Your franchisor isn't helping out, huh?
What kind of feedback have you gotten from them? Do they have a dedicated franchise success executive? Or a franchisee council to draw experience from?
Your long term strategy is to raise the guest check average for each visit, and increase the frequency of those visits.
Along the way you can look into:
-lowering your cost of customer acquisition
-lowering your cost of fulfillment (food, overhead, labor--I guarantee there's waste now)
-lowering the average time to process an order (eg. in the drivethru, how long from arrival, through ordering, to departure with food? Most strugglers are terrible on this stat).
However, you can only cut so far. Expansion is a far better goal.
What you bought was a system with expectations and controls. Your pricing and costs should be known. If you don't know them, you won't know if you're profitable, and that's something requiring immediate correction if so.
Are you looking at what competitors are doing...or what the top franchisees in your area are doing? Chick-fil-A in my area is doing some awesome things with the drivethru...how they staff it, process orders, increase flow through rate. And there are McDonald's in my area that I know are A listers...those that are mediocre B-level performers...and C-types that have poor standards enforcement, lousy culture, and missing processes. Who's the A-lister near you? I sometimes work with a B who is burning to become an A, and that's fun because I know they'll do the work.
I would suggest you looking into similar franchise owners that are succeeding and do some networking. Consider visiting in person over lunch or arranging a conference call with them. Prior to your visit or conversation, make you a list of questions that relate to your needs and pick their brain. Professional development and networking is important for growth in any field. If all else fails, consider YouTube to educate you on your particular field of expertise.
Jason K's answer hits the nail at every point! Just to add:
- Are you in a growing segment and did you sign up with the right brand and franchisor? If you didn't, don't throw good money after bad money and get out as unscathed as you can and move on. You can't change those factors.
- If you have scale (more than say 10 locations?), use it to your advantage and build the best team you can afford.
- Does your store GM have clear KPI's, among them Transaction (Tx) and Average Guest Check (AGC)?
- Map your 5 minute universe and own it with Local Store Marketing (LSM), not just flyers, but true community engagement.
To increase your sales, you can create an avatar of that customer that you are targeting. There are so many more ways to get your product to your customers than ever before. Especially if your product is new, you may have to generate interest by calling your customers. Reach out to 100 customers as fast as you can. You do not really care about your sales results, only the number of people you contact. You will become fearless when selling your product. In selling it is important to make a creative and compelling sales presentation to your customers. If you are going to have a sale on your product soon, tell your customers about it. Pick out one or two benefits of your products and state those clearly in the sales headline. If your product has multiple benefits, create sales messages for different customers that they can relate to.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
