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The customers you made money from when you're starting out don't have to be the same customers you make money from when your restaurant hits the big time.
by afterburner 8y ago
The customers you made money from when you're starting out don't have to be the same customers you make money from when your restaurant hits the big time.
- johnmaguire2013 8y agoThere's risk associated in shunning your existing clientele in hopes of attracting a newer, more premium clientele.
- sgc 8y agoCertainly less risk than just closing up shop.
- masklinn 8y agoIf clients have to wait hours for a burger, the existing clientele is gone either way. If you end up folding, the existing clientele is hosed anyway. And as the original commenter noted, you could put coupons in the local newspaper and the library and whatever else, so the locals have access to burgers at the old price.
- kibwen 8y agoOr you have someone whose job it is to stand outside and memorize the names and faces of local patrons and turn away any newcomer who can't present an ID with a local address. You can have a second entrance for everyone else, takeout-only, with an hours-long wait, which plenty of food tourists will happily endure.
- somabc 8y agoI see you are familiar with Berlin nightclubs!
- dark567 8y agoLots of bars have "regulars" that they give unadvertised discounts too. This isn't an unsolved problem, you don't even need to go as far as coupons.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoIf there's enough demand, then it should be possible to increase capacity.
- toofy 8y agoI think this is the point many people are seemingly missing. Ask any family restaurant/bar owner in a seasonal tourist destination and they’ll explain why locals must be one of the first considerations before you make drastic changes. Particularly if an important reason for opening was a personal preference to serve locals over tourists in the first place. It’s incredibly interesting to see how few people understand that someone may open a business with priorities other than massive growth potential.
- dahauns 8y ago>It’s incredibly interesting to see how few people understand that someone may open a business with priorities other than massive growth potential. It really is interesting, but hardly surprising, given the demographics of this forum. :)
- blt 8y agosome people start a business for reasons more complicated than making the maximum amount of dollars.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoAt this point it's not about earning money, it's about not getting overworked to death. Raising prices sounds like the best strategy. You keep raising until the workload returns to normal. If you feel you're serving the wrong customers, you now have time to figure out how to fix that. Otherwise, if people eventually get turned off by the price and your workload goes down, you drop the price, and keep dropping it until you reach a stable point with just the right amount of orders.
- ubercow13 8y agoWhat if you don't want the new customers, you want the original ones