How to prep your restaurant for the busy holiday season

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‘Tis the season for gift giving, and the holiday season is a huge gift for restaurant owners! The holiday rush is the busiest time of the year for many restaurants. Whether your focus is on Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve or just the winter season in general, adequate preparation will help you avoid last-minute pitfalls, streamline restaurant operations, and even improve sales.

Holiday plans for thousands of Americans include either hiring catering services or visiting restaurants for their holiday meals. With the perfect combination of holiday promotions and restaurant holiday décor, you can convince more restaurant-goers to include your place in their plans.

So, if you’re hoping for more walk-ins on Christmas Eve, or you want to reap the benefits of a holiday-themed takeout menu, read on to uncover some of the best ways to prepare restaurants for holidays.

Update your restaurant holiday interior

Decorating your dining room with a holiday theme is a no-brainer, but there’s no need to present an image that isn’t true to your brand. As you prepare your restaurant for holidays, you need to remember your demographic and your restaurant branding style.

Talk to your team and plan your decorations to suit your interior. What type of dining experience do you usually offer? There’s a big difference between a laid-back brunch joint and the best restaurant in town for fine dining. Go ahead and deck the halls; just be you too. For example, Italian restaurants can take advantage of the fact that the Italian flag is already Christmas colored!

A festive and freshly decorated restaurant is the perfect Instagrammable moment to kick off your holiday marketing. Start a new promotion on social media complete with a hashtag and the chance to win a gift card when diners share their images of your food and décor.

Increased numbers during the holidays could call for some outdoor seating. There’s something special about eating great food outside on a cold night with a fire pit and outdoor lighting. If you modify your floor plan, remember to update it on your restaurant POS system of choice so that operations run smoothly.

Create a special menu for the festive season

Any motivated chef loves the opportunity to design and try out new dishes for the holiday season. Create a special holiday menu that includes familiar fall and winter flavors, such as pumpkin spice and cranberries, as well as baked goods like gingerbread.

Maybe it’s the need for winter comfort food or just all the holiday events, but people tend to enjoy bigger portions during this time of year. You can use this as an opportunity to upsell more expensive and larger appetizers. Think shrimp cocktails, caviar, cheese boards and bakes, and festive dip platters.

When it comes to entrées, keep thinking big. It’s one time of the year when most diners will also consider a prix fixe menu. A general rule of thumb for holiday meals is to base your main dishes around meat, like the classic prime rib with all the trimmings a la carte. For Christmas mains that sell, try to create dishes that remind diners of their family traditions.

Here are some key takeaways to keep in mind when creating a seasonal menu:

• Decide what role you want your special menu to play in your restaurant — i.e., is it just an addition or the main focus?
• A holiday menu can be a good opportunity to integrate new ingredients that are in season, keeping costs down and food fresh
• A new menu means opportunities for interesting wine and drink pairings, helping boost sales and sell more alcohol

When you’re making your menu, you’ll of course want the holiday specials to be visually appealing. Be sure to take photos of your holiday menu items that will pop on social media and jump off the page on your restaurant website.

And don’t forget that all this fabulous food and the festive dining experience you’re creating is an excellent gift in and of itself! Encourage your diners to give gift cards to your restaurant—it’s one less present they need to shop for.

Add a new drinking experience

If you have a bar at your restaurant, there are all sorts of opportunities to sell drinks. Celebratory gatherings with friends and family call for fun drinks, after all! Holiday cocktails are ideal for anyone, from a group hosting a holiday party in your restaurant to diners waiting for a table. An assortment of festive-themed craft cocktails can be the perfect add-on to a holiday menu and look great on social media.

If you don’t have a bar, a pop-up wine bar could do the trick, as long as local laws allow it. You can sell specific wines that complement your meals, promoting your dishes. Selling mulled wine in an outdoors pop-up bar is a great way to warm up passersby and improve your chances of enticing walk-ins. Make sure you have the needed licenses and permits in place first.

Put a holiday spin on the time-honored tradition of happy hour. A sign outside your restaurant promoting “buy one get one free” on cocktails could be a real head-turner for tired Christmas shoppers. Cocktails have huge margins, so selling them at a discount still leaves you winning and could encourage diners to stay for food.

Lastly, music is a big part of the holiday season, so add live music to the holiday happy hour. For more family-friendly restaurants, host some carolers for a festive sing-along.

Consider hiring additional staff

You may find yourself busier during the holiday season. This is normal. But you don’t want your loyal customers to feel let down by having your staff overworked—so taking on additional staff may be a wise maneuver. The customer experience is always important, but it’s arguably even more important during the holiday season.

If you have any experience from the last year to draw on, consider what part of your restaurant, if any, was backed up during busy periods. If not, consider where your weak links may be. Does the back-of-house need a new dishwasher or line cook? Are your servers in the front-of-house stretched thin? Can you handle an influx of online orders and keep your dine-in service running smoothly?

These are all valuable questions to consider before we move into the holiday season, especially since staffing a restaurant is one of the most difficult parts of being a restaurateur.

Don’t forget the sports

In the U.S., sports can play a huge role in the busy holiday season. For many, it’s peak football season, which means lots of opportunities for marketing ideas. If you’re operating a sports bar or another venue with televisions, this is excellent: Football and other sports make your life easy. But even if you’re operating an establishment with no screens at all, you can still incorporate your local team into your marketing strategy.

For example, if you have a popular college or professional sports team, consider a discount on certain items when the team wins. Aligning your brand with a team in your marketing campaigns can help new or would-be customers remember you.

Focus on takeout and delivery

You have a limited capacity when it comes to dine-in customers. But there are essentially unlimited customers available for takeout and delivery, so if you’re looking to boost sales but find yourself at capacity, this is where to look.

Many people want to have their holiday experience at home but don’t want to go through the hassle of cooking. Perfect! That’s where restaurants come in.

Advertising your holiday menu for delivery, takeout, or even for catered events can help snag new customers. If you’re advertising for major events, like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, you’ll want to get well ahead of the curve and market ahead of time. In most cases, customers need to order in advance for such holidays, so beating the advertising rush can help customers solve their dinner dilemma before it ever occurs to them.

Try new ways to prepare restaurants for holidays

The best way to get your restaurant ready for the holiday season is to combine these tried-and-true methods with your own ideas. Nobody knows your restaurant better than you, giving you an edge over all your competitors during the last financial quarter of the year.

Whichever ideas you use, keep the feel of your restaurant intact. Remember that adding decor and a special holiday menu are key to the customer’s dining experience. This season is synonymous with alcohol for many (like champagne on New Year’s Eve), so find ways to add festive drinks to your menu too.

The busy holiday rush can strain your restaurant’s technology solutions. One of the best ways to prepare restaurants for holidays is to have a solid front-of-house management platform in place with Yelp Guest Manager. This software supports your team by handling reservations, waitlist management, takeout and to-go orders, floor plans, and table management.

Request a demo today and make one of your busiest times of the year a little bit easier. After all, restaurants that start using Guest Manager experience up to 2X the traffic on their Yelp Business Page–it’s the gift that keeps giving!