I purchased a 10 year old, established place in '08 that was a death trap. One of the best things I learned was to think along the lines of making or saving $10 a day. It’s not much, until you look at it over the course of a year. Can you cut out some excess payroll? One hour a day after taxes will be a $3,500 shift over the course of a year.
What about phone lines? I saved a ton of money switching to VOIP lines over the 2-line system the place was running with land lines from the local phone company. Can you do a hybrid of doorhanging and direct mail? There are parts of our town that are difficult to door hang and the residents don’t like it, vs. other areas that don’t mind and are close together. I can hang 100 menus an hour. If you’re doing EDDM at that rate, you could hang (considering payroll taxes) 75% more menus doing it with your own employees.
Considering you’re making a decent profit already, what if you made some of those changes and reallocated that savings into some of the other ideas already presented.
Have you considered expanding your menu? We recently moved (and this is a very, very, very special circumstance) to a location that added a minimal increase in fixed costs, while still covering the costs of purchasing our old building. We added a full, casual Italian dining menu that has zero competition in town and doubled our sales overnight.
