Many restaurant owners are facing a drop in traffic. This phenomenon, in addition to having a negative impact on your sales, should be interpreted as a warning signal.
This should alert you to a malfunction in your business. Lack of visibility, unattractive concept, non-optimal customer experience or simply a cyclical slump, it's time to investigate the causes of this drop in traffic in order to stop it as soon as possible. Here are some tips to help you!
Analyze the context of the decline in attendance
Are you facing a drop in attendance in your establishment and want to remedy it? Before any action is taken, there is first an analysis phase, that of the context and the causes that led to this change.
External factors
As you may have noticed, the HCR sector is currently going through a period of great turbulence.
Increased costs
The war in Ukraine and the energy crisis have led to an increase in prices that all industries are facing, including the restaurant industry. The cost of raw materials and energy has risen considerably, and you have been or will be forced to pass this on to your customers. The clientele is therefore absorbing part of this price increase. Most regular customers will continue to come to your restaurant, but they may visit less often. Others will unfortunately leave your restaurant for a competitor with more affordable prices.
Customers are also suffering from inflation in their personal lives and are being forced to cut back on leisure spending, including dining out.
New consumption habits
In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of new consumption habits. While the French continue to go to restaurants, more and more of them are having their meals delivered or opting for click & collect. We owe the acceleration of these two modes of consumption to the confinements imposed during the pandemic and to the democratization of telecommuting. The desire to eat in a more responsible way, to adopt more ethical production methods as well as to consume homemade dishes or to discover flavors from other countries are all trends that you should take into account.
This is more than just a stigma of the pandemic, as these behaviors seem to become established over time.
As NPD Group's out-of-home catering (OOH) study "Catering: how did the first post-Covid summer go?" points out, the foodservice sector is suffering. According to the study, commercial catering saw a 13% decline in visits and a 10% drop in spending between 2022 and 2019. Meals-on-wheels, meanwhile, saw a 20% drop in visits over the same period.
A shortage of personnel
Shifting hours, unattractive salaries, fast pace, the working conditions of the restaurant sector partly justify the difficulties of recruitment that the professionals of the sector encounter. Due to all these constraints, many have turned away from positions in the HCR and have converted.
Internal factors
Besides external factors, what are some other reasons why fewer and fewer customers are coming to your facility? Here are a few things to explore:
- The prices on your menu in line with the quality of the dishes?
- Have you invested enough in marketing and communication?
- Is your target audience sensitive to your concept?
- Is the customer experience optimal (waiting time, service quality, decoration, atmosphere, etc.)?
- Are you meeting your customers' expectations?
- Has the competition increased recently?
Having trouble identifying these internal factors? Don't hesitate to call on a professional who will have the necessary hindsight and knowledge of the sector to help you.
Identifying the causes of this decline in attendance is key. This reflection will give you some of the answers as to the strategies to put in place to reverse the trend.
Also, trust the customers who frequent your establishment and don't hesitate to read your reviews on Tripadvisor or Google. They will be able to tell you why they are likely or not to return.
Calculate your attendance rate
The attendance rate is a commercial indicator that will allow you to evaluate the activity of your restaurant, and more precisely the level of attendance. It is expressed as a percentage and is obtained by dividing the number of covers served by the restaurant's capacity over a given period and multiplying the total by 100.
Let's put it into practice. During a service, your establishment can accommodate 50 guests. During each of these services, you estimate that you will receive an average of 25 customers. Your attendance rate is therefore equal to (25 customers/50 covers) x 100, or 50%.
To calculate your restaurant's attendance by time period, day, month, season or year, simply adjust the components of this simple equation. You will only notice an increase or decrease in the number of customers if you do this calculation regularly and compare the results from one period to another. This way, you can see how the attendance evolves over a week, a month or a year. Also remember to take note of factors that may have impacted your calculation: stock shortage, employee sick leave, bad weather, school vacations, high/low tourist season, economic/sanitary crisis, etc.
This indicator will allow you to determine if the drop in traffic you are observing is cyclical or not. If it is, you can then take appropriate measures to anticipate the expected slack periods or decide to close at those times. On the other hand, if the drop in traffic is unexpected compared to your forecasts, this will serve as a warning signal.
For example, IO Analytics allows you to see at a glance how many people visit your restaurant per hour, per day and per week, and thus adapt your opening hours, your staffing needs and your stock!
4 tips to attract more customers
Among all the existing techniques to attract new customers and encourage customers to remain loyal to you, we have selected 4.
1. Rely on current trends
Just like the textile and decoration industries, the restaurant industry is also subject to fashion trends. It is therefore essential to carefully follow what is being done in the sector and to regularly monitor emerging trends. You will then be able to surf on them and propose an offer in adequacy with the desires of today's customers.
Vegetarianism, organic and local products, homemade food, world cuisine are all trends that you don't want to miss at the risk of seeing customers lose interest in your establishment.
Psssst, Innovorder has premixed this 2025 watch for you: Fast food: 8 trends not to be missed in 2025
2. Implement a loyalty strategy
One of the quickest and most effective ways to deal with a decline in customer traffic is to implement a loyalty strategy. When a customer pushes the door of a restaurant for the first time, the hardest part is behind you. You have already convinced them once, you will know how to do it again!
To do this, start by giving your customers, especially the most loyal ones, a warm and personalized welcome. That couple of customers that you welcome every week will certainly appreciate that you have reserved their usual table for them without them having asked for it. You can also offer your customers a loyalty program (discounts, exclusive offers, special events, etc).
Don't hesitate to involve them in the decision process and encourage them to give their opinion. Why not make a poll on your social networks to help you choose between this or that light fixture or between this or that a la carte dish? After voting, they'll be tempted to visit the restaurant to see that piece of decor with their own eyes or to try out that new recipe that now appears on the menu.
👉 Going further: restaurant subscriptions: the future of dining?
3. Modernize your facility
As you may have noticed, French people's behavior regarding food has changed a lot, especially since the last global pandemic. Many of us have become accustomed to ordering their meals by click & collect or having them delivered.
These customers will no longer or less frequent your establishment, but they are not lost customers, quite the contrary. They just need you to adapt. How can you do that? By allowing them to have access to your menu not at the table, but by delivery or click & collect thanks to meal delivery platforms like Uber Eats or Deliveroo. It's up to you to offer an omnichannel sale. This solution is inexpensive to implement. Moreover, it allows a real growth of the average basket which on average increases by 20 to 25% and this positively impacts the turnover.
Perhaps your image is aging? Do you want to improve the customer experience while dealing with labor shortages? Ordering terminals, production screens, AI tray scanners, thanks to these digital tools, you will also improve the customer experience by reducing waiting time and the risk of order errors, but you will also improve your image and remedy the lack of staff. In the long run, all this will allow you to stop the drop in traffic that you are facing.
Don't wait any longer and contact one of the Innovorder experts!
4. Promote your restaurant
Can your restaurant's decline in traffic be explained by a lack of communication or insufficient promotion? A drop in traffic is not always due to a bad experience that discourages a customer from coming back to your restaurant or a negative reputation that drives away new customers. Potential customers may simply not know you exist.
You will have to promote your restaurant through different communication channels : website, emailing campaigns, television, local press or radio, sponsoring, posters, social networks, online advertisements, etc.
Making your brand known to as many people as possible is crucial, but so is getting it into the minds of your customers. You will make sure that it will immediately come to mind when they are looking for a place to dine or have lunch.
👉 To go further: How to advertise on Facebook for your restaurant?
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Do you want to attract new customers to your restaurant but don't know how? Contact an Innovorder expert to get advice for your restaurant.
