Pub food: business boosters
Ideas for driving food and drink sales at your pub including £5 meals, beer-tasting plates and a two-for-one dining promotion.
£5 meals
Where: The Punch Tavern, Fleet Street, London
The idea: Sunnil Panjabi, licensee at the Punch Taverns leasehold says: "The £5 meal began as a "credit-crunch lunch" that received recognition in the press. Every week we choose a different dish from our menu and offer it as our £5 special every day at specific times - for example, our beer-battered fish & chips was our £5 offering during National Chip Week. It boosts sales by encouraging people to try different dishes, attracts passing trade and drives website traffic.
What we needed: Sending out press releases and handing out flyers on the street at lunchtimes built awareness in the local business area at very low cost.
Business benefits: The £5 meal has become a cult thing — numerous customers eat here three times a week, although we offer the same meal seven days running. We also get phone calls asking what meal is on special that week. From January to May 2010, food sales rose 45% just after the offer's introduction and our switch to all-British food. Our wet:dry split rose from 70:30 to 56:44 and average weekly covers to 700. The offer is easy for the customer to relate to as they don't need to buy anything else, and the GP is 60%.
Top tips: Choose your usual dishes and maintain quality so that people know they're a bargain. Offer a range of prices on your menu. Don't do it when you are full - on Fridays our offer runs from 3pm.
Two-for-one dining promotion
Where: Lindsey Rose, Lindsey Tye, Ipswich, Suffolk
The idea: 2 for 1 vounchers. Pub manager Pete Miller says: "The aim was to attract new customers by offering a two-for-one weekday lunchtime offer via local paper the East Anglian Daily Times. Customers presenting us with four vouchers from the newspaper could buy one main course from a separate set menu and get another, of the same or lower value, free."
What we needed: "The advert cost us £285 to appear six times in one week which is really good value. There is no set formula so you can tailor the promotion to meet your own objectives; we opted for lunchtimes only, excluded the weekends and specified that vouchers needed to be redeemed within three weeks.
We created a set menu of three mains with a GP target of 50%; fusilli with roasted vegetables and pesto, classic fish pie with seasonal vegetables and chilli con carne with rice and soured cream. We were careful not to compromise on the quality of the offering as the purpose was to draw people in with the promotion but then impress them sufficiently that they would want to come back."
Business benefits: "When we run this type of offer we tend to average around 100 voucher covers each week. Turnover is about the same but our number of covers increases by 20% which is great as the main value of the promotions is to attract new trade. We choose slower periods to run the offers as there's no point attracting business with a lower GP when we are busy anyway and make sure that we obtain new diners' contact details so that we can let them know about future offers."
Top tip: "Make the most of the voucher to get key messages across. Treat it as an advert and include simple things such as clear directions, a website and a phone number."
Beer-tasting plates
Where: North Bar, Leeds
The idea: Assistant manager Mark Cooke says: "North Bar held a special tasting event in February to launch the new range of single-hopped IPAs from Brewdog. Our tasting plates consist of various beers sold in one-third of a pint measures.
With the variety of beers available at North Bar, it's always difficult to decide what to have. Our three permanent tasting plates offer any five beers (£11), our four cask ales (£4) or all 16 beers (£22).
They appeal to people learning about beer and help them understand the breadth of styles and spectrum of flavours. Changing lines also enable experienced customers to taste what's new without having to buy a whole pint.
At this event, four different beers were available, based on the same brew, just hopped with a different variety of single hop: Citra, Nelson Sauvin, Sorachi or Bramling X. A tasting plate of all four was available and accounted for a third of Brewdog sales on the night."
What we needed:"CE-stamped third pint glasses are required.
The tasting plates are described in the printed bar menu and we put up posters in the pub for the Brewdog event."
Business benefits: "Takings were up 40% on an average Wednesday night. Tasting plates attract new customers and allow them to try our wide variety of drinks. People then go on to buy larger measures of the drinks they particularly like."
Top tips: "Supply trays. Offer a wide variety of drinks — if there are more unusual options, people are more likely to go for a tasting plate."
