10 Holiday Promotion Ideas For Restaurants

The holiday season brings good cheer, high spirits, and an opportunity for restaurants to celebrate customers by optimizing their marketing skills. With the festivities soon upon us, there is no better time to ramp up your restaurant’s marketing techniques in anticipation of setting the holiday mood.

For many restaurants, holiday promotion ideas include offering discounts, coupons, or free meals. While there is nothing inherently wrong with these promotion ideas or tactics, they will undoubtedly be adopted by other competing restaurants. So how do you set your brand apart from the rest this holiday?

In this article, we will examine our top ten holiday promotions for your restaurant. With these, you will not only draw attention to your restaurant amidst the festivity excitement but also boost your end-of-year sales.

Ho-Ho-Holiday Bells In Your Restaurant

Nothing is as exciting as the lingering feeling of a holiday in the air. As the weather gets colder and “Jingle Bells” becomes the chosen theme in stores, spirits rise higher and excitement quickens. After all, this marks the beginning of festivities.

For customers, the holidays are the period to spend time with friends and family. Gift shops are swarmed with buyers, retail stores sell out presents, and even restaurants are not left out of this festival buzz. With more goodwill going around than on any other day, there is no better time for business owners to make more profit than usual.

As holidays draw closer, restaurants gear up for what will possibly be one of the most profitable seasons in the year.

Many businesses generally notice an increase in profit during the holidays. In retail, for example, the holiday quarter sometimes accounts for 25% of each year’s total sales. However, this is not usually the same with restaurants.

The holiday season for restaurant owners may usher in better sales and more profit. However, sometimes they may also lead to a decline in sales.

The last quarter of the year usually marks a decline in restaurant traffic. Where retailers may enjoy as much as a 77% spike in sales, the average restaurant experiences an average of 27% decline in revenue in the sand month.

This decline is usually due to various factors such as increased competition among restaurants, the need to create memories in the cosiness of their home which makes customers hesitant to dine-in, and other more important financial commitments such as buying Christmas gifts.

However, as restaurants continue to recognize the revenue-earning advantages holidays offer, they also begin to recognize that they have a shot at making more profit this coming holiday. Yet, catching your big break as a restaurant owner this coming holiday requires dedicating effort to promoting your restaurant.

Like you, your competition will hatch out a strategy of promotion ideas to get them noticed- and hopefully, patronized- all through Christmas and the New years.

To become more relevant and increase your chances of making more sales, you need to break out of the monotony of regular marketing and adopt holiday-themed marketing promotions that match the mood of the time of the year.

So, other than a holiday-themed menu and Santa decorations hung around your establishment, what marketing strategies can you use to promote your restaurant and encourage old and new customers alike to patronize your restaurant this holiday?

Top 10 Holiday Promotion Ideas For Your Restaurant

Transforming your restaurant into a dreamy holiday-themed establishment is a great way to tap into the holiday cheer and lure customers into your restaurant. However, sometimes even this isn’t enough.

Holiday promotions are an easy way to set your restaurant apart from the crowd of other restaurants. Creating special promotions attract customers and boosts sales.

1. Set The Mood

Holiday decor alone may not be the key to attracting customers to your restaurant, but it is a major ingredient in the recipe. One major reason why anyone chooses a restaurant to eat at is the homey ambiance that it offers.

Holiday decorations create an atmosphere of warmth that customers find inviting. Whether it is bright Christmas lights or stockings on a fake fireplace, erecting holiday decorations in your establishment create a positive feeling that leaves your customers feeling welcome.

More importantly, it can help your establishment avoid being called a Scrooge or Grinch-y. With holiday decorations in your restaurant, your establishment becomes another fun destination where customers want to enjoy the good cheer.

More importantly, decorating your restaurant helps set you apart from other restaurants within the area. You are bound to catch more attention and attract customers who will simply be in awe of how much you have invested into celebrating the holidays with them.

So, how exactly do you set the theme for holiday spirit? The good news is there is no rule on decorating your establishment.

Incorporate Christmas lights. Buy a Christmas tree. Use centerpieces and candles. Hang up garlands and banners. Invite Santa to your premises. Most importantly, you will want to play some holiday music to set the vibe and improve the quality of customers’ moods.

