Sporting Success: How to prepare your hospitality business for sports events this summer

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A summer of huge sporting events is upon us, from Wimbledon, the Women’s Euros and the Lions Tour, to The Grand Prix, Tour De France and Women’s Rugby World Cup.

A packed sporting schedule means busier hospitality venues over the coming months, with over one third of adults in the UK visiting pubs, clubs or bars to watch live events. With consumers spending an average of 36% more on food and drink when watching sport at a venue, it’s never been more important for hospitality businesses to ensure their operations are in order, to maximise this potential increase in profits.

Here we discuss how to prepare for the next few sport-filled months and ensure your business operations are optimised.

Create visibility

With a vast number of pubs and bars showing popular sporting events, marketing your venue will be key to standing out from the crowd.

By using banners, regular social posts, optimised website landing pages, digital advertising and email marketing, hospitality businesses can appeal to key local audiences.

Through in-depth reporting, managers can identify target sports fans and assess the reach and engagement of marketing activities to achieve the best results, based on the nature of each event.

Try themed food and drinks deals, targeted offers and loyalty schemes throughout the summer to entice the crowds and keep fans coming back for each event.

Use data-driven decision making

To maximise your profits from busy game days, it’s essential to use insights from past events.

From live costing and revenue forecasting to recipe and menu planning, intelligent reporting software can change the game for managers. Understand what sells and what doesn’t, which processes are successful, which items are profitable and what creates waste. Base your game-day strategies from smart data to make informed decisions on staffing levels, food and drinks prices, opening hours and stock levels.

By using inventory management systems through Kitchen CUT, staff know what to order, how much, and when, based on real stock levels, enabling your business to better cater for busy periods, to cut costs by avoiding over-ordering.

Establish an effortless guest experience

In this digital age, ease is everything. And to maximise profits, service should be simple and quick, making life easier for both your staff and your customers.

As consumers ditch wallets for phones, digital payments have never been more crucial. Kitchen CUT works alongside a host of payment solution integrations, designed to make digital payments easier and faster – perfect for sports fans wanting to order quickly during half time or breaks in play.

As well as quicker payments, customers now expect a streamlined digital ordering process. Specialist digital menu software enables venues to share up-to-date allergen, nutritional, CO2 and calorie information directly on a website or QR code, making choosing a dish simpler and quicker than ever.

Digital ordering solutions, such as Kitchen CUT’s partner, wi-Q, enables guests to browse menus, place orders and make payments directly from their own devices. It couldn’t be easier for customers to sit back, relax and enjoy the live sport, whilst freeing up precious time for staff.

What’s more, Kitchen CUT provides chefs with the opportunity to update dishes and prices depending on each sporting event, and other factors such as food trends and stock-take, helping to cater to specific crowds, whilst reducing food waste and boosting your bottom line.

Make sure you are fully equipped

Avoid technical difficulties at all costs! Test and retest your sound system, screens, Wi-Fi and sports subscriptions before every major event, to ensure a smooth viewing experience for your customers.

Account for the busier days with more seating and tables and keep up to date with the weather forecast. Do you need to consider an outside screen? A pop-up outside bar? Be sure to cover all basis to meet customer expectations and reduce stress for busy staff.

From half time happy hours to pre-kick-off quizzes, get creative! Think about how your venue can create a fun, relaxed atmosphere, whilst providing great, efficient service, to secure those repeat customers over the summer months.

Prepare your staff

Happy, engaged and motivated staff are the key for providing efficient service during busy periods and with bars and pubs filling up over the summer months, it’s important to avoid staff burn-out.

Use data insights to understand how many additional seasonal staff may be required for your business. Create a clear and fair rota for sporting events, to help manage expectations and maintain a high standard of service for customers. Clear communication, free meals, social events, and a friendly work environment are all winning factors to boost staff morale, ensure excellent service, aid long-term staff retention and build strong and effective teams.

To conclude…

With a whole host of major events just around the corner, screenings will undoubtedly provide a much-needed boost for hospitality businesses this summer. But to cater effectively for this predicted increase in footfall, venues must act now to ensure that staff, stock and processes are up the challenge. By optimising operations and streamlining their services, hospitality businesses can take advantage of this perfect opportunity to expand their customer-base and increase profits over the coming months.