A meal that doesn’t often get enough attention from restaurant diners is dessert. While dinner may be viewed as a necessity, dessert is often seen as a decadent option. This leaves restaurateurs with the challenge of finding ways to get customers to embrace this part of the dining experience.
Engage the customer
In order to get customers excited about your dessert offering, your wait staff should brush up on how they present items on the dessert menu. Instead of just listing the names of the dishes, they could talk about the ingredients or how the desserts are made. By doing this they tell a story behind the dessert, which may make the dish sound appealing to customers.
Create picture-perfect presentations
Some restaurants have created dessert presentations with the specific aim of getting mouth-watering pictures for social media. If your desserts are not Instagram worthy, make a point of working with your chef to create new ways of presenting the dishes. Take pictures of your new creations and share them on social media. This may pique the interest of some people and turn them into customers.
Experiment with ingredients
As people’s tastes vary, having a wide selection of desserts may help in getting your customers to try your dishes. Have a versatile menu, that changes throughout the year to accommodate fruit and other ingredients available seasonally. With each change in season, comes an opportunity to reach out to your customers and let them know about the new dessert options you have on your menu. Regularly updating your customers will serve to keep your restaurant fresh on their minds.
In addition to classic desserts, you could also have signature desserts for your restaurant. These could be tied into your restaurant’s story, which should be shared through your various media channels.
Provide a unique experience
We live at a time when people love sharing. Creating a dessert that people can share may attract couples or a group of friends on their night out. Your chef can put a spin on traditional desserts and make shareable versions of it.
Another great way of getting customers to consider dessert is by pairing it with certain drinks. As your diners order the drinks, you can introduce the dessert to them. Let the customers know what ingredients have been used in the dessert and what makes it a perfect match for their drink. Engaging with customers in this manner may help get them to consider adding the dessert to their order.
Some customers may choose to skip dessert as they don’t like staying too long after their dinner is over. You can offer them dessert to go. This may make them more open to browsing your menu and choosing a dessert they may enjoy at their next destination.
You may need to experiment with a few dessert dishes before finally finding ones that your customers like. By following the suggestions above, your restaurant may see a rise in sales as more customers opt to add dessert to their dining experience.
