Increasing Loyalty: Why Restaurants Need to Build Customer Trust through Nutrition and Social Responsibility
It may seem like in times like these, customers are less likely to be trusting of any establishment. After all, there are so many risks. While it may seem difficult to do from a business standpoint, you will need customer loyalty in order to boost your revenue. Why restaurants need to build customer trust? It’s the most basic building block to a consistent relationship with your intended audience.
Customer trust is the foundation on which all loyal customer relationships are built. Gaining customer trust means respecting customers, understanding what they want, and prioritizing the customers’ wellbeing. In order to do that, you’ll need to focus on nutrition and social responsibility, even if that’s the fastest path to short-term revenue.
What Is Social Responsibility?
In short, social responsibility means that you have a responsibility to act within the best interests of society. Restaurants are intrinsically connected to customer health.
Health begins with what you put in your body. These days, customers are busier than ever, and many don’t have time to cook or go grocery shopping very often. For many customers, restaurants are the primary source of health and nutrition.
It’s important, in this case, to make sure your customers know what they are putting in their bodies. You need to maintain transparency, and give customers unfiltered access to information on nutrition and ingredients. By doing this, you can prove to your customers that you take social responsibility seriously.
Why it Benefits Your Business
Your customers are more perceptive than many would give them credit for and they want to be able to trust the businesses they are loyal to.
Rather than losing customers due to a poor reputation, put your customers first. Take care of them and show them why they can trust you. Be transparent about what you are putting into your food, and let your customers make an educated decision about what they consume.
This is more important now than ever. Because COVID-19 is still not fully understood, and seems to be affecting people with prior health conditions, consumers are more focused on health and wellness than ever. They are careful about what they are putting in their bodies, and want to know what exactly is in their food. Delivering on this demand will be instrumental in maintain a loyal customer base moving forward.
Menu Creation and Updates
The easiest way to increase transparency from the get-go is to include calorie counts on your menu. Taking this first step will do so much to show customers that you are committed to helping them in their own journey to improve their health and wellness.
While it seems like a massive undertaking to transform your menu, remember that you don’t have to do it all at once. You can start by adding a small section with healthier options. Many restaurants have an “under 600-calorie” menu that showcases all of their guilt-free meal options. You may even have enough options already to include this section, and all you need is some simple menu redesign.
Promote these meal options to your customers by offering discounts and deals at first. See how these options perform by monitoring sales, and if successful, begin slowly building out your menu with healthier options and locally-sourced ingredients.
Many restauranteurs have found success by jumping on the vegetarian and vegan train. This not only expands your offerings, but helps you reach a wider customer base while capitalizing on a very in-demand trend. Other trending options include gluten-free, dairy-free, organic, low-carb, and low-sugar dishes.
Leverage Your Technology
A solid POS system will provide you with the tools you need to make menu changes on the fly, provide nutritional information to your customers, and monitor sales to see which healthier options are more profitable and popular to customers than other.
Leverage the data you have available at your fingertips to track ingredient usage to help forecast what you’ll need to purchase and help you accurately calculate calorie counts. Monitor your sales and see which healthy options customers are gravitating towards, and how sales change once you add caloric and nutritional information to your menu. Data is instrumental in making smart business decisions.
NCC provides the technology you need to get started. To learn more about the technology we provide and how it can help you improve loyalty by becoming a more socially-responsible business, contact us today!
