We’ll be Open for Christmas

The first piece of advice would be to actually be open over Christmas. According to Yelp, of the 30,000+ restaurants in London, only 713 are said to be open. With the growing interest in eating out over the festive period, this means there is a lot of room for restaurants looking to corner the market.

Festive Menus

When people think of Christmas, they think of things like turkey, cranberry sauce, mulled wine, pigs-in-blankets, and Christmas pudding. This doesn’t necessarily mean offering these items in the traditional sense – don’t think turkey on a plate beside roast potatoes and brussels sprouts – but rather incorporating these flavours and foods in your menu during yuletide. For example, Moro, a Spanish restaurant in London, serves a chorizo and chestnut soup as part of their Christmas set menu. Or, perhaps, for another subtle touch, consider using cranberry vodka in a cocktail to nudge customers into the Christmas mood.

You can also make subtle Christmas tweaks to your core menu items; Nando’s recently created the Mzansi (Xhosa word meaning South Africa) burger, which takes its famous PERi-PERi chicken breast, as well as chicken thighs, and Christmas-ifies it with a chestnut pâté and “festive” slaw. Gridiron in London (Mayfair) does an ash-burnt leek with winter truffle and walnuts, a tasteful way to feature winter flavours.

Offer a Christmas Day meal

While many consider Christmas to be all about the home-cooked meals, others can’t be bothered with the faff.

Take a cue from Norma on in Fitzrovia, London, who offer not one, not two, but three different Christmas menus. The first features a classic three-course meal while the other two are differently priced “feasting menus,” which include dishes meant to be shared family-style. By having various options, Norma is catering for a wider variety of Christmas dinner needs: Dinner for two? Done. Ten relatives who want to emulate a more home-cooked meal? Done. Davy’s in London also takes this approach by offering Christmas Breakfast, party bites, and dinner!

Offer take-and-bake Christmas dinners

For those who are not keen on the idea of cooking an entire holiday feast but want to eat in the comfort of their own homes, consider offering pre-made take-and-bake meals to be picked up a day or two early. That way, those who would rather avoid the stress that comes with making a feast can instead have a relaxing afternoon with friends and family. One example of a grocery store doing this is Whole Foods, who provide entire Christmas feasts as an option. For the eco-conscious, Cook even provides a Christmas lunch (for 2, 8, or 12) that is carbon neutral “from field to fork!”

And for restaurants this does not necessarily mean providing everything, from pigs-in-blankets to turkey and gravy. Consider just offering pre-made versions of some of your most popular appetizers or side dishes, so the turkey is all that’s left to prepare!

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas: Decor

You know the drill – It’s Christmas, the lights come out, the wreaths find their way onto doors, the scent of pine and cinnamon wafts over. When thinking about decor for wintertime, it is important to keep in mind what works best for your restaurant.

Dalloway Terrace in Bloomsbury, London changes their decor to mimic the seasons, or what we wish the seasons were – think a tropical setting for spring, fresh florals for summer, autumnal colour shifts of leaves for autumn. And for winter? Recreating a winter wonderland indoors so that customers may dine bathed in holiday spirit. Dalloway Terrace changes the designs every year to spice things up. Take a look at two examples from winter at the restaurant for the past two years:

Falling on the more extravagant end of the scale, a dining experience at Rolf’s German Restaurant in New York falls comes complete with an entire ceiling of baubles and lights for a VERY merry environment.

And remember, if all else fails, twinkly lights. You love them, we love them, everyone loves them.

Host an Event

Charity events

People tend to be more charitable around Christmas. And, contrary to what some might believe, Millennials appear to be the demographic which tends to donate the most to charity. According to the UK Charity Commission, this added up to an average of £31.29 per person aged 18-24 during the 2017 Christmas season.

Combine this with the knowledge that members of Gen Z tend to prefer experience-based dining, you may also benefit by drawing younger traffic to your event and restaurant.

Office Christmas parties

In 2017, UK employers spent a mind-boggling £4 billion on Christmas parties, according to a survey by Travelodge. Take a note from Rosa’s Thai Cafe and create a special menu for this as well. As people start having parties from the end of November onwards, you could have your private rooms booked for weeks in a row and set in the books way ahead of time. And of course, what better way to appeal to companies shopping for Christmas parties than to have a lively decorated restaurant interior and menu items guaranteed to get people in the Christmas spirit?

Promotions

Deals for large parties

If you want to highlight that your restaurant is changing things up for the yuletide season, think about adding special promotions and deals only available within a certain window of time, like December 20th to December 30th! To encourage families and large parties to eat out, think about deals targeted towards large groups.

Drinks deals

Once again, drinks deals never fail to sell, especially given that in colder weather where temperature and hours of sunlight are down, people tend to drink more than when in warmer climates.

