Holidays
Top 5 Online Holiday Restaurant Trends
September 30, 2019
Maximize profits through your restaurant website with these holiday trends
The holidays are one of the busiest seasons of the year for your restaurant. It's a time for additional profit gains through alternative revenue streams. Make sure you're prepared. We see spikes in online gift card sales—326% for the month of December—2x more event tickets sold and a 221% increase in catering revenue. We know the holidays are just around the corner, so here are some holiday trends which your restaurant can implement online.
Restaurant Gift Cards
Consider the following, we saw that the average gift card purchase amount around the holidays is around $100. Offering gift cards through your restaurant’s website is an easy way for guests to purchase gifts for friends, family and colleagues. The number one type of gift card sold over the holidays is a restaurant gift card, which on average produces an ROI of 124%. Of those, 68% of people will spend more than the gift card amount, increasing revenue.
BentoBox Gift Card statistics
Holiday-Specific Classes
The ability to sell tickets for events online is an easy way to bring in alternative forms of revenue while offering guests close access to your team, especially around the holidays. Pondicheri, in Houston, TX and New York offers a fun, interactive Thanksgiving prep workshop that teaches attendees to cook delicious and colorful Indian dishes vs. traditional Thanksgiving meals.
Pondicheri's Thanksgiving Prep event page
Promoting Private Events
Around the holidays, there is a significant increase in private events. Friends and family congregate and create memories over meals. From work parties and festivities to date nights, it’s the time of the year to cash in. Restaurants use their websites to promote daily specials and inform guests of any news or happenings. This is all done through popup alerts and private events pages that highlight what the restaurant offers. New York City’s Hearth uses popup alerts to entice guests to book private event space for the holidays.
Hearth's homepage alert promoting its venue for a holiday event
Holiday-specific Catering Menus
If guests aren’t holding events inside your space for the holiday season, they may look for catering offsite or for pickup. This is a great opportunity to bring in high-margin revenue and easy cashflow for your business. Promoting holiday-specific catering menus allows you to prepare best for the season in regards to inventory, regulate the volume of orders and dedicate time and resources to fulfillment. The Busy Bee Cafe in Atlanta, GA uses its online catering store to not only promote holiday-specific menus but to sell them online as well—providing additional access for guests, especially in our current on-demand, digital and mobile forward world.
The Busy Bee's holiday-specific catering menus
Prix fixe Holiday Dinners
Around the holidays, people travel around their cities, across state lines even internationally to visit friends and family. Often times, guests choose to eat out since it’s sometimes easiest when hosting. Prix fixe holiday dinners are always a great option to offer your guests. By selling tickets online, guests can reserve their space ahead of time, creating easy cash flow for you, while also giving your team optimal prep time to order the right amount of inventory, know you’ll have guests dining with you and even provide a unique dining experience. Le Coq Rico promotes their prix fixe, all-inclusive Thanksgiving dinners—especially in a city like New York, where people tend to eat out more often than not.
Le Coq Rico promotes its coursed, prix fixe holiday dinner
Interested in ensuring your restaurant is prepared for the holidays? Get in touch with our team to learn more about how restaurant websites can drive revenue and foot traffic.
Recommended
Interview
Q&A with John and Karen Urie Shields of Smyth and The Loyalist
September 27, 2019
We talk about their day to day, The Farm and what influences their culinary journey
Holidays
8 Ideas for Restaurant Holiday Promotions & Events
October 5, 2021
Check out these examples of restaurant events, and see if they make sense for your upcoming holiday plan.
Holidays
5 Ways to Maximize Revenue Between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day
December 1, 2021
Looking for easy wins for your restaurant’s holiday strategy? Here are some ideas to implement quickly.