With every new season comes a fresh wave of opportunities for the restaurant and coffee shop sector. The summer season is no exception. In fact, it’s a period ripe with potential. By using the right summer marketing strategies for restaurants, you can boost your revenue and attract more customers, including tourists.
The rise in summer temperatures often leads to a noticeable increase in both domestic and international tourism. It also coincides with vacations, providing more opportunities for people to go out, travel, and seek out new, refreshing experiences to break their daily routine.
In summer, there’s a growing desire for lighter meals, cold drinks, ice cream, and comfortable, air-conditioned spaces or pleasant outdoor restaurant seating during the cool summer evenings.
This shift in consumer behavior opens up vast horizons for restaurants and cafes. With the right summer marketing strategies and advance planning, your restaurant can turn the summer heat into higher sales, attracting new customers, and offering unforgettable, loyalty-boosting experiences.
Read on to uncover top summer marketing strategies that will turn the hot season into a period of prosperity for your restaurant or café. We’ll help you boost profitability in the generally slow, summer season.
Restaurant Summer Strategies: Add a Refreshing Flavor to Your Menu
To keep customers coming back, start by designing a seasonal menu for the summer months. Summer is known for the variety of fruits and vegetables. Use these seasonal flavors to create light and mouth-watering dishes and beverages.
Here are a few menu-ideas to entice and attract customers:
Get creative with summer fruits
Incorporate watermelon and cantaloupe into salads, juices, and desserts. Add mint and citrus fruits like lemons and oranges to grilled dishes and beverages. And don’t forget to add berries or strawberries—they’re a fantastic choice for desserts, juices, and breakfast plates.
Limited-time summer specials
Grab your customers’ attention with limited-time seasonal offers that create buzz and boost sales and repeat visits. Feature “dish of the day or week” specials using fresh, seasonal ingredients.
Offer “family summer boxes” that bundle light dishes and refreshing drinks at competitive prices. You can also introduce “signature summer drinks,” like creative cocktails and juices, available only during this summer season.
With these summer strategies and ideas, your restaurant will become a go-to spot for people seeking unique seasonal experiences.
Focus on light and refreshing options
Curate your menu to meet the demand for light, refreshing choices during the summer. Offer cold beverages like fresh juices, iced teas, and mojitos. Add salads packed with seasonal ingredients and light proteins, and swap out heavy dishes for lighter options like cold, healthy sandwiches.
Further reading: Sahel Season: Big Opportunity, Even Bigger Challenges
Enhance Customer Experiences in Outdoor Areas
If your restaurant or coffee shop has outdoor seating areas, like a rooftop, patio, or even a sidewalk, you can turn it into a night-time hotspot. Make sure you get the necessary permits first.
Make sure your restaurant’s outdoor seating area is comfortable and inviting. Pay attention to designated smoking areas, lighting, and how you place your tables to ensure a smooth flow for your customers and staff.
To keep your customers comfortable in the heat, consider investing in outdoor cooling systems. Use a variety of fans or misting systems to provide effective ventilation and lower the temperature, making sure to perform regular maintenance to keep everything running smoothly.
Turn your restaurant’s decor into a key attraction that captures the spirit of summer and enhances your social media presence. Use bright, refreshing colors for your furniture and accessories, and add natural touches with green plants and seasonal flowers to create a relaxing vibe.
These additions can significantly boost your restaurant’s appeal during the summer.
Optimize Your Delivery and Takeaway Offers
As customers try to beat the summer heat and stay indoors, demand for restaurant food delivery services increases significantly. To make the most of this trend, you need to optimize your delivery offerings.
Start by creating meals designed exclusively for the summer, particularly for delivery and pickup orders. Develop light options like mini sandwiches, cold appetizers, and fresh-cut fruit, which are perfect for summer gatherings.
Use insulated packaging to maintain the quality and freshness of your dishes during delivery. Choose thermal containers that keep food at the right temperature, whether you need to keep salads and drinks cold or cooked dishes hot.
This ensures the delivery experience is as close as possible to dining in. Use containers with internal dividers to separate delicate ingredients like sauces from salads, preventing changes in texture or flavor.
Showcase your summer specials on delivery apps with a professional and appealing display. Create a clear section titled “Refreshing Summer Options,” supported by high-quality photos that highlight your seasonal dishes and drinks.
