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Restaurent

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What are restaurant promotions?

A restaurant promotion can be any special offer to guests at a restaurant. Many restaurant owners offer a percentage off a meal or specific menu item. These offers typically last for a limited time. To make the promotion irresistible, give guests something they consider valuable for free. The trick is making sure the tactic boosts sales instead of cutting into revenue.

Remember, a restaurant promotion doesn’t have to be a deal or discount. It’s anything worthy of shouting from the rooftops. For a fine dining Italian restaurant, it could be that fresh truffle supplements are available at a premium price for a limited time. For a family restaurant, it could be a kid-friendly event happening in the parking lot.

Who is the target customer base?

Before creating any restaurant promotion, it’s helpful to identify the specific people it’s meant to bring in the door. Your customer base likely has many categories of guests.

Get clear on who you’re trying to attract with a promotion to make it more effective. You could focus on:

  • Families
  • The after-work crowd
  • People who enjoy early dinners
  • Theater goers
  • Wine lovers

Picturing a specific regular who falls into the group you want to target with your promotion will help you brainstorm the kind of promotion ideas most likely to delight them.

 

Image depicts three restaurant workers discussing metrics and data at a table.

Online ordering

People are so crazy about online ordering that it makes sense to promote heavily if you have it. The promotion can be as straightforward as sharing the links through social media and emails. If you want to sweeten the deal, throw in a free menu item or a small percentage off the delivery charge to entice people to order.

Personalize offers

Promotions don’t need to be one size fits all. With access to guest data and order history, you can slice and dice your email list to offer highly personalized promotions. For example, you could email people on their birthday with a code for a free order of their favorite dessert to celebrate.

Identify guests who have spent the most on bottles of wine to promote a wine pairing dinner. Create a special prix fixe event and offer a discount to guests who’ve enjoyed multi-course menus in the past.

 

Social promotion

Hopefully you’re using social media on a daily basis to promote what’s going on at the restaurant, as 62% of consumers follow food and beverage companies on social media to discover restaurants, according to a survey from OpenTable. It’s also a great place to actually run a promotion.

Consider offering a free dessert or side dish to those who share a post about the restaurant. Or, post a dish with the caption that everyone who comments and tags a friend gets a chance to win that dish when you pick a number at random at a later time to select the winner. You can also enter everyone who shares out a post to their own network into a drawing for a free dinner.

Image depicts a diner at a restaurant vlogging their food experience.