The Ten-Minute Manager�s Guide to ... Increasing Check Averages

By Lisa Bertagnoli, Special to R&I -- Restaurants & Institutions, 3/15/2008

FOOD COSTS ARE UP, BUT RAISING MENU PRICES to compensate is risky when consumers are watching closely what they spend on everything but necessities. Raising check averages without hiking prices is an appealing sales-boosting strategy, but reaching that target requires careful planning. No check-raising tactic—offering food and wine specials or engaging in suggestive selling of appetizers or desserts—works without complete server buy-in.

"The best servers understand there’s a game about it," says Bob Phibbs, a Coxsackie, N.Y.-based retail consultant. Those servers "understand their goal is to make people feel good about their purchases."

Phibbs’ suggestion: Figure out when check averages are lowest; devise a check-boosting strategy for that shift or day; and schedule the best servers to work during that time to give checks a boost.

Beat Monday Blues

At Cordúa Restaurants in Houston, Monday-night wine dinners have boosted check averages by nearly 50% and have doubled Monday-night sales volume to $12,000, says owner Michael Cordúa.

The wine dinners are offered on a rotating business at three of Cordúa’s four restaurants: Américas, Churrascos and Artista. (The fourth, Amazon Grill, is more family-oriented and isn’t right for wine dinners, he says.) Monday-night wine dinners get 200 to 300 reservations, compared with 100 on a nonwine Monday night, Cordúa says.

The dinners are less formal than a typical wine dinner. "It’s not like a regular wine dinner, where everyone’s in synchronicity eating at the same time and the winemaker talks about wine," Cordúa says. A set menu with four or five courses is offered, but diners don’t have to choose that menu or even participate in the wine tastings. Seating is open rather than assigned, and winemakers answer individual diners’ questions upon request.

The wine dinners, launched 10 years ago, are advertised via an e-mail invitation to a list of about 8,000. "It’s been very effective," Cordúa says of the e-mail marketing.

Among Cordúa’s other check-raising tips: Delay bringing food menus to the table so servers can offer drinks first; get the first round of drinks out quickly so that guests have the chance to order a second round; and sell appetizers that are easy to share. "Guests are more likely to order appetizers in groups than individually," Cordúa says.

Added Attraction

With free chips and salsa, who buys appetizers in a Mexican restaurant?

At Abuelo’s, plenty of people, says Renée Underwood, vice president of marketing for the 39-unit Lubbock, Texas-based full-service chain. Abuelo’s Dip Sampler ($6.99) has added 22 cents to the restaurants’ per-person average since it was introduced to the menu in August.

The dip trio consists of queso Diablo, a spicy melted cheese dip; spicy meat queso; and avocado cream (avocado mixed with ranch dressing). The dip was tested as a limited-time offer from March to July of 2007. During that time, it accounted for 6% of all appetizer sales, Underwood says.

In August, the sampler was added to the permanent menu and promoted via a four-color photo. The sampler is now the third-best-selling appetizer after queso ($4.99) and guacamole salad ($4.99); it accounts for 18% of all appetizer sales.

A holiday promotion for the dip in November and December that featured suggestive selling by servers helped boost sales, Underwood says. So does the sampler’s presentation, on a wire rack with three bowls. "It’s turning into one of those items that sells itself," she says.

The sampler met Abuelo’s objectives to introduce an appetizer that wasn’t a meal replacement, says Underwood. "When you grow per-person averages, you usually do it in the appetizer category," she says.

Wine Works

Mafiaoza’s, a 320-seat casual Italian restaurant in Nashville, Tenn., offers 60 wines by the glass. With selections priced between $5.50 and $10, the list offers unexpected choices, such as an Italian Vouvray and a $99 glass of ultra-high-end cabernet sauvignon.

Check averages, about $16.50 per person, are a dollar higher than they would be without the wines-by-the-glass program. "With a bigger selection, everyone’s more likely to find something they want," says Brett Corrieri, Mafiaoza’s corporate chef and catering director. Also, the glass list spurs bottle sales, especially with bigger parties.

Training is key: Distributors conduct a wine class for staff at the restaurant every Wednesday. As a reward for their check-raising efforts, servers receive a $50 cash bonus for every $1,000 of sales they generate on a given night.

Netting a Higher Check

In January and February, server tips rise 20% at Salt Lake City-based Gastronomy Inc.’s seven Market Street seafood restaurants. That’s an indication of how well the chain’s annual Crab Festival works in raising check averages, says Mary Anne Farrier, Gastronomy Inc. director of marketing.

The festival offers a special crab menu of around a dozen dishes, including appetizers such as Maryland lump crab cakes ($9.99) and a crab ravioli entrée ($20.99). The dishes are, on average, priced higher than dishes on regular Market Street menus, so "check averages are larger, but we can’t say by how much," Farrier says.

Heavy server training and marketing efforts support the Crab Festival. Servers are educated in the varieties of crab offered during the festival; the varieties on offer also are described on the crab menu. Servers also taste each variety and can sell based on their knowledge of the product.

Marketing vehicles include crab table tents and posters; Market Street delivery vans also carry Crab Festival signs.

The promotion was created about 15 years ago to boost sales after the holidays, traditionally a slow period, Farrier says. The restaurants now sell about 2,000 pounds of crab during the festival months.

Seven Ways to Motivate

Check-raising strategies are only as good as the servers executing them. Coxsackie, N.Y.-based consultant Bob Phibbs, author of "You Can Compete: Double Sales Without Discounting" (Greenleaf Book Group, 2003), offers seven ways to get servers moving:

1. Show them the money. Figure out how much more servers could earn in a month by suggestive selling, and then literally show them that amount at a staff meeting. "Go around the room and ask each server what they’d do with an extra $50 or $100," Phibbs says, "then tell them they can do it starting with tonight’s shift."

2. Set goals. "Take your regular average check and increase it by 10%," Phibbs says. Then show servers how easy it would be to reach that goal by adding one appetizer or dessert to an order. But make sure the goal is attainable. "If it’s too high, they won’t try," he says.

3. Post results. "Servers are competitive," Phibbs says. Put peer pressure to work by posting average checks for each server in the kitchen each week.

4. Reward with busier shifts. Schedule servers with the highest check averages during peak periods to reward them and to help you drive sales.

5. Reward with a raise. Give an hourly wage boost to servers with the highest check averages. "It doesn’t have to be much since you also have given them the best shifts," Phibbs says.

6. Fire poor performers. "You can’t continue to try to drag them to your way of thinking," Phibbs says of the "lower 20%" of servers who don’t perform.

7. Hire better servers. Literally and metaphorically hungry types such as graduate students and actors are much more likely to understand the emphasis on upselling than "a kid living at home who just needs a job," Phibbs says.

Lisa Bertagnoli is a Chicago-based freelance writer.