Optimising Profit Opportunities By Expanding Dayparts

KEY INSIGHTS

• The old predictability of three meals a day is moving towards more grazing and snacking
• You can encourage customer participation across different dayparts by promoting specific occasions
  
• In expanding your menu across these periods, try to repurpose what you already stock rather than bringing in additional product
  
• Instagram is an efficient means of promoting new menu additions to capitalise upon particular dayparts
  

With foodservice operators seeking to rebuild their customer base now that lockdowns are hopefully behind us, one of the challenges is recapturing the business lost to new quick service and direct-delivery alternatives which have carved out their own niche in the market over the past year.

One way to address this is by looking at ways to maximise your profit potential across all relevant dayparts. The first step is to ask yourself how you can attract more customers outside of your traditional high-volume dayparts – ie those built around lunch, dinner and, in the case of the café market, breakfast.

In thinking about dayparts it’s important to remember that the increasing flexibility of work hours is changing the way your potential customers structure their day. While business people and office workers often have to delay their breakfast and lunch meals due to meetings, consumers who are working from home have newfound opportunities to dine out or order in at times that suit them.

In other words, the old predictability of ‘three square meals a day’ is being replaced with a move towards a greater demand for grazing and snacking – smaller meals more often, spread throughout the day. You can capitalise on this by ensuring your kitchen is set up to offer all-day breakfasts, lighter snacking meals and a broader variety across your entire opening hours.

This may require some changes to your kitchen and staffing setup, such as ensuring sufficient ingredients inventory and necessary storage capacity. You might also need to redesign your seating areas to accommodate more customers outside of the usual peak periods – assuming the demand is there for dine-in. If on the other hand you’re doing more takeaway or home delivery orders, it might be better to reduce seating and instead expand back of house space as needed.

You can encourage customer participation across different dayparts by promoting specific occasions such as happy hours, late night dining, early/late afternoon snacking or brunch – all of which provide an opportunity to increase sales. You might also consider extending your opening hours until later in the evening which can also boost higher-margin alcohol sales by appealing to the late night crowd.

It’s also important to make sure your menu has items which fit these dayparts – if necessary, expand your offerings with food that complements the type of meals you serve in peak periods, but which captures a different part of the market. But in doing this you should be looking to streamline your menu by using what you already have in stock to your advantage, rather than bring in a lot of additional product which will add to your labour and prep cost. Shared or repurposed ingredients cut down menu complexity – so look at where you can create new applications for menu mainstays like cheese, flatbreads or focaccia.

For example you might add some attractive Italian style salads or antipasto plates to complement your main pizza/pasta offering for those customers dining mid-morning or mid-afternoon, or offer some discounts such as on coffee with a snack for breakfast/brunch customers, and alcohol with a light meal for late-evening diners.

Naturally you’ll need to communicate these initiatives to customers via marketing activity, both in-premises and via your social media accounts. Instagram in particular provides an efficient means of publicising new menu additions designed to capitalise upon specific dayparts and drive new customer business.

By boosting your overall menu offering in this way, you can also encourage customers to increase their spend when they’re in your venue, as well as tempt them to visit more frequently.

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