Let’s creep it actual: for restaurant house owners, Halloween generally is a little scary.
The excellent news? With the correct advertising and marketing technique, you may arrange your restaurant for fulfillment and obtain spooktacular outcomes.
There’s no magic to it—solely information. We’ve crunched the numbers from over 10,000 bars and eating places. The end result? Eerie-sistible insights that can assist you make this Halloween an evening to recollect, from a rise in takeout gross sales to staggering numbers for pumpkin-related objects.
In actual fact, bars open final Halloween noticed a 15% enhance in whole gross sales and a 26% enhance in whole variety of tickets, making Halloween this 12 months much more promising.
Let’s take a look at a number of advertising and marketing concepts that you should use this Halloween to generate extra enterprise.
Revamp your menu
Associate with native companies and points of interest
Adorn your eating room
Type your employees
Host a fang-tastic occasion
Promote in-store and on-line
Entertain trick or treaters
Leverage user-generated content material
Launch Halloween promotions
Revamp your menu
Halloween is a superb time to focus on autumn flavors in your menu. Converse along with your chef about together with seasonal substances like pumpkin, candy potato, butternut squash and apple, for instance.
You’ll be able to run a particular prix fixe menu all through October. Or strive a Halloween menu for the week earlier than October 31. You may also have distinctive objects out there on Halloween weekend with pricing per merchandise.
Supply a takeout particular
Taking into accounts all varieties of eating places, there was a rise of 11.37% in take out gross sales on Halloween Monday 2022 in comparison with Monday prior. That’s all of the proof it is advisable to increase your takeout choices this 12 months to additional fulfill hungry prospects. That might embrace:
Providing reductions on widespread takeout objects
Purchase-one-get-one specials
Takeout-only objects
Don’t overlook the boos!
Cocktails are key. A fast on-line search will reveal a great deal of Halloween-themed cocktails that use substances most bars have already got.
In actual fact, Lightspeed’s report on Halloween 2022 confirmed pictures and combined drinks are hottest amongst patrons. In North American bars, spirit gross sales grew by almost 68% in comparison with the prior week. Cocktail gross sales grew by 34%–and wine gross sales dropped by 17%.
With that in thoughts, listed below are a number of cocktail concepts to get you began:
Listed here are a number of to get you began:
Grenadine to mimic the look of blood in layered drinks or pictures
Cranberry juice provides a crimson tone to vampire-themed drinks
Dry ice is secure to eat and leaves a stunning path of smoke
No time? No drawback. You may also briefly rename a number of bestsellers so as to add a bit of Halloween aptitude.
Within the days main as much as Halloween, use your POS to generate experiences that present which objects promote essentially the most. Merely renaming a number of menu objects will give your restaurant a enjoyable Halloween vibe. Don’t be afraid to get punny with it, like so:
Edamame turns into Edamummy
Remodel your chilly cuts right into a char-cut-erie board
Hen wings are bat wings
Add adjectives like “haunted” or “frightful” in case you’re caught
Bone appétit!
Associate with native companies and points of interest
Halloween is a superb time to workforce up with native points of interest that characteristic seasonal actions. And it’s no secret that buyers love something pumpkin. That’s particularly evident within the Northeast US, the place gross sales of pumpkin-related objects elevated by 3,164% in October in comparison with July. Within the South, gross sales of such items surged by 2,824%, and within the Midwest, 1,737%.
No should be the ghost with essentially the most, both. Some easy concepts embrace:
Each buy of a desk d’hôte meal comes with a reduced admission to the native haunted home
Promote lowered value tickets to a pumpkin patch in your restaurant
If there’s a dressing up retailer in your space, supply to maintain rebate flyers in your bar. In alternate, these native outlets can promote your restaurant.
Working with different native companies builds neighborhood. It additionally expands your buyer base and units up future partnerships.
Adorn your eating room
Right here’s your probability to get additional artistic.
For an eerie vibe, dim the lighting and arrange a number of synthetic spider webs. For a extra farmhouse really feel, it’s a gourd thought to make use of small pumpkins—both plain or painted—as centerpiece decorations.
Able to kick issues up a notch?
Grasp paper skeletons from the partitions
Place jack-o-lanterns across the restaurant
Sprinkle plastic spiders in your tabletops
For additional inspiration, go to a ornament retailer earlier than Halloween. Test Pinterest for extra concepts in case you have a common sense of what you’re making an attempt to attain.
