How Families Can Help Grow Your Restaurant

How Families Can Help Grow Your Restaurant

If you promote to 1 diner, you may win 1 customer dining at your restaurant. If you talk to 1 family, you may win 3 family members eating at your place. Families can be attractive customers for restaurants because they can potentially save them at least one-third of the promotion cost or win 3 times more customers.

According to a survey conducted by Technomic, 49% of the parents dine out at least once a week. Most importantly, they are not only looking for family restaurants, and they are also looking for broader selections of the casual dining experience.

This is a huge opportunity for casual dining restaurants, which will be able to acquire customers while not being positioned as a traditional family restaurant.

Promote “Kid-Friendly” Features in your Restaurant

How Families Can Help Grow Your Restaurant

When families eat out with their kids, the kids influence where the families go. Places that are not friendly to kids can be a nightmare for parents. There are a few things parents always look for in a restaurant:

  • High chairs or feeders
  • Children's menu or Kids' Dining Sets
  • Changing tables or rooms for changing dirty clothes/diapers
  • Small stools for children

Make sure you advertise these features if you have them.  They're golden opportunities in attracting families. There are desperate parents regularly exchanging recommendations of kid-friendly restaurants on social media, forums and messaging apps.

Even better if you can put a “kid-friendly” tags on your website, online restaurant directories, and digital signage on premise, along with showcasing images of these kid-friendly areas. You will grab a lot of new customers.

Make a "Kids' Corner" to Avoid Disturbing Other Diners

Kids crying and running around can disturb your other customers. In order to please both families and other customers,  it is best to carve out a "kids' corner" from the rest of your restaurant.

Given that not every restaurant is spacious enough to set a permanent “kids' corner”, one of the easiest ways is using digital signage to indicate a "kids' corner" when necessary.

Depending on your customer traffic, digital signage can easily turn on the “kids' corner” at a particular time. You can easily schedule cartoons or kid-friendly content to play on digital signage at a certain aisle, intuitively attracting kids and families to gather in that area, keeping them apart from other customers.

You may also consider using stickers, mats, and toys to take the "kids' corner" more accessible to families. However, you may need to regularly rearrange your children's area if your restaurant requires more space hosting private events or other special events.

Engage Kids with Fun, Family-Friendly Content

How Families Can Help Grow Your Restaurant

Kids always love to disturb their parents when they are eating, in order to seek attention from their parents. Having something that distracts them and gives parents a break.  This can be a great way of managing the customer experience.  

Looping a series of animations or family-friendly content on the screens often calms kids down and helps their parents eat peacefully. Animations, no matter how they appear to you, will help your restaurant become a magnet that keeps pulling the kids back, along with their parents.

If you want to delight the parents in one go, digital signage often allow you to create a playlist to play not only animations but also family-friendly content. This will give parents’ another great reason for coming back to your restaurant.

Are Kids' Menus a Must for Families?

How Families Can Help Grow Your Restaurant

It may time consuming to create a kids' menu, which sometimes requires different ingredients and utensils. On top of that, it may be time-consuming if the effort is needed to make the food appear fun and appealing to kids. This could be a bit much for a restaurant if their focus is on attracting new customers.

Family combo meals would be a smarter idea. This way, families can get meals that can be enjoyed by both parents and kids, with some snacks and desserts that kids can enjoy. Below are some popular and easy suggestions:

  • Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches
  • Fish sticks or chicken nuggets with all kinds of sauces
  • Milkshakes, ice cream, or frozen yogurt with colorful toppings

Show Your Ingredients and Label Allergy Warnings

How Families Can Help Grow Your Restaurant

Parents are becoming more conscious of the nutrition value and ingredients for what their kids eat. Not only are parents concerned about whether the food is healthy or not, but also whether their kids are allergic to the food or not. This is especially important due to growing concerns about fatal allergies.

According to KidsHealth.org, peanuts are the most notorious cause of food allergies, as well as milk, eggs, soy, wheat, tree nuts, fish, and shellfish. However, the reality is that a restaurant cannot avoid everything allergic.

Having an “allergen-free” menu can also affect the entire restaurant operation by limiting menu choices and will also need extra effort to clean every pan and plate before cooking a meal. 

Instead, a sensible solution is to display the menu and ingredients and any allergy warnings to help parents make the best food choices for them and their kids.  There is no need to design the menu completely from scratch. Our digital signage provides a variety of templates for restaurants to display menus.

Host Birthday Parties or Special Family Events

How Families Can Help Grow Your Restaurant

Attracting a group of loyal customers opens up a new revenue stream for the restaurant. For example, running birthday parties or having a special birthday menu can be quite profitable. While hosting birthday parties will take up time and space in your restaurant, offering catering for parties is another option.

At the start, you can test this service on a 100% reservation basis without setting up anything. With simple advertisements on the website and the restaurants’ signage, parents who are interested will think of your birthday party hosting or catering when times come.

Are you ready for more revenue and getting more customers? Then digital signage may be a more cost-effective approach to supplement your marketing campaigns.

References: 
https://possector.com/marketing-promotion/kids-friendly-restaurant-ideas
https://blog.restaurantscanada.org/index.php/2016/01/14/eight-ways-to-make-your-restaurant-kid-friendly/
https://www.sld.com/blog/food-service/how-to-attract-millennial-parents-to-your-restaurant/

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