Entertaining & Upselling Waiting Guests: A Great Use for a Video About Your Restaurant
Are you lucky enough to sometimes have guests waiting in line for the opportunity to eat at your restaurant? That’s a nice problem to have.
But it’s still a problem.
Many times waiting guests get tired of the delay and leave for a competitor’s establishment. Yes, you’re having a good night of business despite their leaving. But if they had stayed, you’d have had a great night … significantly more revenue in your till and likely high-profit margin revenue at that.
Even those who do tough out the wait may be short on patience by the time they’re seated. Many will expedite their meals, ordering less than they would have otherwise.
Here’s a simple way to dramatically reduce the frustration of guests waiting for a table and to even increase the size of their checks while you’re at it: Use a creative video about your restaurant to both entertain and upsell those waiting.
A professional video about your restaurant can be produced for well under $1000 and often for under $500. Sure, you can spend many times these amounts on a video, but it isn’t necessary to do so.
A video about your restaurant can be used in numerous ways: on your website, on your Facebook page, at Google+ and TripAdvisor (which both let you post videos at no-charge), in your front window to attract those passing by, etc. But it can pay for itself many times over with just the revenue it produces being shown on a monitor in your waiting area.
Be it on TV, at the movie theater, or a computer, tablet or smart phone, watching video is far and away the number one way Americans spend their free time. It’s how we’re entertained and how we learn. When watching something interesting, we stop looking at our watches or focusing on the passage of time. Put these facts to work by showing a custom video in your waiting area.
Start with some eye-catching content … for example, video of dishes being prepared. Or, better yet, time-lapse video of the whole kitchen in action. Take three hours of kitchen activity and compress it into a 60-second time-lapse clip. Time-lapse video is definitely riveting content. Your waiting guests will gladly watch the time lapse over and over to catch additional details. They won’t sitting there wondering when the heck their name will be called or the red lights on the pager will start to flash.
Second, stir in some upselling … show off a few of your premium entrees, some of your mouthwatering desserts, and maybe a few high-end libations … items you wish more guests ordered but they just don’t get the full sense of from the menu description.
Third, consider mixing in another form of upselling: do you offer private dining and/or catering or maybe have a chef’s table? Why not a quick clip letting your waiting guests know about these and/or other special features of your restaurant?
Your video doesn’t have to be more than a couple of minutes long. If it’s properly produced, your waiting guests will watch it several times over. It will keep them entertained for long enough to take the edge off the wait. And, I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the sales of whatever items you feature on the video will go up dramatically.
Again, your video doesn’t have to be just for use in your waiting area. Add it to your website. Put it on your TripAdvisor and Google+ pages, which allow you to post videos for free. And post it to your Facebook page with a note asking all of those who’ve “Liked” your restaurant to give it a view and to forward it to their friends.
Bottom line: There are dozens of creative ways to put a good video to work for your restaurant. Please contact dkrehel@evolvevideosolutions.com to discuss how we at Evolve Video Solutions can create a great video for you. Thanks!