The option of online ordering has the potential to bring in a wide variety of customers. Among the potential additions to your customer base are families. This is because raising a family is busy business.
Juggling homework, ballet class, and soccer practice is a huge and time-consuming chore. Because these things take so much valuable after-school time, sometimes cooking dinner just isn’t an option. On the other hand, actually taking kids into a restaurant to eat may sound like a nightmare. In these cases, the ability to order dinner online and pick it up quickly when it’s ready is invaluable to overworked parents.
For this reason, online ordering is sure to bring in some stressed-out moms and dads. However, by going out of your way to cater to these families, you can create loyal customers and keep them coming back more often than they might have otherwise.
Here are a few other ways your restaurant can cater to families and keep them coming back over and over again:
Expand Upon Your Online Ordering
The best way to market to your potential customers is to simply put yourself in their shoes. We already know that offering online ordering is sure to bring in families on their busiest nights. However, you can help make things even more convenient for parents by offering curbside pick-up of their online orders if perhaps even making it out of their car with the kids is a chore.
Sometimes moms and dads get hungry, but if baby is asleep in the car, getting a snack becomes much more difficult. Curbside pick-up solves this problem for parents of snoozing little ones by giving them a food option that doesn’t require leaving the car at all. Additionally, curbside pick-up makes grabbing food a much easier process for moms and dads with cranky kids (or several young children in car seats), as getting in and out of the car with little ones is always a drawn-out process.
Send Home Goodies
Many eateries offer kids a special treat with their meal. This always gets kids excited about your restaurant and gives them something to look forward to when their meal arrives. If you are not already, consider sending home coloring sheets, small toys, or a dessert with each kid’s meal. This small gesture doesn’t cost much for you to implement, but it will still make the kids happy, which in turn makes parents happy—and when everyone is happy, they always come back for more.
Offer Family Deals
Another great way to keep families coming back for more is to offer a “family night” once a week. On this night, you can consider offering a “kids-eat-free” deal, or if you have friendly staff (we hope!) encourage them to engage and play games with the kids.
Want to keep the focus on your online ordering platform? Maybe you could offer the kids-eat-free deal exclusively to those who order online. Additionally, a fun family trivia game or other activity idea could be sent via email after the online order has been placed.
Taking Action
These are just a few of the many ways to attract families to your eating establishment. Of course, the first step is to implement your online ordering system! (shocker)
While this process may seem a bit intimidating at first, it truly doesn’t have to be. 9Fold offers an easy-to-use platform that can be learned by almost anyone. Additionally, the flat-rate system makes online ordering easily affordable to nearly any restaurant that wants to build their online presence into 2017, and helps increase the profits of your business.
Once you have your online ordering system in place, the marketing tips listed above become easy to implement, making your restaurant the most family-friendly place in town.
Are you ready to start building your online ordering system? We would love to hear from you! Be sure to reach out or check out some of our other marketing ideas that can help you boost your restaurants bottom line. contact us today.
