Dining Experience: Drive Review & Repeat Booking

It takes more than flavorful dishes and creative dressing to create a memorable dining experience and keep your restaurant business afloat. Take any business, beauty, wellness, or food the focus is often on enticing new customers. Customer service is the cornerstone of every great restaurant. While each customer’s preferences will be different, a few markers help your restaurant stand out. 

A restaurant can have the best food, atmosphere, menu, and ample staff, but will still face declining customers. Why? According to a report shared by Deloitte, more than 50 percent of guests frequently visit the same place, where they received memorable service. And that’s why we are here to define the factors that make for a great dining experience because ultimately a great customer experience generates growth for you. 

What Ensures a Great Restaurant Experience

It’s often the little things and the small details that the guests will recall more than the food you’ll serve. A small gesture of offering a free starter or a special discount can do wonders and give you a loyal clientele. What consumers expect from a restaurant experience indeed depends on various factors. But there are some prime factors that separate the great experience from the forgettable ones.  

Friendly, Personalized Service

There is nothing more important than treating guests like humans instead of just numbers that servers rush out of the door in an attempt to maximize profit. The opportunity to serve the human experience starts with your hosts. They’re the ones your guests are going to have their very first interaction with throughout the meal. Creating a memorable dining experience wants sincerity and positivity. A host who is as excited to serve as customers are enjoying a meal out. To ensure that your team will act and represent you this way, start evaluating them during the hiring process. You’ll need to test their ability to handle pressure gracefully. 

Consistent Great Quality Food 

The food you serve is the bedrock of your business success and certainly influences how guests perceive your services. Offering quality food should be your foremost priority. Food quality can suffer when there’s a lack of attention to quality control of raw materials. Your cook should verify each dish’s plating and presentation and make sure it’s adequate. To keep the customers coming back, set high food quality standards and make sure you live up to them every time.  

Memorable Atmosphere

Renovating your space, interior decor, or furniture is an integral part of encouraging repeat bookings and positive reviews. The memorable atmosphere will include anything unique from Insta-worthy decor to comfortable seating to an online billing system. From color scheme to lighting to furniture choice to crockery, your aesthetic representation is an extension of your brand and a powerful way to generate interest and drive traffic.

The foundation of your restaurant environment is built from the moment you choose your basic service concept. From that point on, the concept should be considered in every decision that’ll shape the restaurant’s atmosphere. Diners are more likely to respond positively when you use soft lighting in the ambiance. Some fast-casual places also go with bright fluorescent lights. However, in a comfortable sit-down location, warm lighting is always more welcoming to guests. Revamping your space will also include thoughtful choice music – acoustic, live band, chill out, or jazz. 

Offer Online Ordering and Reservation

Online food delivery is expected to surpass $93 billion by 2032. As opposed to traditional call-in orders, online ordering is much easier, faster, and more accurate. Almost everyone expects to order food online. When you make online reservations and ordering enabled, it makes your diners’ life much easier and keeps them coming back. 

Stay Advanced with Technology

Change is the only constant in any business industry. And guest expectations have drastically changed after the Covid years. The key is to use the latest technology for your restaurant to improve the guest experience. Looking for such technology to handle all your business operations?

We have a trendy tool to offer you – Picktime. Picktime is a simplified cloud-based appointment scheduling software for restaurants. To avoid missed calls and double bookings use Picktime 24/7 available services. It has a user-friendly interface that can be accessed from multiple locations on any device with 24hrs chat support.

No matter the size of your business, it has cost-saving and efficient features to offer. Using Picktime you’ll get a customizable booking page with a unique URL and a book now button for your website. It will send automatic SMS & email reminders of every booking. You can add tables, services, client & staff details, and manage your in-house reservations just like online reservations.

There are no extra installations required and you can also accept advance payment using PayPal or Stripe. Users can also have an online calendar (Apple/Google/Outlook). Payment, Sales, Reporting, or Team Management Picktime can handle it all. Not only this, users can also have powerful integrations with other business tools including – Google Meet, Zoom, MS Teams, Skype, WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Instagram, Google Maps, MailChimp, Constant Contact, CRMs, Facebook Pixels, and many others. Find out more today by signing up for free. 

Start a Loyalty Program

Rewarding is a surefire way to turn your clients into loyal ones. The more you’ll invest in retaining the existing customer the less complicated it will be to maintain a significant success for your business. An effective loyalty program has proper customer relationship management components for personalized services. Ultimately, loyalty programs are to encourage clients to return to your restaurant and have a memorable dining experience. 

Encouraging Repeat Bookings

It may come as a surprise to you that in order to increase your repeat booking numbers you need to start at the very beginning of customer service. From the moment your prospects hear your restaurant name to the day they visit and leave, it’s all about customer service and how you represent yourself. Repeat bookings are a fantastic marketing tool that will increase customer and brand loyalty. Let’s note down a few pointers that’ll help you in repeat bookings and positive reviews.

• Elevate your pre-arrival guest communication
• Conduct thorough guest research
• Share hot spots and local resources with your guests
• Offer exclusive incentives
• Continue feedback communication after their retreat

Ready to create a memorable dining experience for your guests? Follow the above-shared tips and become a hotspot that people flock to.