In the previous post, we shared how you can use the growing trend for supporting interracial couples and open a restaurant with this focus. Today, we prepared a bunch of other business ideas that can help your restaurant win the competition and thrive.
#1. Help pets
A cat or a dog cafe is a popular trend today. This type of restaurant helps to educate future pet wonders about how to take care of their pets and lets people who for some reason can’t afford a cat at home spend time with it. In addition, you help pets find their new homes and do a good deed. By combining the ideas of saving animals with the restaurant business, you gain a positive image in the community, attract more clients, and just do something good.
#2. Use mystery
A restaurant is way more than a place where we eat and get served in a nice atmosphere. People want experience, they want to feel that this place is something totally different. And this is exactly what you can use by leveraging mystery. Some restaurants (the Wooly, Please Don’t Tell, Bohemian) use this idea to make an impression of a hidden bar where guests get something made specifically for them. For example to enter Please Don’t Tell, you need to book in advance and follow instructions even to know where exactly the bar is.
#3. Farm-to-table cuisine
Build partnerships with local farms and take pride in cooking food from natural and healthy ingredients. Let your guests know that they eat food grown up by farmers, which contributed to the unique taste and utility of dishes.
#4. Show your brilliant chefs
Create a place where your guests can see how your chefs cook masterpieces that they eat. You can organize just a space to show particular aspects of cooking (the most spectacular ones), or plan regular master classes in which people can see and even learn something about cooking their favorite dishes.
#5. Self-service bar
Some guests are too picky about drinks, with or without alcohol. They would love to try before buying a whole portion (say, half a liter) or they complain that waiters bring them less than a full portion. Tapster introduced a self-service bar to satisfy the guests like that and just entertain people. On arrival, you get a card, and then you use it to “record” everything you try or pour. At the end of the evening, you pay for everything tracked. This idea allows people to try as much as they want. First, it worked perfectly well for beers, and then they introduced this concept to soft drinks as well, including soda and fresh juice.
#6. Show your eco-friendliness
Being eco-friendly and supportive of social initiatives is quite trendy today. However, people notice whether you work on your image and follow the overall move towards ecology. Reducing waste in the kitchen, adopting eco-conscious policies and showing people that you do it in your kitchen, supporting local farmers, and learning to use as many as possible of your resources (say, even the guts of fish) are proven to be good ideas.
#7. Let guests participate
One more popular yet not overused concept is to allow guests to take part in the dish creation. Some pizza restaurants are using this idea by letting the guest choose what ingredients they want for the pizza.
#8. Healing food
Food can be a remedy, especially when you use the healing powers of particular spices, herbs, and vegetables. You can use the “healthiness” of your dishes to your advantage. A good example of this concept is Apotheke in New York and Los Angeles. They have a collection of homemade tonics (with and without alcohol) that include spices and herbs, such as cardamom and turmeric, to let you feel relaxed or energized.
#9. Make the location non-trivial
When people are too used to the nice ambiance and good service in restaurants, you can surprise them by adding something new to the service. Let’s have a couple of examples. BBQ Donut in Florida serves delicious barbecue on boats. You get the entire set for cooking, including tools, on board a small fancy boat so that you can enjoy water and food at the same time. One more example is Yellow Tree House, a restaurant built literally on a tree, which allows you to feel back like a kid.