4 Tips For Turning Around A Struggling Bar Or Restaurant

Every business has its ups and downs, and yet bars and restaurants are especially susceptible to uncertainty and disruption, whether they are newly opened or well-established.

You don’t have to grin and bear the brunt of a slow season, and taking action to turn things around can be empowering, so here are some ideas for bringing customers back through the doors in greater numbers than ever before.

Revamp your menu (and put it online)

If you’ve seen bookings and footfall drop off a cliff, the time for a radical change has arrived, and your menu is the best place to start.

Look for which dishes are doing best, which are not attracting attention, and see what competitors are up to in order to breathe new life into a menu that’s past its prime.

Furthermore, you want to maximize the marketing impact of a new menu, so use online services like Untappd for Business to spread it far and wide on the web. That way, people will be excited about trying out the fresh dishes that are available, rather than only learning about them if they happen to visit in person.

Also remember that menu changes have to make financial sense; there’s no point blowing your budget on overly elaborate options which won’t gel with your target audience and won’t turn you a profit.

Rethink the interior design

The atmosphere and vibe of a venue has as much to do with its success as what it serves, so if customers enjoy your offerings but don’t click with the ambience, they’ll be unlikely to return in future.

If you’ve got the cash to splash on a bit of a refurbishment to the interior of your bar or restaurant, this is seriously worth considering.

Not only will a reconfiguration allow you to update the aesthetics, do away with tired-looking decor and impress punters new and old alike, but you’ll also have another string to your marketing bow when you open the doors again.

Run special nights

Another option for getting your bar or restaurant back on an even keel is to give customers an extra reason to come calling, above and beyond the basic elements.

Themed evenings fit the bill here, and you’ve got a raft of choices available to you, depending on the size of your venue and the demographics it is aiming to attract.

Trivia nights and karaoke nights are well suited to bars, while couples nights and singles nights can be surprisingly effective for restaurants.

Think outside the box and you can make your events a real occasion for the local community, while boosting your takings at times when attendance might normally be in the doldrums.

Sell yourself on social media

We live in an era when it's possible for even the most humble eatery to go viral, and while not every venue can hope to achieve global fame, there’s a lot to be earned from using social media to your advantage.

Keeping customers up to date with pictures of food and drink, information on events, limited time offers that are unique to your followers and so on can all feed into an impactful strategy for digital marketing today.

Likewise when prospective visitors go to search for your business, if they can find your social media presence on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or even TikTok, they’ll have a closer connection with you from the word go.

Wrapping up

Salvaging a floundering bar or restaurant doesn’t have to be a losing battle, so long as you know your audience, know your limits, and embrace change rather than treading water.