The food combo is a marketing strategy many restaurateurs embrace to promote their menus. Many consumers dearly love these combos as they are assured of making a better saving on a combo meal than single meals while experiencing variety on a plate, which perceives value for money.
For restaurateurs, this strategy is an excellent way to promote their restaurants, providing a somewhat stable customer base, which translates into good daily income. Making these food combos, however, requires a strategy to be effective. This article helps you implement optimal strategies for making food combos to promote your restaurant.
Adding Drink to the Combo
This food combo strategy is common among fast food restaurants such as KFC and McDonald's. Fast foods often go great with a drink, so why not order that food combo with a free drink?
For instance, the cola and fried chicken combo is a common sight that many consumers often opt for. The sweet and salty flavors always have a thing going that makes this combo irresistible.
Pairing your food with wine is also an excellent food combo idea. You must be well-versed in what wine type is pairable with which food. For instance, pairing white wine with macaroni or smoky fish with red wine would make excellent combos.
If your customers love your food and wine combos, you could make that the brand for your restaurant and have a DIY wine cellar to store your wine.
Seasonal Combos
Keeping up with the seasons is one way to ensure your menu remains refreshing to your customers. This food combo method is comparable to the fashion world, which sees many changes throughout the year.
For instance, you could come up with a combo menu that suits summer, such as ice cream dessert and fries, or a winter combo of hot chocolate, cookies, and combos from seasonal fruits and vegetables, such as apples and pumpkins.
It would be best if you made it clear to your customers that you will only offer particular food combos during that specific season, and the food combos will be prepared using fresh vegetables and fruits that are in season.
With this information, the customer will want to experience what you are offering that is in season, as the only other time to have it listed on the menu would be until the following year.
Selling two Half Dishes for One
Many restaurateurs are on the fence about how to make money out of food combos. The idea should always remain, offering fewer portions of each meal to make a complete combo. For instance, the onion rings and burger combo has lesser portions of onion rings and a smaller burger.
To make the perfect combo, however, you must be willing to test every pairing in your menu and allow your friends, family, or staff to critique the dishes. Be ready to let consumers pick the combos they wish to have. It enables them to engage delightfully with your menu.
Harmonize Between Best-Selling and Least -Selling Foods
The food combo strategy will work wonders if your newly opened restaurant faces not-so-good sales on particular meals. A common reason some meals are not as great as others is that the customer will shy away from uncommon meals that might not be well elaborated.
To help get such meals sold, make a food combo of the best-selling meals together with them to increase their awareness among your consumers. For instance, if your soup could be doing better, then opt to pair it soup with your best-selling sandwiches.
This combo strategy is also excellent for introducing new meals to the menu, enabling the consumer to know the meal and its proper pairing with various meals.
Daily Category Combos
If you are a restaurant offering a wide variety of meals, consider sorting them out into various daily meals. They include breakfast combos, lunch combos, dinner combos, and don't forget snack combos. This sorting helps consumers easily choose what they want to order depending on the time of day and allows the chefs to schedule adequate time to prepare meals according to the time of day.
You could have combos ranging from pumpkin pie french toast, yogurt, salmon, and avocado to a green smoothie with raw fruits for breakfast. The restaurant must serve breakfast combos that embody a homey feel and is full of energy to help customers start their day.
For snacks, have light food combos. Excellent snack combos are the likes of string cheese and apple slices, cottage cheese and pineapples, or other cheese with appropriate wine pairings.
A Separate Combo Menu
This excellent idea saves the consumer time, having to look throughout the menu in search of the food combo section. Most customers will often ask if you have a menu for food combos, so why not?
The menu also allows the restaurateur to subcategories the meals into seasonal or according to daily mealtimes. It will even give the server an easier time explaining the combos to the customer as there is enough space on the separate menu that explains all about the combo.
Make sure you name each combo uniquely and in a way that the customer will easily understand. Train the server on their combo description and help customers choose one.
The combo menu can also be used as a marketing tool on platforms such as your restaurant blog or social networks. It is an excellent way of getting consumers to talk about particular combos.
Final Thoughts
Since the food combo idea was coined, many customers have been able to delight in a variety of single meals on one plate, and restaurateurs have also taken full advantage of the combos' popularity.
Good old food combos such as coca cola and fried chicken have remained long-standing despite the emergence of new food combos. It shows that no matter the time of inception, a good food combo remains endearing in the hearts and mouths of food lovers.
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