11 holiday restaurant promotions to gear up for the season

Skip the article and turn takeaways into action by scheduling a call with our team.

As the year winds down (yes, really) and the festive season fast approaches, restaurant owners everywhere gear up for the holiday season. The final months of the year, especially December, offer a golden opportunity to drive up sales with holiday restaurant promotions and conclude the year on a high note. This is the time when people come together to celebrate, making it the perfect occasion for restaurants to do what they do best: Uniting people over yummy food and good times.

Whether you’re running a small local eatery or a large chain, the right promotions and restaurant marketing strategies can go a long way to getting people in the door. Lots of people look forward to holiday specials and the good old holiday spirit that goes with them. Of course, we’re talking about a wide range of holidays—which leaves ample room for restaurant holiday promotions.

So, let’s look at some creative and time-tested ways to get your restaurant ready for the chillier time of year and give your holiday marketing a boost.

1. Show off your brand with a holiday menu

A new season is a perfect opportunity to introduce a holiday-themed menu. We’ve discussed seasonal menus before, where menu items are rotated to reflect the freshest produce of the season and changing desires of customers’ taste buds. Holiday menus are a more specialized version of a seasonal menu.

Get creative with all sorts of menu items, from appetizers to entrees. Deep-fried turkey or ham? Cranberry-infused drink specials? Your own homemade mulled wine? Whatever the style of your restaurant, you can find a way to work holiday themes into your menu items. If you want to stay traditional, great. If your restaurant tends to branch out, do your thing. But don’t go too far off base, like turkey sushi or gingerbread croutons, or you’ll lose people.

The holidays are an excellent time to bust out a prix fixe menu, complete with a wine pairing. Give customers an opportunity to splurge while keeping their options simple and they’ll thank you for it.

Keep in mind the many dietary restrictions in our ever-more diverse and health-conscious society. You’ll want to offer vegetarian and vegan holiday dishes as well as dairy-free items. Consider adding these items to help all customers feel included and make large group gatherings like holiday parties more viable.

2. Create holiday promotions and special offers

Holiday promotions are a powerful way to attract new customers and reward loyal ones. Offer discounts on specific dishes or a percentage off the total bill to motivate customers to dine at your restaurant. Free dessert with an entree order is always a winner as well. Consider running holiday happy hour events to attract more customers during the slower hours. Those happy hours don’t have to be early, either: If you’re slow late at night and stay open late, consider a reverse happy hour that livens the mood and gets customers merry.

Gift cards are an excellent holiday gift for a simple reason: A lot of people are hard to shop for, so a gift card can make the choice simple. Loyal customers will certainly appreciate a gift card from someone who knows they love your establishment. Selling gift cards at a discounted rate is a good way to encourage their purchase. This strategy both boosts immediate sales and encourages future sales by giving customers a reason to return at a later date.

Mailing coupons, though it sounds archaic, is still an excellent way to get your name out there and get customers out the door. Snail mail ain’t dead yet!

The holiday season is a good time to launch a loyalty program, which can now come in the form of a custom app—and isn’t even all that expensive! Turn new customers into repeat, long-term loyal customers with a loyalty program and watch your business grow throughout the new year.

3. Know your demographic

To make the most of your holiday promotion ideas, you’ll need to know your target audience. After all, diners are looking for more than just a tasty meal during this time of year: They’re looking for an experience to remember.

Families with children may be drawn to special holiday-themed menus and activities with light-hearted games and entertainment, while young professionals may be more interested in cocktail specials and happy hour deals. Similarly, couples may be looking for a romantic evening out to enjoy one of those prix fixe meals you’re offering in a cozy, intimate setting.

Parsing your longitudinal data to see who your regular customers are, your average group size, and any other information you can glean will help you get some solid stats behind what you’ve likely already got as a gut feeling.

Whatever you offer should be consistent with your restaurant brand and make a coherent statement. Diners will seek out the customer experience they’re looking for and feel weird vibes from a restaurant straying out of its lane. A fine dining restaurant likely isn’t going to have an in-person Santa, nor is a family restaurant likely to do well with cocktails and candlelight.

4. Showcase your holiday decor and menu on social media

No restaurant marketing campaign is complete without a solid social media push. It’s an absolute must. Advertise your in-house specials or offer exclusive deals specific to your social media followers for maximum benefit. For example, you could create a post that gives a discount to followers who show the social media post—or use a code word for fun.