When it comes to setting the holiday mood with good festive music, Loop TV offers the best service out there. From Holiday classics to holiday ROCK, Loop TV offers a wide range of Christmas and New Year music video selections to create the perfect holiday ambiance.

Loop TV offers easy access to this music in a vast library of music videos so that you can provide appealing visual and auditory entertainment on screens all day long without having to break your bank.

2. Create A Special Festive Digital Menu Board

Make your customers feel extra special by including a special festive dish on your menu. Holiday dishes supplement the feeling of festivities and make the customers even happier to be at your restaurant.

This satisfaction that customers enjoy from a holiday menu can be likened to the joy of a child finding an Easter egg during Easter. In both cases, both parties know they will only get to enjoy the treat once a year, thereby ensuring they savor every second of it.

More importantly, you help customers create a memory that they will appreciate even when the holidays are over. Families and friends will have fun reuniting for the special day over your special food.

Customers alone and away from their families can find your special holiday appetizers comforting. Regardless of the situation, restaurant owners can be rest assured that their dishes are helping customers create memories.

Encourage customers to order these special dishes by creating eye-catching digital menu boards. With these animated digital menus displaying your specials, you can get more customers to notice and be interested in your special dishes.

Loop TV offers an easy way to create professional digital menu boards by providing a wide array of digital signage services to create personalized on-screen messages and set up digital menu boards.

With Loop TV’s services, you can display eye-catching digital signs that will alert your customers of your special offers and holiday meals, thereby encouraging them to purchase these special dishes.

3. Host Happy Hours

Everyone loves to enjoy freebies and promos, which is why hosting happy hour events is a great way to attract customers while encouraging sales.

Happy Hour events create a buzz in your restaurant. They lighten the mood, attract customers, and make sales more profitable. They also allow restaurants to get creative and help their customers have fun during the holidays.

Are you unsure what kind of happy hour event you want to hold? The best part of hosting a holiday happy hour event is that there is no rule to doing so!

Experiment with unique themes like Karaoke specials or Christmas Eve/New Year’s Eve costume parties. Explore different decorations, menu additions, and themes. Offer discounts, holiday coupons, and other incentives.

Admittedly, offering freebies may seem like an unlikely way to make money. However, the key to making any happy hour event profitable is to offer discounts on high-profit foods on your menu.

You may also offer holiday specials at discounted prices to encourage customers to shop a little more, whether they are buying in-person or using your online ordering services to purchase takeouts.

Use Loop TV’s digital signage services to elevate the happy hour experience by integrating it with your promotional strategy and marketing campaign.

Use various catchy templates to display information about your happy hour events to ensure your walk-in customers do not miss important announcements concerning the event.

4. Offer Gift Cards And Redeemable Vouchers

Give back to your loyal customers and attract new customers with gift cardrestaurant holiday promotions. Gift card sales spike during the holidays, so it only seems right to use them as a holiday marketing technique to increase holiday sales.

Some ways you can use gift cards as a marketing plan during the holidays include:

• Spend A Certain Amount, Get A Gift Card: This ingenious offer encourages customers to spend more at your restaurant. For example, you may tell your customers to spend more than $100 and receive a $10 gift card. Although the $10 might be a small amount of money, it will snag attention and encourage customers to meet the price limit in the hopes of winning a gift card.

• Coupons: Offer customers a coupon booklet for a percentage off their meals as a reward for an amount spent or other actions such as bringing loved ones to the restaurants. This will incentivize the customers and make them more likely to return during or after the holidays to spend their coupons.

• Charity Donations: Encourage customers to buy more expensive meals, appetizers, or other holiday meals to dedicate a certain amount towards charity. This will increase sales as many customers try to purchase enough high-value products to help get donations to charity. More importantly, it will show clients that your brand is humane and that you care about society. This will induce a sense of loyalty as customers will become emotionally attached to your restaurants, even after the holidays.

With Loop TV’s digital signage solution, you can add text to your TV’s to remind customers of these offers to increase your gift card sales during the holidays.

