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2019 Restaurant Holiday Trends to Jump On

Trends are everywhere from fashion to food and can change at the drop of a hat, which means businesses must be flexible with what they promote. The holidays bring about a new set of trends and challenges to go along with that. Whether you plan to revamp your menu, deck out your restaurant Hallmark Movie-style, or haven’t had the time to think about the holidays, don’t worry — we’ve got you covered.

We’ve made a list (and checked it twice) of the predicted holiday trends so you can prepare your restaurant accordingly. And if you’re trying to decide whether you should remain open on the holidays, check out our previous post for some data insights from seasons past.

Digital Ordering Upswing

Millennials’ habits have reshaped a lot of pieces of the restaurant industry, and holiday dining is on that list. In fact, millennials consume food in a restaurant or bar around 30% more often than any other generation. But when the weather turns cold, your dining room may not be overflowing with guests.

Instead, we predict your carryout and delivery counter will be bustling. If you don’t yet have digital ordering capabilities, talk to your POS provider about the integration options they offer, or partner with GrubHub or UberEats directly. This will keep your phones from ringing off the hook all season long and, with the right POS system, you can even streamline digital orders directly to your kitchen without the added burden of a server manually ringing in the to-go items.

Gift Card Surges

Gift card sales are one of the many traditional tactics for restaurants to guarantee repeat guests as well as benefit your diners, because who doesn’t love gift cards? A 2018 Prepaid Consumer Insights Study conducted by FirstData revealed that over 80% of consumers with a fine dining, fast casual, or drug store gift card spend more than the value of the card.

Gift cards can be further used to entice guests by giving the purchaser a gift card for spending a certain amount, such as “Spend $100 on gift cards, receive a $20 credit for yourself!” Additionally, you can make these credits redeemable beginning January 1, ensuring your business will be booming after the holiday glitter has settled. [Read more…]

Should Your Restaurant Stay Open for the Holidays?

The holidays are a bright and cheery time for many, but as a restaurant owner, the season may bring some additional stresses. Whether you’re prepping for holiday lulls when guests opt for home cooking rather than dining out, or working around your staff’s countless schedule requests, your head has probably been spinning for a few weeks now.

To alleviate some of the winter warfare, we’ve got a two-part series that includes how holiday trends can impact your restaurant, and how your restaurant’s technology can help you make the most of the season.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

With many out-of-towners flying home to celebrate the winter holidays with family and friends, it’s prime time to draw new and regular diners back to your restaurant. Here’s a look at last year’s dining trends in the United States that can give you some insight on what 2019 may hold.

Holiday Dining Habits

Thanksgiving Eve is one of the busiest days of the year for restaurants, and the busiest bar night of the year. It’s even been nicknamed “Drinksgiving,” so make sure your staff is trained on when to draw the line with guests who may have had a few too many. Toast bars and restaurants saw a 33% increase in sales in 2018 on Thanksgiving Eve compared to other Wednesdays in November of last year.

In light of the higher amount of guest traffic in your restaurant on Thanksgiving Eve, you can use GuestCenter’s reservation functionality to give guests a real-time glimpse at how busy your dining room is, allow them to make reservations, and let them check their place in line from the warmth and comfort of their own home. You can also include your bar seating in your reservation bookings to accommodate an upsurge in guests.

Thanksgiving Day sees a much smaller crowd than Drinksgiving, and restaurants have taken note. Only 30% of Toast customers remained open on Thanksgiving Day last year, and a 2018 Statistica survey revealed that only 4% of people planned to eat their Thanksgiving meal at a restaurant.

Christmas and Christmas Eve have seen a small amount of diners in years past. Christmas Eve brought a 39% decrease in sales compared to the rest of December 2018, and restaurants saw an even greater decrease of 85% on Christmas Day.

Lastly, New Year’s Eve commonly draws a crowd if a restaurant embraces a later closing time, while New Year’s Day has fewer patrons, as people spend the day at home after a night of excitement. Restaurants saw a 5% increase in sales on New Year’s Eve, and a 72% decrease on New Year’s Day compared to average December sales.

Now, let’s determine how these metrics directly affect your business.

Should You Stay Open on the Holidays?

[Read more…]

Giving Thanks to Your Restaurant Family

It’s natural that if your staff is happy, your guests will be happy too. When the holidays roll around, it’s a good time to think about taking hospitality to the next level – not just for guests, but also for your employees. We spoke with several restaurateurs to learn how they nurture their team and learned that staff appreciation generally comes down to four things: parties or social events, communal meals, gifts, and time off.

