Fall is a triple witching time for a restaurant’s takeout and delivery business.  Summer travel schedules are mostly done, allowing for more routine dining.  Takeout and delivery gets a boost in business from the double punch of college and professional football games. Then add October for playoff baseball and the World Series.  Some people love ordering in and enjoying the game at home, rather than visiting their local watering hole.

What sells during game time?  Wings see a 45% increase in takeout orders during football season, while orders for beef and broccoli see a 26% jump in the Chinese food category.  Pizza, of course, is off the charts during sporting events.

What can you do to draw that online takeout business to your restaurant?  Here are some tips:

•    Promote specials to customers ordering online.  Order an appetizer for a game and get 50% off a second appetizer.
•    Craft entree and combos that are particularly applicable because they work well for takeout.  These online combos should be “guy-oriented” – like pizza, wings, sandwiches, chips and guacamole - things that go well with sporting events and groups of enthusiastic spectators.

Remember the supermodel Cindy Crawford? Her motto was, "The camera never blinks." She realized she had to look stunning all the time.  For restaurants, the motto is, "Yelp never blinks." Anyone can put a review of your restaurant on Yelp, and once a bad review is up there, it’s virtually impossible to remove.

How important are Yelp ratings for your restaurant?  According to a recent article in the Economic Journal and reported by Mashable.com, a Yelp rating increase of just a half-star can translate to a rise in peak-hour traffic by as much as 19%.


But here’s the inside story - according to Mashable, Yelp rates restaurants between 1 and 5 stars, and they round to the nearest half-star.  "A restaurant with a rating of 3.24 will show 3 stars.  A restaurant with five or more reviews and a slightly higher average of 3.26 rating will display 3.5 stars."  What a difference .02 can make!

Here are some tips for dealing with Yelp reviews:
•    Ask customers who are in your restaurant several times a week to review your restaurant on Yelp.  A few sentences will do it.  Each rating will show you who posted the review.  Perhaps you can reward them with an appetizer or free drink the next time they’re in.
•    People always remember the last thing you did for them.  If a customer complains because the food took too long to prepare, or their order was wrong, what they will remember more than the foul-up is your sincere apology and how you bent over backwards to make things better.  This should help prevent bad reviews.
•    It's all about providing consistently good service.  Day in and day out, give your customers the best.  That's what gets the best ratings and that's what brings customers back.