The Restaurant’s Guide to Christmas: Marketing & Promotion Ideas

As one of the biggest events on the hospitality calendar, Christmas brings a sled-load of promotional opportunities for restaurants. A well-constructed Christmas promotion and marketing campaign can help your restaurant stand out from competitors during a time of year when customers are searching for ways to get into the holiday spirit. 

Below, we’ve brainstormed restaurant Christmas ideas and marketing tips you can use to drive business this season and keep guests coming back well into the new year.

A well-executed Christmas menu is an excellent way to drive direct reservations and collect data you can use in your restaurant’s marketing campaigns.

Whether you are able to offer an entire Christmas set menu or a couple of seasonal specials, it’s a great opportunity to show some festive flair. Here are some classic promotional Christmas menu ideas that you can ask your chefs to get creative with:

Pro tip: Don’t forget to add some holiday cheer to your takeout menu. For those who’d prefer to celebrate at home, or want to gift your food to a friend, create takeout holiday menu items that taste great and travel well.

Offering a holiday beer with a branded, festive label is a great way to stand out from the crowd. If you don’t feel comfortable brewing yourself, you could partner with a local brewery and commission one. In this arrangement, you’d also mutually benefit from cross-promotion. Plus, the email and social tag lines basically write themselves. (“Lacking Christmas Cheer? You Need a Beer”)

A good way to increase the average ticket value at a time when people are open to spending more is to offer Christmas-themed cocktails, so why not add your signature twist to a holiday classic and put it on your happy hour menu? Here are some ideas to get your mixologists’ inspiration flowing:

Social media traffic spikes more than 70% during the holidays, so it’s worth putting in some extra effort to engage with your loyal customers and potential new customers online. Some social media-related Christmas marketing ideas include:

Christmas is a time to eat, drink and be merry, so encourage your team to offer seasonal upsells while the purse and belt strings are loose. You can also add special offers and upgrades during the online booking process to drive prepaid revenue. Here are a few ideas:

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Offering gift cards is a good way to collect guest data and to bring customers in after the holiday season is over when they redeem their gifts. Get creative and offer gift cards for cooking classes, special dinners, or wine tastings, or partner with a local business to offer a wider range of gifts or giveaways and benefit from cross-promotion.

Offer drinks and catering packages for office Christmas parties and promote them to local businesses. You could offer catering and delivery services or sell partial or full private bookings at your restaurant that allow teams to celebrate outside their office environment

If your restaurant serves a lot of children, swap the coloring books for a gingerbread cookie and some icing. Allow the young (and young at heart) to decorate their dessert.

An oldie but goodie, mistletoe hung in your lobby, near signage or around your Christmas tree is sure to surprise and delight. Let guests stand under the mistletoe and snap a picture. Create a holiday-themed hashtag, and encourage guests to post their experience on social media.

Building out restaurant marketing strategies for your Christmas promotion ideas can sound overwhelming on top of actually planning the events themselves. Here are a few actionable restaurant marketing ideas you can implement on the most popular channels this Christmas season.

Drive direct bookings and secure upfront cash payments with a dedicated seasonal landing page on your website. Design a festive holiday-themed lander to promote Christmas-themed menus, brunches and events like the example below.

Social media is one of the most effective ways to drive business to your restaurant. With every post, link directly to your holiday landing page or booking widget with a ‘Reserve’ button. You can use a tracking link to accurately measure the success of your campaigns for future optimization.

Email remains one of the most effective channels in the restaurant marketing toolbox. Guest data helps personalize emails and drive pre-Christmas bookings with a targeted campaign. For example, build an email campaign to all your customers who booked a Thanksgiving experience inviting them to try a special holiday promotion. Find out more about how you can leverage email marketing to boost loyalty and repeat business in our guide below.

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As you prepare to welcome guests to your restaurant for Christmas, it’s important to keep customer data top-of-mind. Think about ways to use the data you already have to reengage loyal guests and inform your holiday marketing strategy.

With SevenRooms’ restaurant CRM and marketing solutions, you can seamlessly draw new customers to your doors and quickly collect valuable data during service. The more detail available at your fingertips, the better you can create a more personalized experience guests will remember even after the holiday season wanes. Book a demo today.