5 Methods to Pump Up Vacation Gross sales at Your Pizzeria

• Sure, the vacations are already a busy season for pizzerias, however that doesn’t imply you may sit again and let the purchasers come to you.
• A strong vacation advertising and marketing plan will help enhance model consciousness, drive extra enterprise and switch your restaurant into a preferred meet-up spot for family and friends.

By Andrew Beckner

Pull out your sweaters and coats; unbox your tree, menorah or no matter objects you utilize to have a good time the vacations; and pour your self a heat glass of eggnog as a result of there’s a chill within the air, which may solely imply one factor: It’s time to consider vacation advertising and marketing and occasion planning in your pizzeria!

The vacations are a busy time for the restaurant business, however that doesn’t imply you may sit again and let the purchasers come to you. A strong vacation advertising and marketing plan will help you enhance your model consciousness, drive extra enterprise and promote your pizzeria as a festive place to have a good time with family and friends.

Listed here are 5 simple methods to set your self up for achievement this vacation season.

1. Design a holiday-inspired menu. Whether or not you might be utterly overhauling your menu or solely including just a few particular objects, holiday-inspired fare presents your pizzeria many alternatives to extend your backside line and drive enterprise.

Have you ever ever tried making a garlic-bread wreath or pizza wreath? They make for scrumptious appetizers and mouthwatering content material on social media. You could find loads of recipes on-line, however a pizza wreath is only a pizza with out the center, and a garlic-bread wreath is basically biscuits organized in a circle and coated with garlic butter, with dipping sauce within the center. They’re simple to make, worthwhile and completely seasonal.

You can additionally embody extra seasonal objects, like soups, meat pies, casseroles and lasagnas—all good consolation meals for these chilly winter evenings. By serving what’s in season in your space—winter produce like brussel sprouts, artichokes and pumpkins—not solely are your dishes brisker and extra flavorful, you additionally save on meals prices.

If yours is a full-service pizzeria, don’t neglect about your bar. There are many scrumptious seasonal cocktails. Mulled wine, whiskey old-fashioneds, scorching buttered rum and the traditional eggnog can heat up your company from the within out. Moreover, you may serve pumpkin beers, porters, stouts and different hearty winter ales.

After all, with new objects comes a brand new menu. For those who want inspiration or assist along with your vacation menu design, you’ll find easy-to-use menu templates on-line at DIY design providers like MustHaveMenus. They arrive in quite a lot of kinds and are totally customizable, making them sure to suit any model.

Recipe: The Sausage Vacation Tree from Fontanini

2. Supply vacation takeout. Whereas the aim is to fill your pizzeria with glad prospects, some would possibly wish to keep residence with family and friends. For many who wish to get pleasure from your pizza with out altering out of their cozy pajamas, take into account making a holiday-inspired takeout menu.

Your vacation menu can include quite a lot of choices and programs, or you possibly can create no less than one prix fixe (fastened value) choice that features appetizers, entrees and desserts for quite a lot of celebration sizes. Prix fixe menu objects could be handy for each you and your prospects. Your kitchen can do all of the prep for these things beforehand, so when your restaurant is in the midst of its night rush, your prix fixe objects could be simply fired and boxed for takeout.

In your company, these fixed-price objects imply they don’t must undergo the trouble of taking particular person orders for everybody of their household. They’ll simply inform you how many individuals are of their celebration, and you are able to do the remainder, churning out scrumptious vacation meals for the entire household.

3. Run reward card promotions. Get your prospects into the giving spirit along with your reward card promotions. These can take quite a lot of types. After all, you need to promote your reward playing cards on social media. You may even run social media contests.

The traditional “like, comply with, and tag” Instagram contest works nicely for reward card promotions. Right here’s the way it’s executed: You put up a photograph of a present card, and anybody who follows your account, likes your put up and tags somebody within the feedback could be entered right into a raffle for a free reward card. These contests are so common as a result of they’re simple so that you can run, simple in your company to take part in, and will help you share your model with a ton of recent customers.

You can even supply a percentage-based or amount-based low cost for each reward card a buyer buys. For instance, for each $50 reward card, you possibly can give the shopper $5 off of their meal. For each $100 reward card, you possibly can give your buyer $10 off of their meal.

No matter promotions you utilize, ensure you are promoting your reward playing cards on social media, and ensure your servers are selling your reward playing cards to your company. For those who present counter service, it could be a good suggestion to spend money on some holiday-themed playing cards and show them close to your money register, making it as simple as potential in your company to purchase a stack of them for his or her household.

4. Host vacation occasions. Vacation occasions can drive prospects to your restaurant and make for excellent content material on social media. The winter presents a myriad of potential occasions. From ugly sweater contests, visits from Previous St. Nick, vacation film screenings, and different winter-themed hooplas, these occasions can generate buzz and exhibit your model’s persona. Ensure that to shoot photographs and brief movies at these occasions and put up them on social media!

Additionally, Christmas-eve and Christmas-morning occasions could be good for your online business. Nobody desires to make dinner the night time earlier than Christmas or breakfast on Christmas morning. Even when you don’t open your eating room on December 25, take into account providing a handful of brunch choices in your company and making them out there through pick-up or supply by means of a third-party app like DoorDash, Postmates or Uber Eats.

Your prospects will thanks once they don’t must make a complete meal amid the mess and stress of household vacation festivities.

Recipe: The Pizza Sweet Cookie from Ferrero Foodservice

5. Whip up some dessert. Have you ever ever had a pizookie—a pizza cookie? If not, you might be in for a deal with. Take into account sweetening up your vacation menu with a dessert-themed twist on the traditional pizza. The crust is basically an enormous chocolate chip cookie. The toppings are wholesome scoops of ice cream and sometimes chocolate or caramel sauce. For the vacations, you need to use an enormous cookie cutter to make a Christmas tree, topping it with garland product of icing and inexperienced and purple M&M ornaments.

Don’t cease with the pizza cookie. There are various different pizzeria desserts you may supply, and the vacations are the right time to do it, as a lot of your prospects are months away from worrying about their seashore bod and prepared to splurge on sweets. Strive cannolis, tiramisu or churros. There are many dessert choices for the pizzeria. Discover one that matches your model and run with it!

Like several of your seasonal updates and occasions, you’ll wish to promote your vacation happenings far and extensive throughout social media. rule of thumb is 2 to a few posts per week, particularly throughout the vacation season. That’s sufficient to remain in your prospects’ minds, however not sufficient to bother them with fixed updates.

If social media isn’t actually your factor or when you wrestle to search out time to brainstorm, draft and put up new content material, a very good seasonal advertising and marketing technique will help by producing a gradual quantity of recent objects and occasions to share.

Nonetheless, two to a few posts per week could be a lot for a busy small enterprise proprietor. Fortunately, you’ll find free social media posts on-line that may fill out your feed. These posts are simple to customise and share, preserving your social media contemporary and your prospects buzzing with vacation occasion cheer.

Andrew Beckner is a professor, freelance author and foodie. He has printed fiction, nonfiction and poetry. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Chicago Quarterly Evaluate, Sky Island Journal and LandLocked Journal, amongst others. You could find him studying at a restaurant patio someplace in Southern California.