7 new year marketing ideas for restaurants: AI, socials, trendy food

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For many restaurants, the New Year’s Eve glow wearing off means the beginning of a slump in sales. Often, customers post-holiday season are looking to at least attempt to shape up and hit the ground running in the new year. For restaurants, this slow season can be a drain—but it doesn’t have to be. To fill your tables and keep your establishment lively, we’re here with new year marketing ideas for restaurants.

While many restaurant marketing strategies are evergreen, some are period-specific. Marketing campaigns with the new year specifically in mind can help attract new customers and broaden your customer base. It’s the perfect time to introduce new ideas and New Year’s promotions. After all, if people can have resolutions like hitting the gym, restaurants can have resolutions like boosting sales by 10% per month.

So, let’s take a look at some restaurant marketing ideas that sync with the new year and go beyond the “new year, new menu” idea—though we’ll start there.

1. Offer healthy choices

One of the most common New Year’s resolutions is to get healthier in one way or another. Restaurant owners take note! Creating a special menu for health converts (even if temporary ones) can tap into a large market. Consider offering:

• Low-carb and dairy-free alternatives
• Plant-forward dishes with fresh vegetables
• Sustainably and locally sourced ingredients
• Portion-controlled options

Offering transparency in your cooking methods and sourcing indicates to customers you’re serious about health. A major trend is switching away from seed oils in cooking, so offering alternatives can be wise as well.

2. Be a trendsetter

If you’re considering adding new menu items, check out our 2025 food and drink trend report. Tasting flights, for example, are exploding—and not just in wine. Egg flights and coffee flights have exploded in popularity, which can make for popular brunch options. Sandwiches like the internet-famous chopped Italian and Caesar salad sandwich can grace your menu. Mushroom coffee and other mushroom drinks are also trendy. Give the people what they want and they will come…and take photos for social media.

3. Extend happy hour (and offer sober options)

In a slow season, an extended happy hour can get customers in the door and hopefully convince them to stay for dinner. Offering appetizer specials and other special offers can lift spirits brought low by a return to work. Consider making your happy hour sober-friendly with mocktails and non-alcoholic beer. A majority of adults surveyed under the age of 55 noted they intended to participate in dry January in 2024. What’s more, an amazing 45% of Gen Z state they’ve never consumed alcohol. So, offering your establishment as a social spot that’s not centered around booze can land you a significant market.

4. Launch interactive social media campaigns

Social media marketing is a must for any restaurant—but making it fun can really help garner attention. Here are a few social media promotion ideas.

Creating new year story polls

Instagram story polls can drive significant engagement and let customers feel like they have influence. Effective poll topics include:

• New menu item voting
• Preferred dining times
• Special event themes
• Customer favorites (e.g., current menu items)

This is effectively easy and free market research—and fun to boot. Adding booking links to your polls can get customers right to your reservation page and in the door.

Social media contests

Contests bring out the competitive spirit and drive engagement beyond just a standard social media post. There are a wealth of options for contests. Consider some options:

• Photo challenges (favorite dishes, favorite memories)
• Caption contests
• Share-to-win promotions

The rewards from the contest can be a number of different giveaways as rewards. These incentives can include special dining events, gift cards, merchandise, behind-the-scenes tours, or cooking classes.

Virtual chef meet-and-greets

Introduce your customers to your back-of-house (BOH) staff, who don’t often get the limelight. Giving customers an opportunity to see how the magic happens in the kitchen gets them revved up to taste new dishes and adds a personal connection to their dining experience. These sessions, whether recorded or livestreamed, can include:

• Behind-the-scenes kitchen tours
• Interactive Q&A sessions
• Exclusive recipe sharing (if you dare)
• Professional cooking tips

Simply putting a face to your dishes helps customers feel in-the-know and a bit special. Naturally, you’ll need your BOH staff to be on board with this—a bonus always helps with motivation.

Promote user-generated content

User-generated content can be a gold mine for restaurants. Since the work of photography and posting has already been done, simply sharing customers’ social media posts is one of the easiest things a restaurant can do. Better yet, it makes customers feel quite special when their photography or comments get shared—it can really make someone’s day.

To get the most out of user-generated content, make your food and establishment as photogenic as possible. Plating techniques, restaurant lighting and décor, and Instagram-worthy photo spots all encourage customers to take and share photos. If you consider social media the modern-day word-of-mouth, it makes perfect sense.

5. Tap into AI

If there was any big trend in 2024, it was AI. Restaurateurs looking to do a marketing push can make the most of AI in many ways.

AI loyalty programs

Restaurant loyalty programs are moving into the AI era, where loyalty apps can customize personalized offers based on customer history. Loyal customers are the lifeblood of any restaurant, and using AI to parse data was inevitable—but it’s now here. Automating restaurant promotions custom-tailored to preference-segmented customers can save restaurant owners a lot of time and busywork.

Many new AI loyalty programs function as part of a larger AI-based customer relationship management (CRM) tool. The tools linked above, for example, sync with existing customer data in your restaurant management software or POS system, parse that data, and send out promotions that fit a specific customer’s purchasing patterns. These tools are another arrow in a restaurant marketer’s quiver.

AI marketing copy

Creating frequent and consistent marketing material for social media platforms and email marketing can be draining. However, as many restaurateurs are learning, switching to AI for a specific brand voice can help churn out copy fast—or at least help perform research and build ideas. Because many people can still smell AI writing, it’s wise to have a human in the loop to review any copy before it goes out—but it can be a major time saver for busy restaurant owners.

An example prompt put into ChatGPT could read: “Create marketing copy for social media: around 3-5 sentences for a Japanese fusion restaurant promoting its happy hour specials, including 2 for 1 cocktails and 20% off appetizers from 4-6 PM, Monday-Friday. Emphasize the lively atmosphere, regular customers, welcoming environment, and friendly staff.”

6. Team up with influencers and local businesses

Partnering with local influencers like food bloggers and foodie vloggers can help put you on the map via social media platforms you may not have much reach on. For example, if you’re not big on TikTok, reach out to local influencers to work together for promotions. This can be especially valuable if your target audience skews younger. The influencer’s reach doesn’t have to be huge. Some good criteria to use when selecting an influencer include:

• Strong local following
• Consistent high-quality content
• Proven engagement rates
• Authentic alignment with your restaurant’s values

Similarly, it’s wise to partner with other local businesses who match your vibe. These can be other non-competing restaurants, breweries/distilleries, florists or decorators, or anything else—in many cases, forming a multi-business alliance can go well. Making limited-time offers for special occasions across the alliance can build the reputation of each and help keep customers in the same business ecosystem.

7. Leverage your restaurant tech

Software in the restaurant industry has come a long way, and offers many avenues to get eyes on you. Consider, for example, how Yelp can help. Pairing Yelp Guest Manager, a powerful front-of-house (FOH) management tool, with Yelp Ads can help restaurants see up to an 8% monthly lift in diner bookings through Yelp.* What’s more, restaurants that start using Guest Manager experience up to 2X the traffic on their Yelp Business Page.**

And that’s just part of the marketing side of Yelp Guest Manager. Combine that with the world-class reservation system, customizable FOH management tools, and integrations with other vital software and you’ve got the goods to take you into 2025.

Want to see how Guest Manager can make a difference? Give us a shout for a free demo. We’re excited about this new year, and hope you are too.