Recipe for Success: 8 Tips for Running a Successful Restaurant

Whether your restaurant is new, well-established, or already a local icon, making it successful day-to-day can be challenging. There are decisions you need to make about the food and the menu, but also the staff, the presentation, your restaurant marketing tactics, and even more.

So if you’re wondering how to run a successful restaurant, Uber Eats is here to help. Here’s a list of restaurant marketing techniques, food recommendations, and general operational tips to help you run a successful restaurant.

Serving dozens upon dozens of dishes is an easy way to overwhelm your customers. When faced with choice paralysis, they may simply click over to one of your competitors.

Instead of trying to do everything for everyone, focus your menu on a handful of delicious and memorable meals that you can become known for.

You’ll save money on inventory, help your chefs get through more orders, and build a dedicated customer base who love ordering your unique meals.

Similarly, you can’t do everything at your restaurant. Not being properly staffed is an easy way to miss orders or keep customers waiting.

That’s why you need employees you can trust. The more tasks you can successfully delegate to skilled staff, the more time you have to focus on the bigger picture.

Hire people who are passionate, and then make sure they have the training, support, and recognition they need to be successful. Define everyone’s roles and responsibilities. And make sure everyone knows how to handle emergency situations in the kitchen.

Remember: hire for attitude, train for skills.

Ads are one of the most effective restaurant marketing tools in your arsenal. Good food makes customers return; good ads attract them in the first place.

And Uber Eats Manager makes advertising your restaurant easy and effective. When you create an ads campaign in Uber Eats Manager, your restaurant appears higher up in the feed for relevant customers. Talk about grabbing their attention.

Even if you have no advertising experience, it only takes a few minutes to get started. Simply set your budget and bidding method, and let us handle the rest. 

And restaurants that place ads in Uber Eats receive up to 14% more orders*.

You can see how much value your ads are creating through Uber Eats Manager too, and then use these stats to help you decide how to adjust your campaign settings to further improve performance for future ads.

Unless your clientele is the lunch rush corporate type, your menu will most likely benefit from having a few kid-friendly meals.

Make straightforward dishes with salty and sweet flavours. It’s not your job to challenge their palate. If you run a Mexican restaurant, you could serve cheese melt quesadillas. If you’re an American steakhouse, make sure there’s a basic cheeseburger for the kids.

If a kid is excited about what they ate at your restaurant, the parents are likely to order from you again.

Aussies are always hankering for a deal, so offering discounts is an easy way to increase orders – and you can also run them through Uber Eats Manager. In fact, restaurants that utilise these promotions generally see an 86% increase in orders*.

Once again, you can log in to Uber Eats Manager and choose from a number of time-tested offers, like “buy 1, get 1 free”, “spend more, save more”, and “free item with purchase”.

With Uber Eats offers, you set your budget and you’re only charged for an offer when customers actually order through it. You’re also in control of the details of each offer. For instance, you can make it so your customers need to spend more than $30 in order to receive a $10 discount. This lets you ensure your offers increase sales, but at a rate that’s sustainable for your restaurant.

After creating your offer, you can monitor how effective it is through Uber Eats Manager, and change your approach as your needs evolve.

If you really want to encourage people to order from your restaurant, you can utilise multiple restaurant marketing tactics in tandem. For instance, you can run multiple offers at once, or combine offers with an ads campaign so your restaurant can appear higher on the feed for relevant customers.

It doesn’t matter if you’re running a fancy French restaurant or a fast food joint, the quality of your meals matters. Always use fresh ingredients, cook them well, and present them in an appealing fashion – or if you’re preparing an order for delivery, package them in a way that ensures they’ll still be in one piece after the journey.

When customers are spoiled for choice, making your meals look and taste spectacular will separate you from the competition.

During peak hours, it can be tempting to let the quality or presentation of your meals slide. But it’s vital that you rise to the challenge and serve the delicious meal your menu promised. Communicate your baseline expectations to your kitchen staff, and routinely check that they are meeting your customers’ needs.

Deep down, customers know that making an amazing meal takes time. However, deeper down in the pits of their stomachs, they are hungry and they want to eat straight away.

It’s important to take any and every step possible to prepare meals in a reasonable time frame, all while not cutting any culinary corners.

Before opening your restaurant each day, you and your staff should do as much prep as possible. If you’re a pizza restaurant, pre-make your dough. If you serve lots of salads, have all your veggies pre-cut and ready-to-go. All this prep will pay off dividends.

You can also cut wait times by working out your busiest hours and having more staff on during these shifts. Is your restaurant struggling to get out orders come Saturday night? If so, it wouldn’t hurt to have some extra hands on deck.

Creating a loyalty program is one of the best marketing tips for a small business. They entice patrons to regularly order your food over your competitors with the promise of getting something in return in the near future. Not only are you encouraging repeat customers and building brand love, but the long-term nature of these programs ensures you’re not out of pocket too often.

For instance, you might give customers a discount on their 10th order. This way, they’re incentivised to order from you repeatedly, but you still get paid full price for the majority of their meals.

You can also use Uber Eats Manager to reward loyal customers who review your restaurant, sending them a thank you message and a discount on their next order with you.

You’re not alone if you’re wondering how to run a successful restaurant. It’s hard work, but there are lots of restaurant marketing techniques you can utilise to increase your chances – and your sales. And Uber Eats Manager is your key to unlocking some of the best and most effective of these restaurant marketing techniques.

*Uber internal data based on performance across all restaurants in Australia and New Zealand between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024.