Keeping up with all social media platforms can seem like a lot of work, but the rewards are worth it. That means—at least—Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Yelp. Yelp especially has a huge reach: It reaches 9x more consumers online than OpenTable.*

If you as a business owner either aren’t super talented at social media or you find it a hassle, consider delegating the task to one of your younger staff for extra pay. Alternatively, you can hire an outside social media marketing manager.

5. Add a festive ambiance

One of the most important steps in attracting customers during the holiday season is creating a festive atmosphere full of holiday cheer. Whether it’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, or New Year’s Eve, decorations are a must. You’ll want to decorate your establishment with specific holiday-themed items, like lights, wreaths, ornaments, or anything else that’s appropriate to the specific festival.

Christmas, especially, needs a warm and festive vibe. The glow of Christmas lights or flicker of candles can create an inviting atmosphere. Your exterior and signage will need decorations as will the interior, since eye-catching decorations can draw in passersby and increase foot traffic.

Good decorations can help with your social media marketing plan as well, since attractive photos will be easily shareable and visually appealing.

In addition to physical space, you’ll want to decorate your online space as well. Update your restaurant website and social media platforms with holiday-themed graphics that align with your in-house decorations.

6. Offer catering and takeout specials

Not all dining has to happen in person. While you have limited space in your restaurant, there are essentially unlimited customers available for off-site eating. It’s become a popular option for many people to order Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner in, for example, to save the hassle of cooking a large meal. Make sure to get orders in early for special occasions to plan your inventory and staffing. A large catering order can significantly boost sales while circumventing the physical limitations of your dining room.

7. Send out holiday greetings

A personalized touch can go a long way in building customer loyalty. Sending your customers a holiday card is an easy and inexpensive way to remind them of your restaurant. Use your unique brand voice to engage customers in your own way and make yourself stand out in their minds. You can include images of your holiday menu items or special offers to help motivate customers to get in the door as well.

8. Host holiday events

The holidays offer fantastic opportunities for unique, fun events that everyone enjoys. Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve parties are perfect examples. Hiring a Santa (or playing one yourself) can make families quite happy that they don’t have to go to the mall to take their kid to see Santa, for example, and earn yourself some loyalty.

Planning a New Year’s Eve party can be a lot of work, but it can be one of the most lucrative nights of the year for a restaurant. It’s best to get a guest list or reservations beforehand, since this night is often one of the busiest of the year. Make sure customers are well aware ahead of time that you’ll be hosting a special event, and consider a set price to keep things simple.

If your customer base is millennials, try fun group events like holiday trivia—for example, trivia about seasonal movies.

9. Partner with local businesses

Partnering with other local businesses can make for a united front in a restaurant holiday marketing drive. If in-house baked goods aren’t your thing, it’s a great time to pair up with a bakery, for example. Each business can provide limited-time offers for the other’s services to drive sales and build a cohesive network. The same goes for florists, decorators, entertainers, and more. A combined effort in marketing can amplify your voices and help make a Venn diagram between your businesses’ customers that overlaps.

10. Give back to the community

Getting involved with a charity is an excellent idea for the holiday season. It fits with the giving vibe, gives you an opportunity to make a name for yourself, and gives you a good reason to help a part of the community you care about. Consider a raffle as a fundraiser for your favorite local charity, for example. A donation drive for a local food bank could work as well, since customers will also get that happily infectious holiday giving spirit.

11. Recognize the hard work of your staff

Nothing happens in any restaurant without the hard work of staff members. The busy holiday season can take a toll on staff, so consider at least offering free meals—perhaps for their loved ones on Christmas as well. Staff bonuses are always appreciated as well, especially for salaried staff working overtime. Holiday meals shared between co-workers can be an excellent way to bond and build camaraderie in an honest, heartfelt way.

Consider offering performance-based bonuses, like bonuses for the most cocktails, desserts, or appetizers upsold. The choice to do this or not will largely depend on how your staff interact with each other and customers—if you notice any friction at all, it may be wise to avoid encouraging competition. That said, people respond to incentives. Just know who you’re dealing with.

Keep the busy season smooth

If things go well with your holiday marketing ideas, you’ll get a rush of customers. Restaurants often count on holiday sales to make up a significant part of their yearly profits, so it’s do-or-die time. You’ll definitely want things to go as smoothly as possible in your service, so you’ll want the best in the business for your front-of-house service.

Consider a system that does it all: online ordering integration, customizable floor plans, online reservations, check-ins, and waitlists, POS integrations, and more. Does that put you in a cheerful mood? It certainly might once you see it.

If you’d like to see what it’s like to have a crisp software suite that makes front-of-house management a breeze, reach out to us for a free demo. We’d love to be there in time to help you navigate the holiday season and come into the new year feeling fresh.