Customers don't not want to come; it's just that at the very step outside your door, you drove them away.

Friends who have worked in the restaurant business often end up looking back and saying that the restaurant industry is a trap for people—it’s always set up to look like it’s very simple: rent a small shop, buy some equipment, buy some ingredients, cook the food, and you can open the doors to welcome customers. Business will come in. But once you truly try to do it yourself, you’ll realize that the restaurant industry is a very complex business.

Some new business owners do a lot, but sometimes, because of a single move, their business can end up ruined. We often say that when doing business, you should never look at problems from the owner’s own perspective—you should look at your shop from the customer’s perspective. If you were a customer, would you walk into your own store?

Just the very first step customers take when entering the store—many owners get it wrong. Some shops have decent flavors and the environment is fine, but there are simply no customers. There are clearly a lot of people passing by, yet no one is willing to take the step into the doorway, so they can only watch as customers walk into the shop next door. In many cases, it’s not that customers don’t want to come, and it’s not that your food tastes bad. It’s that the “one step” at your door drives them away immediately.

As an owner, don’t you feel like the signboard at the entrance and the posters placed at the front must be made extremely polished—so that the higher-end and more impressive they are, the more they’ll attract customers? You might even think that only by hanging high-priced set meals in a very prominent spot at the entrance can people feel there’s a level to the place, which makes them want to come in.

Actually, many times, this is the reason why many stores have no business. Most of the customers who pass by are spontaneous spenders. They haven’t eaten your food before, so they’re basically unwilling to spend a lot of money and take a risk. The high-priced set meals at the entrance only make them hesitate and turn around to leave.

At your store entrance, this is the first barrier you use to keep customers—and it’s also the easiest place to make mistakes. If customers don’t enter the store, they never get a chance to taste your food. No matter how delicious the dishes are or how thoughtful the service is, it’s all for nothing. Many owners fall into a misconception: they think the higher the pricing, the higher the profit, but they ignore the importance of “customer acquisition.”

Especially in 2026, with how intense the restaurant “arms race” is, competitors are all using high cost-performance to drive customer acquisition, yet you put high-priced set meals at your door—essentially handing over your customer sources to others. In fact, the pricing logic for entrance set meals is very simple: price it in line with nearby competitors, slightly lower than similar stores, emphasize “high cost-performance,” so that customers passing by feel, “It’s a good deal, and it’s worth trying.” First, attract people into the store. Once they taste the food and recognize your quality, then you can raise the average order value over the long term through other dishes and promotional recharge activities. That’s how you can keep making money for the long run. What do you think?