Scientists at Hepatology found that in regards to temperature and drinking, there is a negative correlation. Hence, people DO, in fact, drink more alcohol in winter, and it benefits restaurants to be prepared for this influx! For Christmas time, think mulled wines, ciders, Irish Cream, and eggnog.

The Gift (Card) That Keeps on Giving

Gift cards to restaurants can be a great way for friends and relatives to ensure that they are giving out a useful and much appreciated present. By having these available and advertised for the occasion, restaurants can also increase revenue. Also, it doesn’t hurt that many times, they actually end up spending more than the gift card value. Either way, restaurants can see profits from offering gift cards.

Media

Online branding for the holiday season

As 86% of diners now look at the menu online before committing to a restaurant, it is important to make sure that your website, where you display your menu, is up to par.

Spicing up your website to advertise specific Christmas-themed features at your restaurant will persuade potential customers to stop by and try out any updates to the menu or decor. This might include going all out like Gordon by advertising “A Very Ramsay Christmas” at his hotel and restaurant York and Albany.

Alternatively, look to 12:51’s minimalistic website holiday design advertising for cute and understated graphics of baubles.

Social media, social media, social media

And, make sure not to forget about employing social media! Consider creating a winter or Christmas-themed Snapchat filter and/or promoting any Christmas menus, events, or deals on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to ensure you are reaching the widest audience you can and maximize sales!

Lastly, sending out a Christmas email campaign can also help spread the word that you are making changes especially for yuletide celebrations.

Look forward to future blog posts solely dedicated to social media and how it can be used in restaurant marketing to improve this aspect of your restaurant even more!

Conclusion

Above are but a few of the many creative ways in which restaurants, bars, cafes, and other hospitality businesses can profit from Christmas celebrations. Through some of these tips and methods, you can lift the spirits of your customers while also seeing an improvement in revenue for your restaurant. Of course you could make like Scrooge and avoid the holidays all-together, but what would be the fun in that?

If you want to find out how the Christmas season affects your sales, Tenzo is the tool for you. By aggregating historical data from past seasons, Tenzo’s AI forecasting can make accurate predictions about this year’s sales. Request a demo today!

The post Restaurants and Christmas | 6 ways to make Christmas jolly again appeared first on Tenzo.

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers” – Anne of Green Gables. The celebration of Halloween in the UK has risen (from the dead), and with that comes an opportunity for restaurants to benefit from its increasing popularity. We’ve put together 6 Halloween Ideas for restaurants to ensure success this year.

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Halloween, a holiday that originated through many iterations from the Gaelic festival Samhain, has had an enduring presence. Since the 80s, the festival has taken hold in the Uk and is now a major festival, with more than half of Brits projected to shell out money to celebrate on the 31st of October.

Despite Christmas still taking the cake with spending in general, Halloween has surpassed it in related Google Searches. This may suggest that, while people do spend more on the winter holidays, Halloween has great potential to compete in the coming years. In regards to restaurants, the holiday provides a great opportunity for food and drink purveyors to spice things up for long-term customers and lure in potential new customers wanting to do something special for Halloween.

Below is a list of six Halloween restaurant ideas that can be tapped to benefit from the season of pumpkins, ghosts, and witches.

Gather the Cobwebs and Decorate for Halloween

One of the easiest ways to prepare for this fall celebration is to create a Halloween atmosphere within your restaurant.

For coffee shops and cafes, consider buying Halloween-themed paper straws to feature in the week leading up to Halloween. With the growing use of paper straws and the impending ban on plastic straws in UK restaurants next April, simple touches such as these will have an impact on the popularity of your restaurant during Halloween season.

For fine dining restaurants, consider including autumnal centrepieces at tables or pumpkin and gourd arrangements at the restaurant’s entrance for a more subtle touch. To add a twist to your menu and to combat the all-too-true tale of pumpkin waste that occurs year after year, consider involving all parts of the pumpkin – use the pumpkin flesh in your cooking and the hollow pumpkin skins can be turned into Jack-o-lanterns!

Give ’em Pumpkin to Talk About: Incorporate Pumpkins

Pumpkin sales have exploded in the UK in the past few years, with some farmers seeing an increase in pumpkin yield of 400% from 2015 to 2019.

If you want to go the extra mile with pumpkin decor, carving them is also an option! Below are some cool designs to try out, and you can even commission branded pumpkin carvings to weave in your branding.

People have expressed a growing fondness for pumpkin-flavoured goodies and menu items (Did somebody say pumpkin-spiced-latte?). Why not turn this trend into profit?! Have a soup of the day? Consider switching out the usual split pea and ham for Roasted Pumpkin Soup. Maybe make a pumpkin and coconut curry! Or, use multiple parts of the pumpkin such as the seeds and the flesh in this Roasted Pumpkin Spinach Salad, which is topped with roasted pumpkin and pumpkin seeds and dressed in a pumpkin dressing. In October, there is no such thing as too much pumpkin! Need more inspiration? Check out what other restaurants have been up to in their kitchens!

