The holiday season is a time for friends, family, and celebration. And if you own a restaurant, it’s also time to make some money! The holidays are brimming with opportunities to boost your restaurant sales and traffic. Combine those factors, wrap them with a bow, and they amount to one big gift for the whole restaurant industry.

But are you taking full advantage? Are you doing everything you could be to boost restaurant holiday sales? If your restaurant isn’t seeing a marked increase in restaurant revenue during the holidays, the answer is probably no.

Consumers are shopping, hosting, and gathering. Your customers are out there looking for ways to spend their holiday bonus. They're searching for the perfect gift card, a great catering menu, or a place to host the office holiday party.

So how can you be sure that those searches lead to your restaurant? How can you take advantage of all these opportunities and boost restaurant holiday sales and traffic? What are some proven strategies for increasing restaurant revenue during the holidays? In short, how can your restaurant get in on all the holiday fun this year?

Read on for a few helpful tips for increasing holiday restaurant sales.

Celebrate Good Times (Come On)

There’s more opportunity to go around for restaurants during the holidays. A survey from the National Restaurant Association showed that 77% of consumers turned to restaurants for help with holiday planning. The same survey found that 82% of consumers patronize restaurants during the holidays to ease the stress that often accompanies this time of year.

Not only are consumers more likely to dine out or order from restaurants during the holidays, but they’re also willing to spend more this time of year. According to an article from reservation platform Tock, 88% of surveyed respondents are willing to spend more on a meal during the festive season than they would at other times of the year.

Make sure you put your restaurant in a position to take advantage of all that extra celebratory spending. Here are a few key revenue drivers to help you boost restaurant holiday sales.

3 Ways to Boost Restaurant Holiday Sales

Your customers are already planning for the holidays. Make sure your restaurant is a part of those plans by offering:

• Fun, easy-to-use gift cards
• Cool, accommodating spaces for hosting private parties
• Reliable, flexible offsite catering

Let’s take a look at how each of these opportunities can help you boost restaurant holiday sales this year.

1. Promote Your Gift Cards Like Crazy

According to the research, people love getting restaurant gift cards.

The Perfect Present

In a National Restaurant Association survey, 62% of consumers said they’d like to receive a gift card to their favorite restaurant as a holiday present.

Holiday shoppers are clearly getting the message. According to a recent article from restaurant management platform Katalyst, roughly 46% of annual gift-card sales take place in November and December. The article notes that gift card sales spike 17% during the Thanksgiving weekend alone.

Why Gift Cards are Great For Your Restaurant

Gift cards come with some unique revenue-boosting benefits. For one thing, according to FSR Magazine, 72% of gift recipients will spend more than the original value of their card when redeeming.

And, says a Capital One survey, 43% of American adults have unused gift cards, and 20% have allowed at least one gift certificate to expire. Some portion of the gift cards you sell will never be redeemed, which is obviously great for your margins.

Katalyst notes that when you combine the gift overspend and under-usage with the seasonal surge, the holidays should provide the highest volume window of the year. These figures point to one important conclusion. If you aren’t pushing your gift card program hard in the weeks leading up to the holiday season, you’re leaving money on the table.

Get the Word Out About Your Gift Cards

You should be aggressively promoting your gift card program in the fall. And if you’re not satisfied with your current gift card program, look for help from a reputable third-party provider.

2. Become an Event Destination

Event hosting is a huge driver of customer traffic during the holiday season.

Boost Your Bottom Line

Private event hosting brings in more guests, more dollars per guest, and a higher profit margin per occasion than everyday dining. According to FSR, the average ticket size for an event is 5 to 20 times bigger than the average ticket size for a regular full-service table.

Plan With Precision

Event booking can provide a more predictable revenue stream than everyday dining. According to FSR, most private events are booked 30 to 60 days ahead of their actual date. That lines up perfectly with the four- to six-week lead time that most experts recommend for planning holiday specials, schedules, and food orders.

With event hosting software, you can anticipate inventory needs and staffing needs with far greater precision. This not only reduces the likelihood of food and labor waste, but with advanced scheduling, you can also help to navigate staff vacations and reduce the likelihood of staff burnout during this busy time of year.

As an added benefit, if you collect a deposit at the time of booking, as most event venues do, event planning can improve your cash flow going into the holidays.

Get the Right Event Planning Tech

Of course, in order for event hosting to be an effective driver of revenue, you need a strategy for easy booking, an efficient staff schedule, and a way to streamline inventory. Fortunately, many of the top event hosting platforms out there can help you do all of this and more.

3. Cater to Your Crowd

If you offer catering services, make sure you’re promoting the heck out of them this holiday season. If you don’t already offer catering to your customers, this holiday season is a great time to start. Why?

Customers Crave Caterings

Not only is catering a great way to boost restaurant holiday sales, but it’s also something your customers expect you to do. As Olo Senior Product Manager Kate Franco explained to us during a recent chat, “Catering is happening to you, whether you’re planning for it or not.”

As Kate told us, if your customers really like your food, they’re probably already looking for a catering menu on your website. That’s even more likely to be true during the holiday season.

Hosting for the Holidays

An NRA survey found that 50% of consumers had plans to host family gatherings with the help of restaurant takeout and delivery services. Help your customers keep these plans by offering and promoting a strategically designed catering menu.

In one client case study, Olo says, Black Bear Diner saw a 5% increase in holiday revenue just by adding a simple catering menu made up of crowd favorites.

More broadly speaking, Olo reports that the average catering ticket today is $350, which is 10 times the average mealtime ticket of $35. Capitalize on customer expectations by creating and promoting a special holiday catering menu.

Stay in the Loop This Holiday

The best part is that, if you do it right, these tips for increasing holiday restaurant sales should also help to boost traffic and sales in the year ahead. Gift cards, event hosting, and catering are not only great for increasing restaurant revenue during the holidays. These strategies are also extremely effective for new customer acquisition and retention.

So how can you be sure you’re maximizing the long-term potential of these added revenue streams? Start by staying up to date on all of the industry’s latest trends, tech, and headlines.

Source: Dan Durkin, Back of House

Editor’s Note: This article is for informational purposes only, and no endorsement of any vendor(s) should be inferred.