
Attract New Customers
Getting Creative with New Ingredients
Learn how Chef Eric Von Hansen @caliente_pizza creates successful menu innovations with new ingredients.
When planned in advance, execution of your limited time offer or special menu item can provide your restaurant with increased traffic and sales dollars. But determining what you should offer can be challenging even for the most successful operator.
LTOs are essential to meeting guests’ desire for new experiences. You can be sure that guests will seek these experiences elsewhere if you don’t offer them. Follow the steps below to plan and execute your next LTO.
What are you trying to achieve with this special offer?
Make sure to select the right menu items to offer in order to meet your goal. Choosing something that isn’t unique or doesn’t fit your brand is unlikely to bring in additional sales. Adding items that don’t enhance your established brand may confuse your customer base and turn them away rather than bring them back.
Use the same method to determine the price of your specials as you do for all of your menu items ensuring that they are in line with your current pricing strategy.
The success of your specials not only depends on the quality and flavor of the food, but also on how well you got the word out about your offer.
After the special has run its course you will want to see if you met your goal so that you can make adjustments for your next one. Based on your original goal how did your LTO perform?
By putting together your LTO plan in advance, promoting it heavily while it is running and analyzing your results at the end, you will be setting yourself up for success. To help you get started, Grande has created a calendar template with activity timing, suggested menu items/recipes and success factors. Click here to download the calendar and LTO suggestions.
To go discover five on-trend recipes for your next LTO, explore our suggestions supported by insights or view the recipes via the links below:
¹Datassential Blueprint for LTO Success, 2017