Use enticing descriptions that emphasize fresh, seasonal ingredients and light flavors. You can even use tools like ChatGPT to help you write compelling copy.
And don’t forget to run special promotions, such as free delivery or limited-time discounts, to grab attention and encourage customers to order.
Restaurant Summer Strategies to Attract Tourists and Seasonal Crowds
One of the benefits of the summer season is that restaurants can attract tourists, alongside their regularly customers. Here are a few ideas to attract seasonal crowds.
Translate your menus
Welcome tourists into your restaurant and ensure a great dining experience by translating your menu(s) into several languages.
Focus on popular languages like English and French. This makes it easier for them and helps them understand what each menu item includes. Use QR code menus to make it easier to choose other languages.
Partner with hotels and travel agencies
Build partnerships with hotels and travel agencies in your area. You can offer nearby hotels exclusive discounts to their visitors or share your menus with them.
As for travel agencies, your partnerships can include them recommending you to their guests or including your hotel in their travel tours.
Consider participating in tourism events and exhibitions to connect directly with key players in the industry.
List your restaurant on GBP
To attract more customers, especially in touristic areas, make sure you create a Google Business Profile (GBP) and get listed on Google Maps. Include accurate information such as your location(s), phone number, working hours, and menu.
You can also add high-quality images of your dishes to attract customers. Highlight any benefits that may appeal to tourists, like free Wi-Fi (if applicable) or being close to touristic attractions.
Don’t forget to engage with and respond to all reviews, even the negative ones, in a polite and professional manner. This shows your commitment to customer service.
Train and Motivate Your Team
To make your restaurant stand out, make sure your team is well-prepared for the summer season. Start by training your staff to handle peak hours efficiently. This includes effectively managing the flow of orders and distributing tasks among the front-of-house, kitchen, and back-of-house teams to maintain a high-quality service, even under pressure.
Your cashiers should be fully familiar with the summer menu and confident in making recommendations for dishes and beverages. If you’re targeting tourists, be sure to include basic communication skills in languages like English as part of your training. Encourage your team to boost seasonal sales by professionally and friendly upselling items.
Consider using an incentive program to motivate your staff, including offering performance-based rewards, such as bonuses for hitting sales targets.
You can track this through reports via the Waiter App or the cashier system that’s directly integrated with your restaurant POS. You can also track performance through high customer ratings via your restaurant’s mobile app.
Use Data to Improve Storage and Reduce Waste
According to our partners and customers, two of the biggest challenges for summer restaurant management are inventory control and minimizing waste.
Here are a few tips to help you:
Analyze data from previous years
If you’ve been operating for some time, review data from previous years to help guide your summer efforts. This will reduce guesswork and help you optimize inventory more efficiently.
Analyze previous years’ sales reports from your POS and inventory management software. This will help you pinpoint which dishes and drinks were most popular and identify peak business hours.
Now, you can accurately forecast your needs, avoid unexpected ingredient shortages, and prevent waste. The result is more flexible inventory planning and a smoother customer experience all summer long.
Further reading: 5 Food Storage Techniques to Reduce Waste in Restaurants
Focus on high-profit, seasonal items
To maximize your return on investment (ROI), focus on seasonal dishes and beverages that offer a high-profit margin and sell quickly. Prioritize ingredients that are used up fast to avoid spoilage.
This ensures consistent quality, reduces waste, and helps you get the most out of every dollar you invest in inventory.
Don’t over-order winter ingredients
Some ingredients are more popular in winter versus summer. Don’t over-order on ingredients and materials that are associated with winter dishes.
The demand for these items usually drops in the summer, making them more expensive and susceptible to spoilage in high temperatures.
Lastly
To make the most of the summer season, make a pre-emptive review or study of seasonal and summer trends.
The summer season is an opportunity to boost revenues. But you need to be mindful of inventory and data.
To recap, consider creating a seasonal summer menu featuring refreshing flavors, keep your restaurant cool and cozy, and consider enhancing outdoor seating if available.
Use smart marketing strategies to attract current and new customers, including tourists.
Lastly, make sure you prepare your team for the summer with adequate data and reporting via restaurant management tools like Foodics.
This will ensure that summer isn’t just another season, but an opportunity of success, growth, and profitability for your restaurant.
Discover Foodics’ benefits for restaurants this summer!