The bar at any restaurant is underrated and sometimes undersold, even. More often than not, it acts as a buffer for people to hang around as they wait for their table. It’s also where patrons sit for drinks when they are alone or with one other person. Many times they hang out at the bar because of the bartender. It also acts like a centrepiece of the restaurant, drawing attention, and is part of what defines your restaurant.

Another function of the bar is to make drinks for diners in the dining area. Your bartender’s flare won’t work here. But simply getting the drinks right will. Every bar menu has the usual suspects. How you can make it work to your advantage lies with you and your staff. Servers and managers do double as salespeople to push dishes and drinks. But you can do more and you can do better than that.

A few things to keep in mind to push your bar sales will help reflect in overall performance of your restaurant.

Recommend the right drink

Usually, we encounter servers and managers pushing down more expensive dishes and drinks down customers’ throats (pun intended). Well, they have to learn to recommend and not sell. Sale will follow a recommendation. But suggesting random expensive drinks will only make the customer believe that the person doesn’t know the bar well enough. A training session with the bartender and chef could be of much help as opposed to just telling them to “push drinks” in the name of sales.

Special drinks

Restaurants now have special menus and are trying out various things to make their menu stand out. After all, why leave the bar behind? In other words, don’t limit your special menu to only food. Kindly include drinks as well. Special cocktails for special occasions will have any cocktail-loving patron ordering them. When you’re using seasonal produce in your food, don’t forget to talk to your bartender and see if it can be fitted in a cocktail. For example, it’s still mango season and you can make great cocktails with this fruit. The same will be true for strawberries or any other ephemeral fruit. These kind of special drinks will help the staff push them even more.

Spread the word

One great way of promoting your drinks is through social media. Posting high-quality images of your best cocktails can be a sure shot way of luring customers in. People go into bars specifically for drinks more often than you’d think. Then there are those who need to be nudged to order a drink. Sometimes, a good picture is a good enough lure. If you don’t have the budget to hire a photographer, simply click pictures using a phone with a good camera. Good light and angles are your friends. Haven’t you heard of the photographer who used an iPhone to shoot an entire wedding?

Let them contest

Another way of pushing drinks is to create curiosity and buzz around it. For instance, a simple contest on social media about the drink will get people to engage with you. Give away the drink on the house and it’ll get others’ attention too. Here, you’d be doing three things at once – talking about the drink yourself, involving potential customers and creating brand recall. All of which at an almost zero expense marketing trick.

Make it look awesome

After everything, if your drinks don’t look and taste great, it won’t work. Even classic drinks can look good and taste great. Good barware is where you can start. Build it up with colours and ingredients that add to the drink. Don’t try any tricks that you can’t pull off. A big example of a cocktail disaster was the liquid nitrogen in a cocktail that tore a customer’s stomach. People want value for money and not cheap gimmicks.

—

All in all, don’t lose focus from your bar. It plays a key role in your business. Markup on drinks will always be high and pushing them can help those profit margins. On that note, cheers!