Making Your Restaurant Better

Should You Add A Banquet Room To Your Restaurant?

10 February 2022

Virginia Caballero

Owning a restaurant means in order to stay relevant, you have to meet the growing and changing needs of your patrons. Adding a banquet room to your restaurant may be the right decision, and here are just a few reasons why.

You appeal to a new audience

A banquet room can be used for a variety of things, from a wedding reception or rehearsal dinner to a corporate meeting or even a hosted community event. If you add a banquet room to your restaurant, you appeal to more than traditional patrons looking for a meal. You appeal to whole groups in the community and start to compete with local hotels and event centers for business.

A banquet room can help you stay relevant and busy during the slower times of year. If you have a liquor license, all the better reason to add a banquet room: not all establishments have a banquet room and access to alcohol.

You make new and larger profits per rental

You can use the banquet room to seat regular guests when the banquet room is not being rented out, which means this room can make you money even if it's not booked. Consider a banquet room, for the most part, to be just an addition to your restaurant. However, when people do want to exclusively rent out the banquet room for a private event, you can make money on the rental.

You may get more bookings if you allow patrons to bring in their own catered foods and beverages or their own desserts or other outside things, so long as they meet a minimum rental rate. This is a common practice when renting out banquet spaces for reunions, birthday parties, and the like.

A banquet room doesn't have to be a very large space, but it should be private and able to house a large number of guests comfortably. An average banquet room has its own entry and exit and should be close to an emergency exit. Refer to your local county and state ordinances regarding gathering spaces and how many people can be allowed in a room of a given size. This varies from venue to venue depending on the type of venue you have.

You can benefit greatly from adding a banquet room to your restaurant. You may even be able to simply convert some of your existing seating space to a banquet room if you have a smaller budget for additions.

Share