How to bring in more customers on your restaurant’s slow nights
Many restaurants face the same challenge: busy weekends but slow weekdays. Especially Monday through Wednesday, customers just don’t pool in like they do over the weekend. Things have to be really exciting and innovative to get people coming to your restaurant in the middle of a hectic week.
In this blog post we will be discussing a bunch of low cost, easy to implement, and creative crowd pleasing ideas that will encourage customers to keep coming back to you, even on slow nights. They’ve seen enough of the trivia nights, karaoke and live music – let us tell you what the good stuff is.
Food and beverage pairings
Let’s start things off with food and beverage pairings, a simple idea with so many different ways to execute it.
Many local organizations sell food items so they can collect money for fundraisers. We have soccer teams selling candy so they can get new uniforms, dance studios raising money for competition travel expenses, and scouting groups that go door to door selling some pretty delicious cookies. A great way to bring people in and support these groups is to do pairings where people can sample flights of your beers or wines paired with different cookies or candy.
Who knows you might answer that age old question–what type of beer is the best chaser when you’ve eaten an entire bag of Kettle chips.
If you don’t have a liquor license or your restaurant just doesn’t serve alcoholic beverages, then you can do coffee and cookie pairings. Find out which roast works best with which cookie variety (it is important business after all).
Use PosterMyWall’s vast upcoming events templates to design the perfect eye-catching posters for these events.
Sip n’ Paint
One of the things a lot of bars do well is tap into the paint and sip craze. It’s a really fun activity and it’s super popular with Gen-Z and Millennials. The great thing about craft and sip is that there are so many different ways to do this.
First off, there are lots of painting options. Your customers can paint on canvas, pottery, aprons, tote bags, candles–pretty much anything! This gives you the opportunity to offer a fresh take every time you host one. If you want to really keep it fresh, you can host other types of crafts like:
- Beading and jewelry making
- Ornament decorating
- Flower arranging
What’s the easy way to execute a sip n’ paint night? You might have a team member or family member lead, or you could even reach out to a local artist and ask if they would be up for it. Just be sure you have enough space for everyone – to avoid any disappointed customers you can look into only taking pre-bookings.
If you’re willing to hand over creative freedom, you can also outsource the whole thing. Mountain Star Brewing in El Paso, Texas hands everything over to a local artist. They see this as a way to give back to the community.
They donate their space to the artist, knowing that anyone who attends is going to order food and drinks. They promote the workshop on social media and their other channels. The artist takes care of supplies, set-up, clean-up, and ticketing. This makes it super easy for them to support the community while also increasing mid-week revenue.
Family activity night
Something that every family has in common is that at the end of the day, the adults are exhausted. People have been at work or taking care of the household–or both. They just want a little peace in quiet. But the kids? They don’t want to stop playing.
The secret to bringing in more families mid week is to create activities that make everyone happy. There are so many options for activities that will keep kids engaged while their parents eat:
- Holiday gift making
- Clay sculpting
- Friendship bracelet
- Coloring books
- Storytelling for younger children
Just be careful to limit the participants to age groups that are appropriate for the activity–and who are old enough not to need too much attention from your staff.
In addition to filling up your restaurant on a slow night, family activity nights help build customer loyalty. Parents appreciate that you’ve made their week a little easier and that’s a good enough reason for them to keep coming back.
Special interest classes and workshops
You can target pretty much any demographic with the right seminar or workshop. These could be anything from financial planning to a cooking masterclass.
The great part is that these events are very easy to host. Simply invite an expert from your community to lead the event – the prep on your part is minimal. And because the expert will invite their customers and prospects to the workshop, you’ll get exposure to new customers while you’re at it. Here are some ideas to get the ball rolling:
- Invite a local author to talk about their new book
- A local baker could demonstrate how to decorate a cake
- Tap your own bar staff to do a quick demo on cocktail mixing
- Iphone food photography where you get to eat the subject matter
In simple terms, the way to build traffic on off nights is to look at your restaurant as a community space!
Invite local clubs to meet
This is an easy one: you don’t have to curate content, you can just invite organizations to use your space.
Pretty much anyone who meets in your space is going to at least order a drink, probably food too. You can invite:
- Book clubs
- Writing groups
- Parents’ organizations
- Women’s clubs
- Men’s clubs
- Non-profits
- Photography clubs
- Arts alliances
- Neighborhood associations
- Hiking clubs
The list goes on and on! All of these ideas are easy to implement. You just have to talk to your audience and go for the types of activities that appeal to them. Your reward is going to be more revenue on your slow nights. But also you’re going to strengthen your customer community and build loyalty. This means more frequent return visits and happy customers who will recommend you to their friends!
Wrapping it up
Your restaurant’s slow nights can be completely switched up with the right ideas and creativity. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think outside the box. Not every great idea needs to be backed up with an insane budget, sometimes all you need is an idea and some motivation!
If you’re looking for more ideas to market your restaurant, take a look at these relevant blog posts:
