The best thing about Christmas and New year is the festive spirit and the adornments everywhere. During the season, people are excited about spending money at their favorite restaurant, and each restaurant needs to make the most of it. Every restaurateur around will be working on the same, so to pull in customers to your place, you should stand apart from the other restaurants in the market. Here are some valuable restaurant marketing ideas for December, which will help you to prepare your restaurant for Christmas & New year to attract more crowds.
15 surprising restaurant marketing ideas for December:
1. Festive & theme decorations
Creating a festive atmosphere in the restaurant with lights, balloons, Christmas trees, fake Santa Claus will help you in grabbing the attention of customers. Get all the decoration complete in three colors that are red, green and white to give the classic look.
Furthermore, make an arrangement for your theme plan. While red and green are generally regular for Christmas, these hues may conflict with the current shades of your activity.
Decorate tables with scented flowers, candles, jeweled berries, and some small gifts, maybe chocolates, as a token of love. This will create more engagement and help you to attract more customers in the coming days.
If you are still confused about theme ideas check online for tips, or go to your nearby restaurants or store for more thoughts. Creating a unique theme will make you stand out from the other restaurants in the market and increase your profits.
2. Create a special festive menu
The restaurant menu for the festive season should be created beforehand so words could be spread about it well in time. Create a limited-time special holiday menu as per your customer’s choice. To make it stand out, you can include various cuisines, Christmas specials like lattes, gingerbread and pies, and your restaurant special.
Announce these Christmas special limited-time options on social media so that your customers and come to know about your seasonal dishes. While preparing food for the new year, one thing to keep in mind is that you should not run out of ingredients. Moreover, you need to stock up your inventory for Christmas and New Year.
As restaurants are mostly house-full at Christmas and New Year. It’s an excellent opportunity to serve people your best so prepare your menu wisely.
3. Additional staff
During Christmas and New Year, you will be getting more guests, so you need to have more staff. You can only serve your guests best when you will have ample staff.
No one likes to wait for their food and especially in winter, people except steaming hot food. But, if there will be fewer staff, then services will be delayed. This will refrain you from getting your customer’s brownie points. It’s better to look for the additional staff before the holiday season commences.
4. Discount offers
Offers can do the magic. You will be surprised to know that offers at festive season attract 50% more customers than regular offers. Organize special events or parties and offer exceptional evaluating limits to families or organizations that celebrate at your restaurant.
Taking 10 percent off for the Christmas season is the ideal method to help appointments and enable your customers to commend the season in the solace of your eatery. New year bookings start early so the market as soon as possible in the best way.
Try to promote your services and offers in every way. You can start by sending push-notifications about special offers and discounts to your customers via your restaurant online ordering system. Second, you can post about the special discount offers on your restaurant’s Google business listing page and other local listing channels like Yelp, YellowPages, etc.
5. Happy hours & free offers
Make the most of the occasional happy hours and offer free discounts to your customers during the festive season. Usually, 1+1 offers on beverages or items help to grab customer’s attention and assist you in getting more bunch of people.
6. Market gift cards
Displaying gift vouchers before your restaurant to catch the eye of clients. Or you can give gift vouchers or arrange for scratch card gifts for your customers. Offering a particular discount towards the end of the dinner might want your customers to return to you. Offer a free Rs.150 gift voucher for a bill over Rs.1000 or Rs.250 gift voucher for Rs.2500 or more.
7. Don’t forget about social media promotions
One of the best restaurant marketing ideas for December is to develop a social media strategy for publicizing the items of your restaurants. Clicking the best pictures of your recipe or making a short video of people having the special food of your restaurant creates enthusiasm, among others.
8. Inviting a musician or any famous personality in a special event
To get customers, you need to offer an exceptional offer, for example, breakfast with Santa, or a one-time full feast at your café. Also, host famous singers or DJ to get the party going. Let people have fun with good music.
This is the best Christmas promotion idea for restaurant to attract new customers as they would love to hear their favorite songs while having dinner. Apart from music, you can also organize carnival night. Organize various contests like the mask and best dancing couple, and reward the winner.
Try organizing these events at the weekend because people are in the party mood and willing to dance to the beat.
Pro tip – Host a karaoke night to entertain your guests this holiday season.
9. Partner with other local business
Join up with other businesses in your area to promote your holiday offers. During the individual seasons, people often shop locally. You can get together with nearby theatres or shopping markets to offer the best deal beneficial for both of you.
Try to approach a theatre and tell them to suggest their moviegoers grab a free pastry by showing a ticket stub at your restaurant, or check whether a store will offer a discount for your customers when they show a dining receipt.
10. Incentives for regular customers
You do not just need clients to go to your eatery now, yet you likewise need them to return later. So make the offers that they cannot refuse. Offer a free drink next time they come or offer a 10% discount for the next visit.
11. Loyalty Program
Don’t forget to reward your special customers and increase the rewards as they order more either online using a food ordering app or offline by visiting your restaurant. Once the customers start using the loyalty programs, they are less likely to choose others over you.
12. Start advertising your holiday offers prior
You need to promote your holiday offers before Christmas and New Year to grab people’s attention before everyone out there. This will help you in getting advanced reservations in November and December from your guests, and you will be well prepared for the Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
13. Make a promotional video
Video has more engagement rates than posts, and it is becoming quite popular. People love to watch unique recipes during the holiday season. So, it’s the perfect time to grab more eyes with an engaging food video.
Shoot your chef demonstrate and prepare various festive dishes from holiday offers. This will let them know what they can expect in terms of food at your restaurant.
Pro tip: Add links to online booking for Christmas and New Year’s Eve in your promotional video to get people’s attention. Also, share the video with your fans so that they can spread the word about your holiday offers.
14. Don’t forget about last year’s customers
Go through the list of previous year’s reservations for Christmas and New Year. Contact them and ask them to show up to get exclusive discounts. Send them the link to a private web address where they can make a reservation and book their table.
Pro tip: Offer a gift or a discount to the people who book early. Make this offer limited so that it can create urgency among your customers. You will be surprised to see how many reservations you will get in this period.
15. Customer feedback:
It’s important to know what people think about your services. Gather reviews for your services from your customers over your restaurant feedback system. It is one of the best ways to engage with your customers. Not only this, negative feedback helps you improve your services.
Holidays are the best time where people love to enjoy with their loved ones and refresh their old sweet memories. Being a restaurateur, you can utilize this time to the fullest. Create an atmosphere, add exotic flavors to your dishes to and keep the festive spirit high.
Thus, the above-mentioned restaurant marketing ideas for December will help you to boost your sales and also the branding. Try one by one so that you will get to know which one works better!
