know they are!

Check out local businesses in your area such as offices or hotels and ask them if they would allow you to place a few flyers in their foyer. You can even offer a small 5% deal to the employees of the collaborating businesses to sweeten the deal.

Use our online ordering system to generate a flyer that encourages online ordering and offers 5% off the first order. You can customize it to offer more, but it might eat into your profit.

Final Words

Now that you know how to increase lunch sales in a restaurant, hurry up and get our online ordering system to get access to all the features you need to skyrocket your revenue during the usually less busy hours.