The Best Dining “Add-Ons” You Can Upsell to Diners

The opportunity to upsell alcohol (wine or beer) is best done at the beginning of service. Train your service staff so they make suitable pairing recommendations as diners order their main courses (especially meats). This is one category that you’ll want to get proficient at upselling, as alcohol sales are big revenue earners for many dining establishments.

Most appetisers pack healthy profit margins, which is great for your restaurant. They also happen to be one of the easier items on the menu to upsell. (Plus, you can sell them to any customer, young or old.) There’s a good chance that guests are already hungry when they arrive, so your front of house team can seize the opportunity to make these easy sales.

Whenever a diner orders anything that would go well with another food item, service staff should suggest appropriate side dishes. Train your servers to identify good food pairings, and teach them to offer enticing descriptions of each side dish to attract diners to make the right choice.

Everyone loves desserts, they just need to be told what desserts your restaurant offers – preferably in mouth-watering detail. If a table seems hesitant to indulge, you can recommend that guests share a dessert, just to get a little taste.

Your front of house team should be very aware of which menu items are most profitable, so they’ll know which items to promote first. For example, if servers know which main course brings in the most profits for the restaurant, they should recommend that dish over other similar choices. Usually when customers ask servers for a recommendation, there’s a good chance they’ll go with the recommended items.