It’s no secret that the more seats a restaurant has, the more revenue it can potentially generate each year. Everyone has been stuck waiting hours for a table at one point or another. As the frustration grows, the number of customers leaving or standing in the waiting area without spending a dollar grows as well. Expanding a restaurant to include more chairs can be costly, but what if you could add chairs without completely extending or renovating your restaurant?
Restaurant patios are growing increasingly popular in both the US and Canada with new smoking bans and the enjoyment of eating in a beautiful outdoor atmosphere. Restaurant patios tend to attract customers to restaurants to enjoy that outdoor dining experience and are a great way to increase seating for the summer. But what happens when the colder months arrive? Nobody wants to eat in the cold, which means it’s time to close down the patio until next year and sacrifice additional revenues right? Wrong.
Restaurant patio heaters are the solution that pay for themselves. If your outdoor restaurant patio isn’t already heated, then you are leaving money on the table by relying on warm weather to keep your patio open. Patio heaters are a great way to extend your patio season during the colder months and add more to your bottom line.
Jim McLellan Discusses How Restaurant Patio Heaters Can Increase your Revenue
Let’s Look at an Example
Here’s an example of how restaurant patio heaters can pay for themselves.
Let’s say you have a 20’ x 10’ restaurant patio that is typically open for 3 months in the year (June to August) with approximately 20 days of operation per month and 4 hours of operation per day. Based on an average occupancy rate of 30% with an average check per seat per hour of $20, your gross revenue generated from the patio only without heat would be $64,000 per year.
Installing a restaurant patio heating solution means you are able to extend your patio season by approximately 2 months and extend your patio operation by approximately 4 hours per day (this would account for the colder nights where customers would prefer to sit inside). Based off a conservative profit margin of 10%, you would pay off your entire heating system in just 50 days with the additional net revenue that your patio generates. That is half of one patio season! In addition to that, your restaurant is now earning close to $15,000 of net revenue each year! (Example provided is based off industry figures and reports from the National Restaurant Association.)
With such a quick payback period and additional revenue generated each year, restaurant owners should really be asking themselves, can I afford not to have patio heaters installed on my patio?