Why is my restaurant so slow?

Before you buy ads, cut prices or change the menu, spend twenty minutes finding out which kind of slow you have. The two kinds look the same from the host stand and need opposite fixes.

Step 1: compare against yourself, not against a feeling

"Slow" usually means slower than you expected, and expectations are bad measuring tools. Pull the covers or checks for the last four weeks and for the same four weeks a year ago, matched by day of the week. A Tuesday compares with a Tuesday.

• If this year matches last year, you are probably looking at a normal seasonal dip. It is still worth acting on, but nothing is broken.
• If this year is clearly lower, something changed, and the next step tells you where.
• If you have no data from last year, compare the last four weeks with the four before. It is weaker, because the season moves under it, but it is better than guessing.

Step 2: split new guests from returning guests

Many point of sale and reservation systems can show whether a guest is new or has visited before, usually by card, phone number, email or loyalty account. Look at both numbers for the same two periods.

If fewer new guests are finding you

1. Search your own restaurant on Google Maps from a phone. Check the hours, the menu link, the photos and the most recent reviews. Wrong hours alone can empty a night.
2. Read the last twenty reviews, not the average. A rating can stay the same while recent reviews start mentioning the same complaint.
3. Walk the block. Construction, a closed parking lot, a new place across the street. None of it shows up in a report.
4. Check the delivery apps. If you are on them, a ranking change can move orders that used to be dine-in visits.

This is the one case where advertising can help, because it is literally a shortage of strangers. Fix the free items above first, or the ads will send people to the same problem.

If past guests are coming back less

This is the quieter problem, and the more expensive one, because these guests already chose you once. Nothing in a normal week pulls them back: they simply go somewhere else a few more times than before, and the gap grows.

1. Find who stopped. Guests who used to come regularly and have now gone noticeably longer than their usual gap. How to set that threshold for each guest is on when a restaurant guest is actually lapsed.
2. Check whether you can reach them. Only guests who agreed to hear from you can be contacted. If almost nobody did, the first job is capturing permission from now on.
3. Invite them personally, with a reason. A new dish, a season, a note that you noticed they have not been in. A reason works better than a discount and does not shrink every future check.
4. Measure it properly. Leave a random slice of that list uncontacted and compare. Some guests were coming back anyway. The method is on how to tell if a win-back campaign actually made money.

If you are comparing tools

Several companies now offer to bring guests back for you. Owner, Toast and SevenRooms sell restaurant software that includes guest marketing tools. Others, such as Splango, write and send promotions for you. Pricing is published by some and quoted after a demo by others. Whatever you look at, ask the same three questions:

• Who does the work? Writing, sending and following up every week, or a dashboard someone on your staff has to remember to open.
• Which list does it use? Your own guests who agreed to hear from you, or a list that belongs to the platform.
• How does it prove a guest came back because of a message? If the answer does not involve a group that received nothing, the result is a guess.

When this is not the answer

If recent reviews point at the food, the service or the price, no campaign will fix that, and inviting people back may remind them why they left. Fix the experience first. And if the restaurant opened recently, there may not be enough returning guests yet for the split in step 2 to mean much.

Questions owners actually ask