 It’s something restaurant operators have had to prioritize in recent months: making the overall experience they offer feel worthwhile for guests. In a recent episode of the Restaurant Business podcast “A Deeper Dive,” the consumer strategist Lisa Miller covered how consumers perceive the value of restaurants right now – and her research shows that operators may need to keep working to make their experience feel like a good value to guests. In her monthly surveys of consumers, Miller has found that a growing number of consumers feel their restaurant visits are not worthwhile. What’s more, over half of consumers get sticker shock when they visit quick-service restaurants, where prices have jumped 30 percent since the pandemic. She says operators need to make employee training a priority to help deliver experiences to guests that feel worth the price they’re paying. Still, the math may not work out for some restaurant businesses – or it may simply look better if the business model is somehow reimagined. For example, it may not be a coincidence that more restaurant hybrid business models are emerging right now. In recent weeks, the Chicago-based retailers Foxtrot Market and Dom's Kitchen & Market, which offer both fresh meals and groceries, announced they would be merging to form Outfox Hospitality. It’s among the latest examples of foodservice businesses that are trying to continue to offer what restaurants do best while providing options that can elevate home cooking. As more grocery and convenience stores offer higher-quality foods, restaurants that step into this space may be able to showcase the value they offer while minimizing the overhead of conventional restaurant models.
 Your restaurant’s efforts to upsell guests or cross-sell additional items to them may fall by the wayside during a busy shift – or if it’s the responsibility of a new person on staff. But these incremental boosts in sales can mean a lot when you’re trying to maximize business during slower weeks of the year. It’s a good time to take a moment to make sure you’re maximizing sales opportunities – whether with the help of your technology or not. If you don’t have a tech stack that allows you to automatically upsell and cross-sell guests, train your staff boost their success in generating these sales by helping them choose the right moment to suggest a menu item (and doing so enthusiastically but not aggressively), giving them some specific and high-margin items to focus on, focusing on orders where your guests generally welcome some extras (delivery or takeout, for example), and ensuring your staff can pick up cues that a guest is not interested in ordering additional items. Even if you do have upselling and cross-selling capabilities through your POS, review them to make sure you’re making the most of them – just in case having the technology has made it easier for you to set a task and forget about it. You can ensure you capitalize on sales opportunities if you review your guest’s sales journey to make sure they are getting the written and visual messages throughout the process that feel natural to them, set various prompts/deals/promotions and then measure their success, and continuously look for ways to assess and improve each step of the sales journey.
 The holiday rush can put extra strain on your inventory – you want to have the items your guests crave, yet there is also more risk of wastage if you don’t have systems in place to manage your inventory carefully. Operators who have those systems in place, however, can unearth some hidden funds and put them to good use. Restaurants spend between 20 and 40 percent of their revenue on food, according to research form TouchBistro, so there is a lot of potential for saving money (as well as overspending). If you need to bring more rigor to your inventory management practices, a recent report from The Rail provides some guidance. First, you need to create a regular schedule for taking inventory and assign a senior staff member to the task. Place your ingredients into categories and organize your stock to reflect it so items are easy to find during prep and it’s more obvious when items are missing or low. Operate a lean inventory with enough stock to meet guest demand and no more. Track the waste that doesn’t end up in a guest’s dish so you can identify waste patterns and also find potential uses for these leftover ingredients – it helps to use software to precisely measure each recipe’s ingredients. Designate a single person to handle deliveries coming into the restaurant – it can help you maintain a better ordering structure and improve your inventory accuracy. Finally, connect your inventory management system with your POS. As the nerve center of your business, it will help you better anticipate factors that can impact your ordering schedule and key ingredients.
 Much like it’s easier and less expensive for restaurants to retain existing customers than attract new ones, operators are in a much stronger position if they can retain and develop their existing staff – not have to constantly look for new people. A study from the Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University found that the average cost of employee turnover is nearly $5,900 per person – funds that could go a lot farther in developing the kinds of resources that would encourage existing staff to stay on. According to a Restaurant Dive report about commentary shared during a panel of labor experts at the recent Restaurant Finance & Development Conference, restaurants need retention and development strategies that work at scale. Getting new employees to stay past the 90-day mark is especially important because these employees account for 12-15 percent of labor costs at casual restaurants and 22 percent of labor costs at limited-service restaurants, said panelist Luke Fryer, CEO of hospitality workforce management firm Harri. You can best identify your pain points – and improve upon them – by mapping out the average growth cycle of employees. At each stage of the employee journey, what are their biggest concerns? How might you address them with tech, tools, training or development opportunities? You also want to be able to identify your best talent early so you can provide what’s needed to retain those people. That means having frequent check-ins to see how things are going – and so they see that you want them to succeed.
 In uncertain economic times, your loyalty program gives you an opportunity to solidify bonds with your best guests and transform more transactional relationships into loyal, engaged connections. What’s exciting about these programs is that while they are plentiful, they are also diverse – restaurants can (and should) develop their own loyalty playbook as an extension of their brand. The offers and experiences you promote should reflect your brand values. There is always room to refine your program and ensure it is effectively building your business. In a recent interview with Forbes, Savneet Singh, CEO and President of PAR Technology, suggests a range of actions restaurant operators can take to test the effectiveness of their loyalty program. Among them: Measure your program’s return on investment – for both you and the guest. Track how your roster of members is growing, as well as how engaged they are. Monitor your average transaction values so you can ensure program membership leads to more spending – and take action to make improvements if it isn’t. Use surveys to gather feedback from guests to ensure they are satisfied with the program. This may also help you gather a continuous stream of new ideas to help you keep your program fresh.
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