Hop to It: Prepare Your Restaurant for Easter

Spring is here, which means Easter is on the way. Easter Sunday marks a busy day for restaurants, and that means an all-day affair for many. Families often gather for an Easter brunch or Easter dinner, as the day marks one of the most important holidays of the year for many. So, if you’re looking for ways to prepare your restaurant for Easter, we’ve got some ideas gathered here for you.

Since Easter is traditionally one of the most family-friendly and family-oriented holidays, plan for large groups, children, activities, and family-style meals. You don’t have to be super creative with an Easter menu—give people what they want, focus on quality, and be sure to offer plenty of entertainment options. An Easter meal should be dressed up in its Sunday best. More on menu options later.

Let’s look at options around your restaurant, in your kitchen, and in your marketing opportunities to get that Easter Bunny a-hopping.

Create an Easter atmosphere

Just like any other holiday, Easter provides an excellent opportunity to decorate your restaurant and make a festive environment. Since the holiday is so culturally entrenched, ideas of what to expect are pretty straightforward. Look to light pastel colors, Easter baskets (with treats or flowers), and flowery outdoor decorations. If you have a garden, great: Use that as an opportunity for an Easter egg hunt for kids (or adults who may find it fun after some mimosas).

How heavily you lean into Easter decorations depends both on your branding and location. If you’re in a particularly religious area or you often cater to the after-church crowd on Sundays, go all out. If you’re in a more secular area or, alternatively, aim more towards gravitas in your branding appeal, keep the decorations light—noticeable, but understated. A high-class steakhouse sporting a guy in an Easter Bunny costume as a customer greeter just doesn’t work unless your customers have a unique sense of humor.

Tailor your menu to an Easter theme

Easter Sunday is one of the largest feasts of the year in many families. It’s up there with Thanksgiving and Christmas in terms of importance for them. That means laying it all out there, no matter what time of day it is. We highly encourage offering both an Easter brunch as well as an Easter dinner. Let’s look at options for both dine-in options.

Easter brunch and Easter dinner options

There are generally two ways to approach an Easter brunch menu: either an a la carte menu or a brunch buffet. Each has its pros and cons, and what you decide to go with will depend on your restaurant style, back-of-house (BOH) and front-of-house (FOH) capacity, seating capacity, and so on.

Dinner can continue the brunch trend or you can go for an a la carte menu. Look to restaurant forecasting and the previous year’s trends as well as reservations to figure out which way to go. An Easter brunch buffet can serve the large-group, whole-family crowd while a quieter, more intimate a la carte menu may serve better at dinner. But again, this all depends on your customers’ expectations.

Easter brunch benefits

There are numerous benefits to offering an Easter buffet for brunch. For one thing, your FOH staff will be far less burdened running from table to kitchen taking orders on what’s one of the busiest days of the year. Instead, they can focus on customer service. Additionally, your BOH staff can make large quantities of food en masse. That includes food people would expect to see on Easter Weekend, including an Easter ham, prime rib, a leg of lamb, and so on. Setting up a carving station is a classic idea in such a case, and one that adds an air of dignity to a buffet.

Naturally, if you’re doing a brunch, you’ll need all the classic appetizers and side dishes to go along with entrées. Look to classics like quiche, mashed potatoes, eggs benedict, hot cross buns, fruit salad, and plenty of gravy. Adding stations to your brunch buffet like a waffle and French toast station or an omelet station can also make your buffet legit.

Don’t forget the desserts, either. Chocolate cake, carrot cake, cheesecake, apple pie, or whatever other invention your pastry chef can come up with will round out a proper Easter feast.

A la carte Easter menu

For restaurants that don’t expect large crowds or tend to cater towards more upscale dining, an Easter feast can still be well served with an a la carte menu. One excellent option for this is to offer a prix fixe menu—which we know is not technically 100% a la carte, but it is still the opposite of buffet dining. A three-course prix fixe menu, for example, can help cut down labor and confusion in the kitchen while minimizing inventory purchasing needs. It also helps customers know how much to anticipate spending and further helps them make their choices, especially when it comes to pairing drinks.

Again, you’ll want to go top-notch on your servings. There are few better days of the year to order prime rib or filet mignon, for example, or other Easter specials. Serving Italian? Look to osso bucco or other rich dishes fit for an Easter celebration.

Naturally, you’ll want to offer drink pairings. Preparing a wine menu in advance and having your servers suggest pairings will class the joint up and add to the celebration.

Start promoting your offerings early

You’ll want to start your Easter marketing campaign as early as possible. Many other restaurants will be doing the same, so getting the early jump can help cement your establishment as a customer’s go-to instead of elsewhere. So, really, we recommend starting ASAP with a marketing blitz on social media, email lists, traditional advertising, or really anywhere else. The earlier and more often you hammer home the idea that your restaurant is the place to be on Easter, the better.

Naturally, you’ll want to use the most beautiful images of your food possible. You’ll also want to be clear about what food will be served, when, and for how much. Putting your Easter menu in front of as many eyeballs as possible is a winning move.

Consider also promotions for Easter, like the aforementioned activities for kids. You can also go a more mature route with a free-flow wine special, discounts on high-end items like champagne, or family discounts for large groups.

Collaborate with other businesses

Working with other business owners is an excellent way to build both brands at the same time.

A key example for Easter? Florists. Since Easter is such a flower-themed holiday, teaming up with a local florist can help draw attention to both your business and theirs. You can have them arrange the bouquets in your restaurant, for example, and offer discounts to their business for paying customers. Their paying customers can receive the same reward in return. That’s a win-win scenario for the ages.

The same goes for local artists. If you commission artwork for your establishment and offer to sell it by placing prices on the wall, for example, you can take a cut of the sales. Everyone wins there and the local artist can help gain notoriety.

This can go beyond small business, too. Since Easter is often a traveling holiday, pairing with local hotels (who don’t have their own restaurant) can get out-of-towners in the door and into your chairs.

Prep your staff

Making sure you’ll have enough hands on deck for what’s likely to be a busy day is key. So, be sure to let staff know they’re all most likely needed on that day and offer rewards for their hard work, whether that may be a nice meal or a bonus—especially if they’re pulling double shifts.

Training staff for a setup you don’t traditionally use, like if you go for a buffet or a prix fixe menu, is also something you’ll want to do well ahead of time.

If you’re considering offering takeout, make sure your inventory and your BOH have the capacity to take on the extra load. If you expect you may already be at capacity, takeout may not be the wisest option. Should you offer takeout, we recommend requiring bookings in advance so you don’t get overwhelmed by unexpected orders.

Make your service impeccable

So, your decorations are set, your menu is in tip-top shape, your food looks excellent, and customers are filtering in. What’s next? Providing good service, of course. Scratch that—providing excellent service. And the best way to do that is to give yourself and your staff the best tools possible to do their job.

But the customer journey begins long before they enter your establishment. They’ll need to find you, decide you’re worth it, make reservations, and so on. Their expectations are already somewhat set before they set foot in your restaurant, but serving excellent food paired with excellent service will cement your reputation in the customer’s mind.

So, from the initial thought to the dining experience, you’ll need to look your best. Yelp Guest Manager can help with that the whole way through. From top-notch customer interactions and reach to customizable plans, integrations with popular third-party apps, table payment, and much more, it’s a jam-packed platform. And its price is right too, since the flat fee keeps cover charges from piling up.

Want to see how Yelp Guest Manager can work for you? Reach out to us for a free demo and we’ll take you for a test drive. Spring is a great time for new beginnings, and upgrading your software is a step in a bright new direction.