For the traditionalists, swap out pumpkins for turnips. More in-line with the origins of Halloween and less common on menus than pumpkins today, these will surely add a unique note to both your plates and decor as well. Keep in mind, though, that carving turnips proves far more difficult than when using pumpkins!

Eat, Drink and Be Scary: Add Halloween-themed Menu Items

Another way to provide a little something special for your customers is to change up your menu to feature Halloween-themed items. This may consist of an entire overhaul of the menu for a few days. Look at Gordon Ramsay’s Bread Street and Heddon Street Kitchens who, in 2018, went all-out with Halloween banquet experiences. Heston Blumenthal showed us just how far you can take Halloween inspiration on his show Heston’s Feasts.

Or, restaurants can take advantage of Halloween specials and make small yet impactful changes to the menu. Embellishing classic cream of tomato soup with a spider web topping design will add a subtle yet spooky feature to the menu. For dessert, perhaps consider making your usual chocolate cake a spooky red velvet for the occasion! In terms of drinks, adding dry ice to a cocktail can enhance an already-existing menu item.

However, reaping the benefits on the 31st doesn’t require new menu items or a special menu created just for Halloween. Spicing up already existing menu items can add a special twist to time-proven classics. One example of this is Mac & Wild’s Bloody Scotch Egg, a gory twist to a regular brunch item that temporarily made its way onto the menu in honour of Halloween. Mr. Bao, a Taiwanese restaurant in Peckham, also got on board with the trend and created the pumpkin bao: a pumpkin-shaped and pumpkin-filled bao.

#Squashgoals: Employ Social Media

In 2019, pizza chain Papa John’s created a Valentine’s Day Snapchat filter to go along with their heart-shaped pizza deal. According to Mobile Marketer, they found that 1 out of 4 people who swiped up on the filter ended up ordering a pizza. Creating a custom Halloween filter for your restaurant during Halloween time could help lure in passersby who happen upon the filter when snapping nearby. A memorable lens also creates something fun for customers to talk and get excited about. On top of this, Snapchat’s geolocation features can also send more diners your way.

Another option would be to create a costume contest on Instagram where people tag themselves at your restaurant in costume. They could then get entered into a pool to win a gift card, discount, or coupon for one free item (perhaps even a Halloween special).

For more general information on using social media as a marketing tool for your restaurant, subscribe to our blog for our upcoming post on this topic!

Let’s have some Skele-fun: Host an Event

Try hosting an event to celebrate Halloween! If your restaurant has private rooms, consider offering a specific Halloween package in which you provide special decór, cocktails, food, etc. Renting out these private rooms to people to host murder mystery parties also could be a great use of the space and a hit for anybody participating.

Alternatively, if you already host a recurring event at your restaurant, such as a Pub Quiz, Karaoke, or a bottomless brunch, consider making the event appropriately themed for October! For example, Dim Sum Restaurant and Cocktail bar (and Tenzo customer) Ping Pong takes their weekly Boozy Brunch and Halloween-ifies it, complete with on-theme music and, with the spookiest costume, a round of blood-coloured shots on the house. Little changes such as these make a difference for customers without requiring excessive expense and time.

Lastly, if in search of a full restaurant transformation, look no further than Sexy Fish, or should I say Scary Fish, for inspiration. The restaurant transforms for a one-night Halloween extravaganza, complete with live entertainment and various harvest-themed treats, such as pumpkin gyoza.

Trick or Treat Yo’self(or your diners): Offer Discounts

Of course, if all else fails, people do love a deal. Halloween restaurant promotions are a great way to draw customers wanting to celebrate the spooky season.

For families, offer for kids to eat free if they come in on Halloween wearing their costume.

In terms of drinks, offer 2 for 1 deals on Halloween cocktails during a haunted happy hour. Create a Scary Hour that follows Happy Hour or is on the weekend with all sorts of Halloween-themed discounts and spooky music.

Halloween is also your chance to rake in the group bookings. Encourage groups of friends to join in the festivities, by offering 10% off for groups of ten or more.

Offering deals or hosting events also makes use of the Google My Business features, Events. Feature these events straight on your profile and they will show up on Google Maps, a sure-fire way to increase interest. And, when people Google happenings in the area around Halloween, your event will show up in the list!

Conclusion

Halloween provides a fitting opportunity for restaurants to capitalise on people’s desire for a little spooky fun, and by implementing some of the above ideas, you too can join in on the festivities!

While there are many ways in which to involve your establishment in the holiday celebrations outside of the six listed above, hopefully, these recommendations get your restaurant started in the right direction.

The post Halloween Ideas for Restaurants to Ensure a Successful Spooky Season appeared first on Tenzo.