5. Go Festive Online

Social media is one of the best marketing tools restaurants can use during the holidays. While preparing for restaurant promotional campaigns, remember to keep potential customers online in the loop with every event going on in you physical store .

Create a festive mood on your social media pages. Upload holiday-themed graphic designs or pictures on your website and profiles. Offer a behind-the-scenes look at your restaurant decoration process on your social media pages. Send holiday marketing emails to potential customers. Overall, create unique holiday content for all social media pages.

Sharing holiday cheers online is a great way to help your restaurant get noticed. This will increase brand awareness, and potential customers will be encouraged to purchase from your establishment.

To increase your brand awareness online, work with influencers. Partner with these influencers to spread the word about ongoing promotions t widen your customer base, boost sales, and increase profit throughout the holiday season.

6. Run A Catering Option

Offer a catering service for customers who do not want to dine in with friends and family. Run a catering promotion so these customers will still have access to your menu even without stepping foot into your establishment. This win-win situation leaves your customers happy and your profit in great shape.

7. Give A Gift After Every Purchase

It is easy to wonder how giving customers a gift after every purchase will help you make a profit. After all, you will need to spend money to purchase these gifts. However, contrary to popular opinion, you do not need to break the bank to offer gifts your customers will appreciate.

Offer customers a free holiday gift when visiting your restaurant or purchasing food from your establishment. These gifts may range anywhere from holiday cards to affordable stockings or a small free size of desert. Regardless of what the gift is, what matters most is giving in the season of giving.

8. Host A Holiday Trivia

Contests are a fun way to bring people into your establishment. They are also a great way to make sales because customers will stick around longer and be tempted to purchase food when they do.

You may host contests such as a trivia night in your establishment. Loop TV offers the perfect solution and addition to your holiday Trivia contest with the Trivia service.

With channels including TriviaLoop and LoopTrivia, you gain access to eight interesting categories of multiple-choice trivia quizzes spanning genres such as Music, Sports, TV and Films, History, and even Nature. With TriviaLoop, you can create an entertaining game for your customers to enjoy in your establishment.

9. Host Holiday Events

Have you considered hosting holiday events during the festivities? This will attract customers to your establishment, increasing brand visibility and profit through more sales.

Hosting a seasonal event is a signature way to build a holiday culture that other restaurants will probably lack. These events will help your customers feel special, fostering loyalty that extends past the holidays.

Plan buffets, brunches, and other special events not typical to your establishment. Create a new menu of special offers different from your usual. Include entrees, drink specials, special free desserts, and never-seen-before food options.

Invest in good decor, proper entertainment, and enough publicity. This will help your events seem more special and successful than basic events in the restaurant industry.

10. Reward Loyal Customers

Although restaurant holiday promotion strategies are geared towards making money and attracting new customers, retaining loyal customers is one of the best ways to keep your profit up during the festivities.

Loyal customers are more likely to be repeat customers during and after the holidays. As a result, it is important to show them that you appreciate them. However, you can do this while still making sales.

Send heart-warming text messages, emails, and holiday-themed cards to your loyal buyers. More importantly, offer a loyalty program such as 15% off the holiday menu or other juicy offers created specifically for your loyal customers.

By doing this, you not only encourage them to purchase food to use their discounts but also foster a sense of loyalty that extends past the festivities.

Making Sales During The Holidays

The holidays are always an intimidating period for restaurants. With traffic typically dwindling during the festivities, it can become challenging to keep making a profit up or make sales.

However, with our solid holiday promotion strategy ideas, you can keep customers interested in visiting your establishments and making purchases. This will not only keep your seats full but ensure you continue to make high-volume sales throughout the holidays.

Are you planning to implement any of our holiday promotion ideas? Bolster the success rate of your holiday marketing campaign by integrating Loop TV into your restaurant's digital marketing ideas.

Loop TV offers a world of unlimited entertainment and sophisticated digital signage solutions to entertain your customers all year long. With more 200+ professionally curated entertainment channels from music videos to lifestyle news and superior digital signage solutions to display important customized information to your patrons.

To get started, sign up for a media player on Loop TV’s official website today!