The Best Ways to Fill Your Restaurant This Holiday Season

The end-of-year holidays are a fantastic time for families, groups of friends, work colleagues and couples to go out and celebrate. Customers want to have memorable experiences that will last long into 2020, and your restaurant can play an important part in helping to create them.

That makes this holiday season a great time for your restaurant, too. But how do you capitalise on this exciting time of the year and tempt lots of new customers to come and celebrate with you?

These are our simple, tried and tested tips to fill your restaurant tables throughout the holiday season!

1. Create complete events

Rather than keeping your offering similar to the rest of the year, perhaps with a menu tweak and a few decorations, this is your chance to create something truly special. Organising an event that allows your customers to celebrate all of Christmas or the New Year with you is a sure way to get bums on seats. 

You could transform the dining room into a winter wonderland and put on a fixed price set menu to encourage your customers to spend the entire day or night with you. That could include appetisers and soups through to luscious desserts and after-dinner drinks. You could also organise entertainment such as live music and children’s story times, and even hand out party bags with outfit accessories so customers can customise their clothing to match the theme of your event.

2. Cater for company parties

At this time of the year, many businesses like to say thank you to their staff and boost the morale of their team by throwing a Christmas or end-of-year party. That can become a crucial source of revenue as you can cater for 20, 30 or more guests in a single booking. 

The key to standing out from the competition and securing those group bookings is to personalise your service to meet the requirements of every party. That includes creating a menu that offers the variety and quality groups are looking at a price they find tempting. 

As well as catering for diners, you can also create office party events that allow your customers to celebrate in a different way. For example, you could put on a tasting menu at lunchtime and host cocktail making classes in the afternoon. That gives group customers more freedom and allows you to fill your restaurant at quieter times of the day. 

3. Host happy hours for happier profits

The purpose of a ‘happy hour’ is to bring in more customers during the slowest time of the day, which is typically in the late afternoon. However, it’s up to you when you host your happy hour. During the holiday period, extending your happy hour could be a simple way to turn a quiet restaurant into a busy and profitable space. 

Drink and appetiser deals are perfect for happy hour, so make sure you have some tasty options on your menu. By getting people to buy a couple of drinks and share appetisers with their friends, they’re more likely to stay and order dinner. And even if they don’t, putting on a great happy hour will keep new customers coming into your restaurant and your revenue on the up.

4. Give your best customers a Christmas gift

Spread the joy this Christmas by rewarding your best customers. If you have customers that return to your restaurant time and time again, why not send them a nice card with a voucher code, free meal or gift voucher inside. You’ll be spreading the joy of Christmas while building the loyalty of existing customers and creating some invaluable marketing buzz. And most importantly of all, you’ll have a restaurant that’s full of happy customers.

5. Promote events across all your channels

Creating events that customers want to attend is only half the battle. Promoting those events effectively is the key to filling your restaurant tables this holiday season. People start planning their holidays early, so it’s important your marketing activities are already up and running in early November. 

You should promote your holiday events through social media, email, in-house signage, flyers and posters, website content, traditional advertising, online ads and any other opportunities you identify. Your profile on Eatigo can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool. You can:

• Publish a special Christmas or end-of-year menu
• Offer discounts at times of the day when you’re not usually busy
• Post promotional messages about your end-of-year events to attract new customers

Fill your empty seats this holiday season

Looking to fill your restaurant’s empty seats? Join us at Eatigo, the restaurant reservation platform, to offer time-based discounts of up to 50% to more than five million hungry customers. There’s no better way to keep your restaurant busy throughout this holiday season!
You can join Eatigo today by submitting your interest via one of the forms below:

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