Cue the music
Your eating room may characteristic seasonal sounds. If it’s applicable, you may pipe creepy sounds at low quantity, or create a celebration vibe with a themed playlist. Test Spotify to see if they’ve something already curated. Simply keep in mind to verify to provide it a hear earlier than you play it in your patrons!
Type your employees
Asking your employees to decorate up for Halloween will be a good way to create a enjoyable and memorable expertise. Many neighborhood eating places have fun Halloween with costumed employees members. It’s a good way to get some word-of-mouth publicity.
You’ll be able to select a theme in your employees’s costumes, or allow them to choose their very own get-ups individually. Both method, you’ll be showcasing your restaurant because the place to be for Halloween.
Dressing up can increase morale and primes everybody for an evening of nice service.
This 12 months, as all the time, bars and quick informal eating places are getting ready for the Halloween rush with occasions, promotions and elevated employees.
“We’re prepared for it,” says Rohit Sharma, Normal Supervisor and Operations Associate at Bar 404, a speakeasy in downtown Toronto. “There will probably be quite a lot of friends coming on the identical time, [and we] need to be sure that we have now extra hosts to accommodate [everyone].”
Sharma additionally encourages workers to get in on the enjoyable, creating seasonal cocktails and sporting costumes to work.
If your online business is much less suited to a costumed expertise, you may as well encourage your workers to put on orange and black. It’s a refined method of stepping into the Halloween spirit.
Host a fang-tastic occasion
Have a Halloween social gathering at your restaurant to spice up gross sales and encourage repeat enterprise.
Adults additionally love Halloween. Would you like a child pleasant or family-focused social gathering? In any case, there are dozens of actions patrons can be part of:
The basic costume contest or its cute spinoff, the pet costume contest
Pumpkin carving contests
Guess what number of candies are in a jar
Winners can declare prizes like reward playing cards, vouchers or a bottle of wine.
Internet hosting a halloween social gathering enables you to focus your advertising and marketing efforts (like decorations and a customized menu) into one night time.
Your occasion doesn’t should be aggressive. In Branson, Missouri, Desk Rock Espresso Roasters host a pumpkin portray night time for his or her prospects.
Promote in-store and on-line
There’s no magic spell for drumming up enterprise. Fortunately, you may faucet into two highly effective forces as an alternative: phrase of mouth and social media.
In the event you plan to supply a particular Halloween menu, you may tease its arrival with printouts. You may also give them to different companies within the space.
Social media is a good way to announce Halloween happenings. Inform followers about your plans throughout all of the platforms you employ for your online business.
Recess—residence of Chicago’s largest patio—is internet hosting a Nightmare Earlier than Christmas-themed occasion.
Entertain trick or treaters
Prepare to provide the neighborhood pumpkin to speak about!
Is your online business in a residential space? Giving sweet to the native youngsters is an eerie-sistible approach to generate goodwill in the direction of your restaurant. And it may be a approach to create compelling user-generated content material.
In the event you make deal with baggage, you’ll want to embrace your online business card.
Leverage user-generated content material
It doesn’t should drive you batty. Consumer-generated content material (“UGC”) is, merely put, social media content material that your prospects put onto the net.
It’s one of the efficient methods to construct social proof. It’s scary how efficient it’s. There are numerous methods for eating places to make use of UGC to construct their model.
Taking part in neighborhood occasions (or simply by giving Halloween sweet to native youngsters) sometimes brings user-generated content material to your fingertips.
You’ll be able to create a hashtag and promote its use in your menu board. Or tag prospects and encourage them to do the identical of their photos and movies of your restaurant.
Launch Halloween promotions
Our newest Halloween information report exhibits that folks like to exit on Halloween night time. For example, in Los Angeles final 12 months, bar gross sales elevated 107%, whereas gross sales in Brooklyn and Jacksonville, Fla., elevated 46% and 65% respectively.
Meaning October is a superb time for a promotion.
You’ll be able to supply 13% off sure menu objects
Have a “purchase three get one free” promotion
Embody a free dessert for each $31 buy
Have enjoyable on the market
Halloween is a chance to strive new advertising and marketing concepts in your restaurant. Get artistic and luxuriate in!
