Upselling in Restaurant

Upselling in restaurant is a very powerful tool to achieve incremental revenue from existing guest.

Used effectively, it need not come across as very pushy. Infact upsell can be used as a tool to identify opportunities to satisfy the needs of a guest.

In a restaurant, you have multiple opportunity to upsell . In this article we can look at a few upsell opportunities in beverage

Start with Water

Water provides a perfect opportunity to upsell. Premium water help to increase the average cheque and also provide guest an alternative to sugary beverage.

In order to upsell water, the simplest way is to offer 2 options. Sparkling or Still. Remember your goal in this is to avoid tap water, which is free.

A fancy dialogue for selling water that you can use :

” In our restaurant we have a selection of sparkling and still water. The (insert brand ) sparkling water is perfect for this weather.”

Practice the statement till you are comfortable selling water. Usually these have a great contribution margin and can help boost your bottom line

Juice or an alcoholic beverage

The next level of upsell are either a freshly squeezed juice or alcoholic beverage.

These have a natural demand and is also easy to suggest and recommend. Going with the concept of offering choice, offer a choice between juice or alcoholic beverage.

The reason to offer choice of 2 is so that the guest feels the need to pick one from the 2 offered choices.

If you ask a question like would you like a juice, the answer can be a no. But if you recommend between 2 choices, it is more difficult to just say no.

Finally offer Premium beverages

Premium beverages are great to boost top line. It can also help increase the guest perception of your restaurant and their own meal experience.

Restaurant offer multiple options to suggest premium beverage : a celebration, an occasion etc. If you know the same in advance, it is easier to upsell. However even if you discover a celebration during the meal, offer a premium beverage during the meal.

How to Upsell?

The key to upsell is to

• Know your guest
• Be confident
• Know your product.

By following this techniques and enrolling for the course on upselling, you will be able to sell more.