Several Considerations for Your Fine Dining Restaurant
If Americans have one pastime these days, it may very well be eating out. More people eat out more times per week than ever before. Whether it’s retirees who have no desire to cook or millennials who don’t have the time, there is a big market for restaurants. Even with all that demand, however, most restaurants wind up failing within 3-5 years. That’s why it can make sense to focus your restaurant in the fine dining niche. Visits to fine dining establishments have been growing, up 3% in the past year. Fine dining also is a fairly small slice of the total restaurant, with only about 10% of total sales, which means there is a lot of room to grow. If you do want to focus on fine dining, there are some things you should know.
On average, fine dining customers pay nearly $29 apiece, and when you are spending that much, the experience is as much a part of the meal as the actual food. That means you need to concentrate on the presentation of the food you are serving. You might want to use edible flowers as garnish, for instance, to really make your dishes pop with bright colors. Make sure you also are using high quality plates and silverware.
Another important consideration is to make sure the quality of your food is high. You may want to look into sourcing as much as you can locally. Organically raised meat and local produce is a good bet. People will know it is quality if they know where it comes from.
In addition to quality food, fine dining customers often want food that is healthy. This can include both main courses and side dishes such as salads. One popular thing to use in salads and as garnish are true leaf microgreens. Microgreens, whether they are true leaf microgreens or some other type, are essentially immature leaves of certain plants and vegetables. These are popular among many people, but you need to make sure to look after quality. Microgreens are rated on a 1 to 5 scale, with 3 being the minimum to be marketable. However, in a fine dining restaurant, you shouldn’t serve any that are rated less than a 4.
