How to Grow Average Ticket Size in Your Restaurant (Without Turning Servers Into Salespeople)

Most advice about growing ticket size stops at "upsell more," which skips the part that actually matters: when do you ask, and how? A prompt your server rattles off while dropping the bill isn't a strategy, it's a wish. Here's where the research lands: a diner is most likely to say yes while they're waiting, on their own phone, with nobody hovering over the table. Bzz puts the offer in that exact moment, so it doesn't hinge on whoever's working the floor remembering to pitch.

Why the Wait for a Table Beats the Bill

Picture a guest who's just been quoted a 20-minute wait for a table, or who's ordered and is waiting for food to land. They've decided to eat and spend at your restaurant; that decision is behind them. Now they're sitting with their phone and nothing to do. Bored, a little curious, wide open. The bill is the opposite state entirely: card already out, eyes on the total, and any late "would you like anything else?" reads as one more thing standing between them and the door.

There's hard evidence behind this, most of it from the quick-service side of the industry. When McDonald's, Shake Shack and others shifted ordering onto self-service screens, the orders got bigger; McDonald's reported diners spending roughly a dollar more per visit, and across quick-service operators the lift in average order value runs 10–30%. A better menu didn't cause that. A screen just doesn't judge you, so nobody feels a flicker of embarrassment adding a milkshake or a second side. Researchers keep finding the same thing: people order the indulgent extras when there's no server watching them do it.

The One Time Self-Service Backfires (And How to Avoid It)

There's a catch, and it's worth being straight about it. Screens don't always lift spend. In 2024, Lu Lu and Wangoo Lee at Temple University published a study in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research on what happens when people order at a fixed kiosk with a queue building behind them. They found the reverse of everything above: guests felt responsible for holding up the line, rushed the decision, spent less, and stuck to familiar items instead of trying anything new.

Here's why that matters for a restaurant. The screen was never the problem; the physical line bolted to it was. And the fix the researchers recommend reads almost like a description of how Bzz works. Restaurants, they wrote, should "avoid creating a physical line and instead create a virtual line using cellphone technology," and make the wait more engaging by "displaying the menu in a way that customers can easily browse as they wait."

That's the entire point of putting the offer on the diner's own phone while they wait in comfort, instead of on a counter kiosk with people stacking up behind them. You keep what makes self-service work, no social pressure and more indulgent choices, while removing the one condition the study shows wrecks it. The independent evidence and the Bzz approach happen to line up.

Small Additions Beat Big Upsells

Say a table has two ways to spend more. A server can pitch the £32 seafood sharing platter, which most tables wave off before the sentence finishes. Or a £5 side of truffle fries can sit on the guest's wait screen with a photo, tapped before their starter even arrives. The cheap add-on wins, and it's got nothing to do with the fries being a better dish. It's a small enough yes that nobody stops to deliberate. The kiosk data shows the same shape: the categories that grow most are the easy ones, drinks and sides and small upgrades, where the extra pound or two barely registers in the moment.

The maths tilts your way for another reason: these add-ons cost the kitchen almost nothing in extra time. A modest take-rate on a cheap item, repeated across every table that waits, adds up over a service, a week, a year. You can drop your own covers and prices into the calculator further down rather than trust a figure we invented. The big verbal upsell does the opposite; more effort, more awkward table-side moments, less money.

Diners don't resist spending more. They resist being asked to spend more by a person standing at the table. A screen they're already looking at carries none of that weight, so the yes comes easier.

Get Your Servers Out of the Sales Loop

The awkward truth about verbal upselling is that it lives or dies on who's working the floor. Your best server remembers to mention the specials and the dessert wine. The new hire on a Friday double doesn't. Your host might pitch a bottle of house red to a waiting table; the runner covering for them on a slammed Saturday just wants the tickets to clear. You can train it, pin reminders in the pass, run competitions with a prize for most desserts sold. Plenty of staff still hate doing it, and a server who hates upselling sells nothing.

Routing the offer through a digital wait screen takes that variable off the table. Every guest sees the same options, the same way, at the same point in their visit. No difference between your strongest server and your newest, no pitches forgotten in the Saturday rush, nobody on your team made to feel like they're working a used-car lot.

Put Your Own Numbers In

We're not going to hand you a headline figure from an imaginary business. Your traffic, prices and take-rate are what matter, so put them in below and see the range for yourself. Start with a conservative conversion rate; even a low single-digit percentage adds up once it repeats across every guest who waits.

What This Looks Like in Practice

The offer itself matters less than the timing and the format. Restaurants are where this pays off first, quick service close behind, but the same idea works anywhere people sit and wait. A few examples: