For bars, restaurants and other hospitality businesses, increasing revenue doesn't necessarily require adding more tables, raising menu prices or even attracting more guests during the traditional dinner rush.
Sometimes, the opportunity is sitting in an empty dining room at lunchtime, an unused kitchen on a day the restaurant is normally closed or an untapped catering market a few miles away. It might come from a ticketed dinner, a delivery channel that had previously seemed unprofitable or an experience compelling enough to give guests another reason to visit.
Across the industry, operators and consultants believe diversifying revenue is becoming less about chasing novel ideas and more about finding additional ways to monetize the assets, expertise and customer relationships hospitality businesses already have.
“We are noticing that many new businesses are taking advantage of a mixed revenue model that goes beyond food and beverage,” said Courtney Blake, owner and managing director of Pilot Light Consulting, a strategy studio for hospitality ventures, social enterprises and consumer packaged goods. “Whether that is an experience, a membership or rethinking what retail revenue streams can offer, restaurants and bars are becoming more than places where you get a bite to eat.”
But not every new source of revenue is worth pursuing. The operators having the most success are often those who understand what their concept already does well, identify an unmet customer need, and build outward from there without overwhelming the staff or diluting the brand.
Maximize the Restaurant Space, Staff and Equipment You Already Have
At Dolfy’s, a Basque-inspired restaurant in New Orleans, co-owner Sophia Petrou has been looking for ways to generate incremental revenue without turning diversification into an operational burden.
One answer has been pizza night.
“We're always thinking of ways to utilize our space to its maximum capability without over-exerting ourselves and our staff,” said Petrou. “Pizza night is a great example. We're open five days a week for dinner only, so we're able to capitalize on a day we're normally closed and rebrand the restaurant for one night only, using our beautiful woodfire oven and some of our staff who want extra hours. It takes much less effort than a normal night, since we're only executing a quarter of the menu we usually run.”
That illustrates a broader opportunity for operators: Before investing in an entirely new business line, consider where existing real estate, equipment and labor are underutilized.
Petrou has considered adding weekend brunch, for example, but said the additional staffing it would require changes the equation. She also sees potential in the kind of shared-space arrangements emerging in expensive restaurant markets, where one concept might operate in a space during the day and another at night. “What I see in bigger cities with high rents are double concepts or residencies, where a chef takes over a breakfast restaurant at night, or vice versa,” she explained. “We've dabbled with the idea, but we need to lay solid foundations with our normal hours of operation and build trust with our clientele before expanding.”
Hospitality consultant Izzy Kharasch, president of Chicago-based Hospitality Works, sees similar potential in catering, particularly for restaurants that sit unused for much of the day.
“Typically the No. 1 overlooked revenue stream is catering,” said Kharasch. “Many restaurants are open for business after 4 p.m. They could be utilizing their space all day for groups who need to have a lunch function. Adding a brunch on Saturday and/or Sunday can certainly add revenue.”
Greg Provance, owner of GP Hospitality Partners and several restaurants in the San Diego area, believes operators should look even further outside their four walls—particularly at nearby businesses.
“Catering, hands down,” said Provance, when asked about underutilized opportunities. “Restaurants are wired to think B2C: Four-top at a time, ticket by ticket. There's a B2B revenue stream sitting right outside the door. Corporate lunches. Box orders. Drop-off catering for offices and events. Bigger average tickets, batch production instead of a la carte chaos, and a customer who orders on a schedule instead of a whim. Most owners have never made a single sales call to a local business. That's not a market problem. That's an execution gap.”
The opportunity, in other words, may not require a new concept at all. It could require a new customer.
Third-Party Delivery Is A Key Restaurant Revenue Strategy
Delivery is hardly new, but several experts interviewed for this story believe many operators still aren't taking full advantage of it, especially with all the delivery apps or platforms available today.
Brooks Kirchheimer, co-founder of Utah-based Hill Top Hospitality—which operates Urban Hill, Hearth and Hill and Hill’s Kitchen—was once among the delivery skeptics.
“We think one of the more popular [alternative revenue streams] today is third party delivery,” said Kirchheimer. “I personally overlooked this for multiple years because of my lack of trust with the delivery drivers and wanting to ensure our product got to the guest in a state that we would feel comfortable in. After a lot of research and planning, about a year ago we began third party delivery at four of our five restaurants and it has been a wildly impactful revenue stream, more so than we first expected.”
Provance argues that operators should stop viewing platforms such as DoorDash and Uber Eats solely as an expense and start managing them as revenue and customer-acquisition channels. He points to a client operating three Japanese grill concepts in the Midwest as an example. “DoorDash makes up 67 percent of his total sales,” said Provance. “His net profit margin across all three locations is 24.5 percent. He's not fighting the platform, he's using it to reach a hungry customer at the exact moment they're deciding where to spend money, then working his menu, his promos and his data to keep it profitable.”
Provance said managing a platform strategically means monitoring such measures as errors, refunds and prep times while paying close attention to which items and promotions actually generate profitable sales.
But delivery can also create problems if an operator builds sales without considering the restaurant's capacity to fulfill those orders.
Kharasch cautioned that third-party orders arriving during peak periods can leave the kitchen struggling to serve both delivery customers and guests sitting in the dining room. “Smart restaurateurs will turn off the third party deliveries during their peak periods so that they can concentrate on their guests,” he said.
For operators, that highlights an important distinction: More revenue does not automatically equal a better business. New sales channels have to work operationally and financially, not merely generate volume.
Experiences Give Guests Another Reason To Spend
As restaurants compete not only for consumers' dollars but their time and attention, experiences are also creating incremental revenue opportunities.
Hill Top Hospitality has experimented with a variety of programming across its concepts, including regional dinners at Hearth and Hill in Park City, Utah; chef collaborations at the higher-end Urban Hill; and trivia and open mic nights at its more casual cafe concept. The group also offered the viral dot cakes at Hill's Kitchen, which were available in June as part of a Pride-themed menu that supported Equality Utah.
“We believe that guests seek out and are willing to pay for happenings that you cannot get every day,” said Kirchheimer. “We believe this very much plays into the last decade of the social media era of people wanting to brag about the cool, fun and different explorations that they have had. A normal dining experience is something we take very seriously, but who doesn't want to feel exclusive at a meal that their friends and family were not able to get access to?”
A special event series that Hill Top Hospitality initially envisioned as a possible one-off event proved particularly successful. “For example, our regional dinner series in Park City we started over a year ago thinking that it would be a one-off type event highlighting a specific type of cuisine for one night, and we have now done eight of them in the last year, each one has sold out,” said Kirchheimer.
The format gives chefs an opportunity to experiment outside their everyday menus while giving customers access to something they cannot simply return and order the following week.
Blake believes that kind of experiential component will become increasingly important to hospitality businesses. “I think experiences will be the differentiating factor for successful owner/operators in the coming years,” she said.
Blake added that she is already seeing concepts in which food and beverage function as part of a broader business model built around activities, experiences or memberships.
“If the business is just starting, we are seeing a completely different model emerge where food and beverage are an amenity to a larger marketing initiative,” said Blake. “We have had this in our industry for years—hotels are a great example of this—but I’ve started to see more creative models that include experiences or activities or memberships that incentivize the cultivation of regulars or that bring people in for more than just dinner.”
Limited-Time Offers Can Create Incremental Restaurant Sales
Not every revenue strategy needs to be as ambitious as launching a catering operation or new business model. Operators can simply use limited-time offers and cultural moments to encourage additional visits and purchases from an existing audience.
BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse, for instance, recently tied a trio of limited-time products to summer celebrations, including America's 250th birthday and the summer's major international soccer tournament.
According to a June 2026 company announcement, the chain introduced a Stars & Stripes Pizookie for dine-in customers, followed by the nonalcoholic Firework Fizz. The company also highlighted a seasonal cold IPA as part of its summer lineup.
“Summer is all about getting together and enjoying those fun and celebratory moments—especially during the most anticipated soccer tournament in the world and in honor of America's 250th birthday,” Heidi Rogers, chief marketing officer at BJ's Restaurants Inc., said in the announcement, noting that the Stars & Stripes Pizookie was designed to elevate watch-party moments and give guests even more ways to celebrate together.
For operators, the broader lesson is not necessarily to create a patriotic dessert. It's to look for timely occasions that align naturally with the existing brand and give customers another reason to visit or add something to the check.
New Restaurant Revenue Streams Still Have To Fit the Brand
There is a danger, however, in seeing someone else's successful revenue strategy and assuming it will transfer seamlessly to another concept.
Blake pointed out that operators copying another business without understanding the needs of their own customers is one of the common mistakes operators make when diversifying or looking to drive new or additional revenue.“You have to pay attention to the needs of your customers,” she said. “Just because it’s a good idea on paper doesn’t mean it will resonate with or solve a problem for your guests or clientele. This is actually an area where hospitality people may have an advantage, however, because we know what it means to serve. Just expand that level of service outside of your menu.”
Kirchheimer describes the same risk another way. “A lot of the mistakes often come down to the phrase that we have all heard before, which is ‘Trying to fit a square peg in a round hole’,” he said. “Trying to be something that you are not can be fun conceptually but when it is put into action it can blow up in your face. I am often reminded of this, like I am sure many owners are, by our talented culinary and management team, which I am grateful for.”
Even within Hill Top Hospitality, not every experiment has been a hit. Kirchheimer said trivia nights at Hill’s Kitchen Sugar House have not performed as well as anticipated, with the operation relying on an outside company to help drive the business. The company is now looking at bringing in a different provider to drive more business.
That willingness to test and reevaluate can be an important part of diversification, particularly before significant capital is committed.
“Prototype it,” encouraged Blake. “What is the smallest and cheapest way that you can test your idea before investing in it?”
Petrou’s advice is similarly grounded in what the restaurant already does successfully. “Get your core right first,” she said. “Lay solid foundations with your normal hours and build trust with your clientele before you start adding things on top. The best new ideas come out of what you already do well, not something bolted on the side. Start with the space, the equipment, and the people you already have, and grow from there.”
Execution and Marketing Can Make or Break New Revenue
Even an idea that fits the brand can fail if the operation isn’t prepared to execute it. Thus, Kirchheimer said buy-in from the people responsible for actually running a new program is essential. “Often times myself as the owner or our marketing team or PR team will come up with the most amazing ideas in our minds but the operators that will be executing it do not always agree,” he said. “If they are not bought in, it will not be successful no matter how hard you push them.”
Kharasch likewise sees inadequate preparation as a common problem, especially when restaurants add new ordering systems for additional revenue.“Lack of training and preparation are the biggest mistakes,” he said. “The owners work with the third parties, set up and then implement the new system. They forget to bring management into the loop and when the orders begin to come in the staff is not nearly prepared.”
Generating demand presents another challenge. A restaurant can launch catering, brunch, special events or other new revenue streams, but customers have to know those options exist.
“Alternative revenue streams fall short when there is a real lack of marketing,” said Kharasch. “Opening a brunch on the weekends will only be successful by letting your customers know. All the planning in the world will not make for a successful new program unless an equal amount of effort is put into the marketing and/or public relations.”
The Future of Restaurant Revenue Diversification
Technology can also help operators get more revenue from alternative channels they already have, particularly digital ordering and delivery.
In April, for example, restaurant technology company Deliverect announced new artificial intelligence-powered tools designed to optimize digital menus, identify technical problems that could interrupt online orders and quickly alter digital menu presentation around events and promotions. The idea is to increase sales.
Among the capabilities described by the company is an autonomous menu tool that analyzes purchasing data and changes the prominence of products on the menu based on restaurant objectives, such as increasing average order value, order quantity or overall revenue.
“We built Deliverect to give restaurants control of their digital operations,” Zhong Xu, CEO and co-founder of Deliverect, said in the company's announcement. “Today, we are giving them the intelligent engine to grow their digital revenue.”
Regardless of which technologies operators adopt, Provance believes the underlying opportunity lies in treating digital channels as businesses that need active management rather than passive add-ons. “You don't get to set it and forget it with catering or delivery,” he said. “You manage it like a line on your P&L every week, or it manages you.”
Looking ahead, experts don't expect the push to diversify restaurant revenue to disappear.
Kharasch anticipates continued growth in third-party opportunities while operators continue exploring subscription programs and developing more effective and creative loyalty programs. Kirchheimer also sees potential in both at-home dining and distinctive events.
“From the recent articles and insights we have read and received as well as our own data, it does seem like guests dining in restaurants could be on the decline and dining in the comfort of their own home or in a more unique event setting could be on the rise,” said Kirchheimer. “We will continue to invest our resources and our time into both of these areas as we believe that they will increase revenue generation more and more in the coming years.”
Yet the common thread among the operators and consultants that Bar & Restaurant News spoke with is that restaurants should not chase every possible source of income.
Diversification is most compelling when it makes better use of what a business already possesses: an idle dining room that can accommodate a corporate lunch; a wood-fired oven that can anchor a special pizza night; a kitchen capable of serving customers beyond the restaurant's four walls; culinary talent that can transform a dinner into an event; or digital ordering data that can be used to improve profitability.
Provance argues that operators may therefore need fewer new ideas than they think. “Stop asking whether to add a new revenue stream and start asking whether you're actually running the ones you already have,” he said. “Most operators don't need five new ideas. They need to stop treating third-party delivery like a task to survive and start managing it like a channel to grow. Same with catering. You don't need a new concept; you need a sales call. Diversifying revenue isn't about doing more things. It's about running the things you're already doing like they matter, because they do.”