Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Many people want to start restaurants, but even if you’re a great chef with stellar recipes, you still have to find your niche. The following contributed post is entitled, Finding A Niche For Your Restaurant.
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Looking for a way to attract more business to your restaurant? The answer might not be to try and cater to everyone but to instead find your niche.
If you’re competing with lots of other restaurants in your area, you need to find yourself a unique identity. Targeting a niche might limit the types of new customers you get through your door, but it could also grow the amount of return customers. This is because you’re creating a unique experience that these customers can only go to you for. Below are just a few ideas for carving out a niche.
Consider untapped demographics
Is there a specific group of people in your area in need of a restaurant like yours? This could be one place to start. A few large demographics that can sometimes go untapped include:
· Families with young kids
· Dog owners
· Customers with specific dietary requirements (e.g. vegans, customers with gluten intolerance)
You could decide to really home in on one of these niches. For instance, if your demographic is families with young kids, you could look into commercial swing set parts and create your own playground or build a unique kids’ menu. The more you focus on a niche, the more you risk of alienating people not in that niche, so decide whether there’s really enough customers locally within that niche to make it your full focus.
Give your restaurant a theme
You may be able to carve out a niche by giving your restaurant a unique theme. The most basic form of this is targeting a specific type of cuisine from a certain part of the world such as Chinese food or Italian food. However, if you’re setting up a restaurant in a city, you may find that there are already Chinese and Italian bistros in the area, meaning that you’ll need to come up with an even more specific theme to stand out.
If your premises is a historical building or is located in a historic area, you may be able to incorporate the history into the theme. If you’ve got a certain hobby that you’re passionate about such as movies or sports or cars, then you could even turn this into the theme. This theme could be incorporated into everything from the food to the décor to your visual branding.
Make it more than a restaurant
You may be able to market your restaurant as more than a place to eat and drink. For instance, it could also serve as a music venue for local musicians to play in. You could set up a shop on the side for people to buy books or clothes. You could even host cooking classes there, or let other people hire out the event for parties and functions. This dual purpose is certain to serve as a USP and could help you to build a loyal fanbase that benefits from both of these purposes.
