How many customers do you need?

Think about how many transactions you need per week in order to be successful. For the sake of argument, let's say 2,000 transactions per week.

Now multiply that by 52 weeks - 104,000. This is the total number of transactions you will need for the year.

The next step is to estimate your customer frequency of visit. BE CAREFUL: this is where most restaurants falter. MOST owners assign a higher frequency of visit than is actually the case. As a result, they underestimate the number of customers they really have.

Let's say your average frequency of visit is once every two weeks, 26 visits per year. In this case, you have 4,000 customers.

If average frequency is closer to 3 weeks, 17 visits per year, your total number of unique customers is more like 6117.

If the visit is every 4 weeks, 13 visits per year, you have about 8,000 customers.

Now, what happens if we add 2 visits per year for each customer (let's assume an average ticket of $10 to keep the math simple):

4,000 x 2 = 8,000 x $10 = $80,000 per year
6,117 x 2 = 12,234 x $10 = $120,234 per year
8,000 x 2 = 16,000 x $10 = $160,000 per year

All of this can be accomplished by marketing your restaurant in creative ways, with no advertising dollars.