Opening your own cafe or restaurant is not every girl’s childhood dream? However, expectations do not always coincide with reality. Opening a personal catering outlet may not be beneficial at all. Just imagine the picture: empty tables, bored waiters and cashiers, sleepy chefs and other signs that your bistro is not popular. Sadly, isn't it? To everything else, add the cost of classic advertising and payroll staff. In general, as they say, oil painting. But how to attract customers to the cafe, if the standard advertising "chips" do not bring any results?
Analyze your mistakes
To get started, work on the bugs. Think about what you have already done and why these actions did not produce the long-awaited effect. It is possible that you did not analyze all the pros and cons of your competitors. Therefore, they got stuck in one place. According to experts, it’s enough to walk around the establishments closest to your cafe under the guise of a buyer.
Next, get a notepad. Draw it into several columns and, without hesitation, make notes. The signs “+” and “-” can always play their role. You can also compose a certain scale for yourself, for example, from 1 to 5. Well, at the end of such a raid, summarize and try to think about what your direct competitors have and what you don’t have. In other words, before attracting customers to the cafe, analyze the nearest competitors.
Putting ourselves in the place of the buyer
Another common mistake is the fact that when developing the design or menu of a personal restaurant, we are guided exclusively by our own tastes, interests and opinions. That's just all this can look very different in the mind of the client. For example, they installed a new advertising sign. And then try to put yourself in the shoes of the client. Ask yourself the question: “Will she be of interest to the ordinary passerby?”, But not the painful one for you: “How to attract customers to a new cafe?”
Decide on the age contingent
When planning the subjects of the institution, it is worth considering the audience for which it will be designed. For example, if this is a family bistro, where adults with children will come, it is worth making an attractive glass sign with bright desserts. So, it is this "trick" that is most often used by restaurant owners in Japan. They install a large glass display case in front of the entrance to the institution. And under it is placed a cafe menu and dummy desserts.
It is worth noting that such desserts not only attract the attention of passers-by, but also look very appetizing and realistic. This approach will help to solve several problems at once. Firstly, such desserts can attract the attention of not only children, but also other lovers of sweets. Secondly, desserts can be set according to the cafe menu set for the day. If necessary, they are always easy to replace and supplement. And finally, seeing firsthand the ingredients of desserts, visitors will save themselves from a huge number of questions to the waiters about the composition of the dishes.
If the contingent of the cafe is mixed
If you decide that a mixed-type audience will gather in your bistro, make a certain distinction. For example, family gatherings can be clearly limited in time. So, parents with children can come to you until 20:00. And then you can open the doors for people from the category "18+". However, this fact is worth mentioning in the advertisement and on the main sign on the building. Here is how attract customers to the cafe without unnecessary effort and cost.
Focus on children
The most grateful and promising customers are, of course, children. How often did you notice that you were not going to go somewhere at all, but your child saw something in the window and literally dragged it to a store, bistro or any other place. Therefore, it is very important that this is an attractive, especially for children, cafe advertisement. Examples of successful restaurant chains, by the way, confirm this fact.
For example, at the entrance of the famous McDonald's there is a large figure of a clown or a real disguised person who gives out bright balloons to passing children for free. By the way, mainly abroad, cafe owners often hire people who dress in large and soft costumes of the main dishes of the restaurant. For example, you can meet a man in a costume of a hamburger, a giant burrito, a hot dog, etc.
Animators and playgrounds in your cafe
Some cafe owners also attract children, for example, inviting experienced and enterprising animators. A bright addition to such a pleasant company, as a rule, is considered a separate children's corner for games and creativity.
It can be a big house in which children can play, a pool with plastic or foam balls, a trampoline and much more. Parents will also be interested in such places, because after eating they will boldly let their children go to the playground, and they themselves will continue to talk peacefully with each other.
And of course, such establishments will attract the attention of companies with families who will not think about where they will put their playing children. These are just a few helpful tips on “How to attract customers in a cafe”. Ideas in this case can be very diverse, starting with an invitation to the room and ending with a prize draw, for example, sweet desserts.
How to attract customers to the cafe: bright and catchy "chips"
Attracting attention to your cafe is possible not only with the help of paid touts, but also by displaying attractive signs and signs, flags and garlands. Moreover, for their manufacture does not need a lot of money. Sometimes the simpler the better. So, stands reminiscent of a blackboard are very popular. In this case, the menu, prices or announcement of the action are recorded on it with white or colored chalk.
Humor as a great tool to attract attention
The inscriptions composed with humor are originally looked and remembered. For example: "Having bought one kebab, the second ... also buy." Or: "Our borsch is the most borsch in the world." Well and further in the same vein. Here you immediately attract attention, raise the mood of potential customers and position them towards you. By the way, if the sign is really interesting, many customers can take pictures with it, take selfies. And further down the chain: the photo gets into social networks, relatives and friends learn about it, who also become interested. As a result, the effect of a kind of word of mouth is triggered, and people begin to come to your institution.
If we talk about the hobby of some people to take pictures, the owner of an Italian cafe offered his customers lunch and at the end gave them funny photos. On them, for example, cafe customers ran away from giant hamburgers or drove down a giant pasta down to a plate.
How to attract people to a cafe by the road?
If with ordinary cafes everything is clear, then in order to attract customers to the roadside eatery you will have to break your head a little. Indeed, in this case, it is drivers who become potential customers. Alternatively, you can make beautiful and colorful signs and place them along the road. Similar ads can be installed at nearby gas stations or in hotels.
Another option to attract attention is to use 3D projection. Driving past, drivers will definitely pay attention to dancing volumetric people, running animals and other characters, which can also be thought out with a bit of humor.
Now you know how to attract customers to a roadside cafe and a regular bistro located within the city limits. Show your imagination and take a sober look at all the ideas. And be sure to remember to put yourself in the shoes of the client.