It’s a big misconception that not-for-profit clubs and organisations can’t capitalise on marketing opportunities. But when you use marketing and your messages are relevant for your audience, it can have a positive impact on your club’s profits.
Where should you start? We recommend that when your season settles into a groove, that is, after the flurry of registrations passes and before you get busy organising your finals, you should take a strategic step back and have a critical look at your business units. This is the time when you can set income and profit targets for each business unit for the next year, including broad targets for membership, as well as specific targets for improving the viability of your canteen.
How do you run your canteen?
Canteens are most commonly run by the club's volunteers, who are rostered on to work the canteen. However, there are other options for clubs when considering how to structure the running of a canteen:
You can outsource the entirety of the canteen, meaning a third party private or commercial operator pays a lease fee to the club. This is beneficial to those clubs with genuine food and beverage sales opportunities, but who have a very limited volunteer base and who feel that they don’t have the capacity to run it themselves. This is helpful in cases where clubs see their canteen not as a way to make money directly, but as a way to improve the level of service their club offers to members and visitors
As a minor variation on the outsourcing model above, instead of offering the canteen operation to a private or commercial operator, you could offer it to another community group or charity. Organisations like service clubs raise funds from food and beverage sales like this to help fund their charitable activities in Australia and overseas
Rather than invest in the capital and operational expense of having your own canteen, you could invite mobile food trucks to your venue for your home game days, carnivals and events
Instead of charging a lease fee to outsource the operation of your canteen, you could come up with a profit-sharing arrangement, whereby you and a third party private, commercial or non-profit operator agree on a percentage each of the total profit made by the canteen (e.g. a 50/50 split, 60/40 or 70/30). These types of arrangements require good planning and discipline. As a committee you will need to be clear on what you hope to achieve from the canteen arrangement and decide on a fair and lasting arrangement for all parties involved. And then, don’t get greedy! If it works, it’s usually best to share the spoils as you initially agreed, rather than try to go back on the agreement in an effort to take more of the cream for the club
Canteen marketing tips
Most of the following canteen marketing tips can be implemented without spending any money. Based on the size and capacity of your club, choose the ones that are feasible for you and try them out before your next event. Then keep using those tips that work best!
Stock the right products
Know your audience and sell them what they want. Keep track of your best sellers and make sure to have plenty of them in stock
The same goes for drinks if you run a bar. Know what your visitors prefer to drink and stay stocked up. If you find one or two perennial favourites, you may even be able to get a better deal on bulk purchases
Price it right
Just because your club may have had ‘genuine 1974 prices’ for decades, doesn’t mean you need to keep it that way
If you’re still selling cans of softdrink for $1 each, it’s naive to think that you’ll make less money if you close the gap between the pricing in your canteen and the pricing at the shops down the road
If you have some hot-selling ‘signature dishes’, like house-made lasagne or stone-baked pizzas, you may have room to raise these prices quicker or further than staples like a bucket of chips
Change up your menu
Canteen favourites may change throughout the year, with people preferring cold snacks when it’s hot and hot food when it’s cold
In winter, you could try hot drinks, hot soup and hot pasta and in the warmer months change to cold drinks, ice blocks, soft drinks and fresh sandwiches
Changing up your menu also keeps it interesting for members and visitors
The important thing is to keep good records of what sells best and when, so that you can make well-informed decisions when planning what to buy
Promotion
Promote menu changes during the weeks leading up to your next event. Make sure you’re not only doing this on your club’s social media pages, but push them to your local community social media pages too, as it’s free to post
TIP: Humanise your posts. For example, tell a story of the history of who came up with your world-famous ‘full-back burger’. People love reading stories, even if it’s about food, and especially if you include mouth-watering photos! This will ensure people don’t scroll past your post without taking notice
Roaming sales
This single CPR Group tip has made some of our clubs literally hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years!
It means taking your products to the people and it’s exactly what happens with the drinks cart at the golf course
The first group of helpers wanders around taking orders and payments from spectators and families on the sidelines and sends those orders to the canteen. Then when the food and drink are ready, a second group of helpers goes out to deliver the orders
Given the massive spike in revenue that this initiative alone can generate, don’t be afraid to pay your helpers
Remember to take your eftpos machines with you while you’re roaming!
NOTE: If you try this one, please send us a note to let us know how it goes, and tag us in your social media posts advertising it, as we’d love to monitor your progress!
Make your canteen easy to access
This one is a reminder of how you always exit through the gift shop when leaving a theme park…
When people are arriving or leaving, set up your venue so that they need to walk past something they can buy
If your canteen isn’t already in the right spot, you can still achieve great results by setting up a stall or table at the entry and exit points, and stock it with food and drinks that are easy to sell
Vouchers
Canteen vouchers can be a really effective ‘loss leader’ - something you sell at a loss with the aim of attracting new customers or influencing additional purchases
You can give canteen vouchers to players of the match or your best and fairest
Vouchers could be simply for a set dollar amount or for a particular product, even one that is not particularly expensive for you to buy
Once your players of the match go to the canteen to use their vouchers, they'll usually be there with their parents and siblings. You may be surprised by how easy it is to upsell… Remember the phrase, “Would you like fries with that”...? Use it!
Point of sale systems
My accountant always said, “Make it easy for people to give you money, the way they want to give you money!”
Having an automated point of sale system, connected to electronic card readers, can make it easier for people to pay for what they buy from your canteen
People usually only carry limited amounts of cash with them, so this is a great way to avoid limiting the amount of money people can pay you!
Pre-orders
Remember dropping in your tuckshop order at the beginning of the school day and then having your order delivered to the classroom at the start of little lunch or big lunch? Why not try the same thing at your club?
For most sports, it’s easy to figure out when a particular match will end. If you offer pre-orders, parents can order food and drinks to be ready for them when the kids leave the field or court
Purchase what you need
Buying the products you know will sell is the first step. Just as important is to buy the right amount. You certainly don’t want to have mountains of leftover food go bad, but by the same token, you never want to miss out on sales by leaving people hungry because you ran out too soon
You may want to pre-warn your suppliers if there’s a chance you’ll be coming in for an emergency restock on the Saturday afternoon of your big annual carnival, to make sure they’ve got the stock as well
Here are some final pointers to improve your club’s marketing:
Look at the opportunities that exist in all of your club’s business units, including your canteen, and consider what you can implement to improve results
Take one proposed idea from the list above and run it as an experiment. You know the baseline (i.e. current financial performance) and the number of people standing in line, so try to improve your numbers from there
Once you grow, you can add multiple point of sale systems. By adding more registers, you can increase the frequency of sales, especially at the times of day when people are getting hungry!
A common pitfall is if a club’s canteen is making money, they reduce their membership fees! Do not do this! Use the profits you generate from your canteen sales to expand your club by self-funding projects and by contributing to grant-funded projects
Advertise! Let your light shine. Show off your new menu or upcoming events in your advertising on your website and on social media. While you’re there, comb through your old posts and delete the ones that aren’t relevant anymore. Delete posts such as “canteen closed because of lack of volunteers” or “fields are closed because of flooding.” They’re not needed anymore
Contact Michael and Steve, the ‘Basket Case Bros’, at CPR Group today, the leaders in Australian club governance, to see where your club can benefit from marketing opportunities. info@cprgroup.com.au or call on 1800 100 204.
