When it comes to your restaurant, your menu is one of the most important elements–after all, the food and drink is a key driver as to why customers visit. It’s likely your menu regularly changes, be it on a daily basis or with the seasons, but it’s important to integrate data with creativity to ensure your menu is as profitable and popular as possible.
Lightspeed Advanced Insights uses the data harnessed from Lightspeed Payments–plus staff and sales data sourced from the Lightspeed back officeto create accurate, real-time reports that let you boost restaurant sales. Here’s how:
Understand customer preferences
The Magic Menu Quadrant within Lightspeed Advanced Insights lets you see your menu in a different light. The collective customer data reveals which items are purchased often but not again and which are barely chosen but drive more repeat business through your doors.
This collective data gives you the confidence to update your menu, cutting items that never sell, prioritising the most popular items and designing new dishes based on what the chart tells you.
Predict future trends
One of the most powerful ways you can use data to design your restaurant menu is by predicting the future, and the more data you collect, the better educated you can be. A modern ePOS like Lightspeed Restaurant is equipped with smart functions that show you your best and worst-selling items on your menu over a period of time, as well as the best time of the day or week to sell them.
Analysing past behaviour lets you predict the future and adapt your menu accordingly. If the data shows that on a Monday, the only dishes that sell are noodle soups, then consider shortening your menu to the most popular items only. This, in turn, will boost your restaurant sales.
Reduce food waste
Reducing food waste is vital to every hospitality business, and data analytics let you make smarter, more sustainable decisions. As we mentioned above, if certain dishes don’t sell at certain times, you can avoid buying these ingredients, and thus, avoid wasting these ingredients.
Another way of using data analytics to reduce food waste is by cutting dishes that never sell. Lightspeed Advanced Insights shows you which items are purchased often but not again, showing you that these items aren’t popular, and therefore it may be worth removing these from your menu, and avoiding the food waste associated with preparing these unsold dishes.
