How to make the most of a busy restaurant season

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As the winter months wrap up and the weather gets warmer, restaurants are about to get crowded. The holiday season and peak days like Christmas have long passed, the winter lull inched along slowly, and the busiest times of year are finally here.

For most, the busy season is the warmer months, where expanded dining opportunities abound due to diners shaking off the winter blues. Transitioning into a busy restaurant season is no small feat, but it’s possible to thrive as your crowds get bigger. Let’s discuss ways for restaurants to make the busy times as profitable and positive as possible.

Navigating a successful peak season will help ensure year-round profitability and give you ideas to boost business on even the slowest days of the year. A restaurant owner needs to cherish their bottom line at any time of the year, since the restaurant business doesn’t tolerate letting your foot off the gas.

So, no matter what sector of the restaurant industry you find yourself in—anywhere from fast food to a fine dining restaurant—the steps you put forward to make the upcoming busy restaurant season a successful one will plant the seeds of success in the future.

Let’s look at ways to make the most of patio season and set a precedent that’ll carry you through this year’s busy restaurant season and beyond.

Upgrade, expand, and improve your space

With warmer weather comes more business, as the busiest period for restaurants is usually in the warmest months of the year between the spring and the fall. If you have any accessible outdoor space, use it! Patio dining during pleasant weather is one of life’s true luxuries, and offering that to your guests is an excellent way to drum up support from both returning and new customers.

Indoor upgrades

Restaurateurs should upgrade their dining area however possible. Indoor spaces can be redecorated to fit modern styles while sticking to your own taste. That can look like swapping out old furniture, updating décor like artwork and lighting, and redesigning your floor plan to be as efficient and welcoming as possible.

If you’re the sort of venue that sometimes hosts special events like live music, comedy, or tastings, make sure you have a wide, open area that accommodates those needs. Having movable furniture can work perfectly for these types of events. It’s even better for business if you partner with other local businesses like breweries or distilleries, food suppliers, florists, artists, and so on. Having a modular space you can dedicate to these special events can bring in extra business and help firm up alliances with other business owners.

You’ll be thankful for a versatile, open space on bustling days like Easter, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day. Hopefully your events and holidays are so well-executed that people post about on social media. And hey, more on social media later.

Outdoor upgrades

If you’re fortunate enough to have an outdoor dining area, you can and should make the most out of it. A restaurant patio can be its own draw, and it can be tastefully decorated with string lights and umbrellas. Outdoor furniture usually will not be as comfortable as indoor furniture, but the draw of outdoor seating will be enough to get people to enjoy the relaxed atmosphere.

There’s something special about an outdoor dining experience, anyway. Even if it’s chilly, fire pits and heaters can make patio seating quite comfortable. What’s more, the patio can serve as an additional seating area or even waiting area when you run out of indoor space.

Patio furniture should be sturdy and built to withstand rain or shine. Ideally, patio spaces should have retractable awnings to allow for sun and shade when the time is right. Adding greenery to your area will only enhance the ambiance.

Train up and hire new staff

If you’re anticipating an upswing in business—and we hope you are—you’ll likely want to either hire more staff, assign more shifts, or both. Having the correct amount of staff on hand ensures that the customer experience remains positive and everyone gets served promptly and correctly. If that’s indeed what you’re anticipating, you’ll likely need extra help in the back-of-house (BOH) just as much as the front-of-house (FOH) since a stressed BOH will get bottlenecked and lead to decreased table turnover.

Training new staff can be expensive and time consuming. Ideally, you’ll already have a solid cadre of workers to call on. Spending time retraining staff and ensuring employee morale is high can go a long way toward improving customer service. While offering pay raises is the easiest way to improve employee morale, offering other incentives like flexible scheduling and staff meals can also keep employees happy. With employee turnover in the restaurant industry already ludicrously high, you’ll want to keep all the top talent you have.

If you’re hiring new staff, we recommend having them be vetted by both FOH and BOH leaders like floor managers and chefs. Team spirit is key in a restaurant, and people that get along well produce good results. If you’re upgrading your POS systems or other restaurant software, make sure your employees know all they need to know to run the floor well and with minimal supervision.

Upgrade your menu and up your hours

A new season is a new opportunity to create new menu items. In many cases, restaurants opt to add a seasonal menu that both match the flavors of the season and tap into current trends. Whether you’re looking to offer new entrées, pair with local farmers to encourage sustainability, or introduce a pop-up craft cocktail bar on weekends, expanding your offerings can draw in new customers. A seasonal restaurant doesn’t have to be a gimmick: Hand an executive chef a blank slate and ask them to draw a dinner menu based on what’s in-season and you’ll be amazed at what seasonal ingredients can accomplish.

These offerings can be expanded throughout the day to encourage sales in off-peak times. So, for example, if your restaurant typically focuses on dinner, consider offering brunch as well.

As long as your restaurant remains profitable while open, it behooves you to keep it open as long as possible. New restaurants can be forgiven for wanting to keep a limited opening time while both restaurant owners and their staff learn the ropes. But older establishments should aim to be open as long as possible and switch up their offerings to keep customers and staff alike engaged.

A solid happy hour can increase profits during off-peak times as well. These usually look like post-work hours during the week, i.e., 4-7 p.m., though reverse happy hours can work as well if you notice your restaurant business takes a dive after around 9 p.m. on a Saturday. In that case, you’d offer discounts on drinks and appetizers later in the evening rather than earlier.

Master your marketing

Improving your marketing is one of the biggest steps you can take to boost your traffic. There are a number of ways to go about this, but social media marketing is the most obvious and most straightforward way to get eyeballs on your establishment these days.

We highly recommend having a solid online presence on the social media platforms your target audience uses, like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Staying active on platforms like Yelp is especially valuable, since the reach is so enormous.* Combined with tools like Yelp Guest Manager, Yelp can be a powerful ally indeed.**

But that’s just one part of the skillset. Short videos demonstrating personality, ambiance, and—of course—food can help you garner views in your area. Share videos of your food being prepped, have servers film funny videos for trending sounds, or share a day in your life as the owner. Viewers these days tend to like authentic and/or funny content, so let your staff’s personalities shine.

If your online menu doesn’t have any photos, try to take a photo of each menu item for takeout menus. People scrolling delivery apps will see images of your food when they’re considering your restaurant, so don’t skimp on quality photography when it comes to your food. Investing in a good photographer, if you don’t have one on staff, can be a wise move.

The best software for busy shifts

Getting where you need to be in the upcoming busy restaurant season is doable, but it’ll take some work. In addition to sprucing up your place, upgrading your menu, hiring more staff, and mastering marketing, switching to the best software will help your FOH service be ship-shape and keep your BOH from getting overwhelmed.

It’ll also give you a big leg up on marketing and getting customers in the door. Switching to Yelp Guest Manager not only gives you fully customizable floor plans and oodles of sales forecasting data to play with, but it also makes customers’ lives easier. We’re talking push-button reservations, seamless check-ins and waitlists, two-way conversations with diners, and integrations with a host of third-party apps like delivery and POS systems.

So, if you’re looking to make the most of the upcoming busy restaurant season, look no further. Reach out to us for a free demo and we’ll get you going in the right direction.