Parties

The holidays are a season of parties. Giving staff an opportunity to celebrate with their colleagues is one of the most common ways to show appreciation during the holidays. While some staff may live near family, others may not. Either way, it’s great to give your team the opportunity to celebrate with their “restaurant family.”

Julia Sullivan, chef owner Henrietta Red in Nashville, plans a holiday party, often around an activity. “We have a party and Secret Santa—karaoke, bowling, or skating,” she says. Keeping the party fun and safe should always be a priority. Sullivan adds, “If we’re going to take the whole staff out, we try and pay for their rides home so no one is driving. We’d hate for a celebration to turn into a bad situation. We try not to have a drinking culture at work.” She encourages people to share rides, and she doesn’t pay for drinks.

An activity-based party takes the emphasis off of overindulging. Says Sullivan, “One of the benefits of making the party around an activity is that everyone can participate without it getting out of hand.”

What works:

Choose an activity everyone can participate in.
Keep the focus off of drinking.
Make it easy for everyone to get home safely.

Meals

Holidays present an opportunity to show your appreciation and make staff meals even more special. At Henrietta Red, the pastry chef bakes 12 days of Christmas cookies. “She does something different every day – nostalgic stuff – and she takes recommendations from everyone,” says Sullivan.

Kelly Nordstrom, Director of Training and Operating Partner at Cameron Mitchell Restaurants notes, “We always make sure that on busy shifts we provide employee meals for the teams. The chef teams plan a holiday dinner for the staff that is served on New Year’s Eve before our dinner shift. This is a great way to break bread together and celebrate our year’s success.”

What works:

Make sure staff is well fed during busy times, when they may be working longer shifts.
Make staff meals extra special with personal dishes or a theme.
Make meals feel like a celebration.
Incorporate suggestions from staff.

[Read more…]

3 Creative Recipes for Marketing Success

When it comes to restaurant marketing, winemaker dinners and charity events are two of the most common activations. While those events can build excitement and help promote visibility, they aren’t the only events that work.

Out-of-the-box thinking is required to develop new partnerships that can break through the noise and represent a win for the restaurant, guests, and partners. Taking a page from the guerrilla marketing playbook and focusing on innovative, unconventional, and low-cost approaches can help build new business, beneficial relationships, and sometimes create opportunities for positive press coverage.

Not sure where to start? Take a look at these three case studies and consider if something similar might work for your restaurant. Use them along with the best practices to inspire and add structure to your own creative marketing efforts.

Alexander’s Steakhouse and John Varvatos

A fine-dining steakhouse & upscale designer fashion brand

Nathan Tenney, the former regional manager at Alexander’s Steakhouse describes an event that kicked off the relationship with John Varvatos, the men’s clothing retailer. “After meeting with management to discuss options, we settled on a complementary cocktail party pop-up with our bar staff making drinks for their guests, and in return they provided our bar staff with tailored suits.” General manager Nicholas DeLuca shares that the bar staff currently receives a discount at the store for purchasing uniforms, and in return Alexander’s hosts their annual holiday party. Alexander’s has even named cocktails after the store.

Benefits: Varvatos staff now refer their clients to Alexander’s, and at Alexander’s the bar staff proudly wears their suits.

Says Tenney, “It cost us zero dollars other than labor and product. The return is exposure in store with the same clientele. They’ve probably sent a dozen guests over to us. That and the uniforms makes the bar staff feel awesome. It’s a perk for the restaurant.”

Why It Works: The demographic is the same for the store and the restaurant. A single event has led to a long-term relationship with benefits for staff and increase in referral business. “Varvatos has brought in their own management and employees to dine here several times to learn about hospitality and see how to apply it to their retail concept,” says Tenney.

Canela and Barry’s Bootcamp

A festive Spanish restaurant in a gay neighborhood & hip fitness brand

When Canela chef-owner Mat Schuster saw Barry’s Bootcamp moving into a nearby space, he saw the opportunity to partner and reached out. Says Schuster, “With Barry’s we’re doing an event with one instructor who has an interest in food and nutrition. It’s an after-class social gathering with happy hour pricing for bites and wine and beer, and we will also customize some healthier bites.” Based on the success of the initial event, Schuster is also considering doing a nutrition focused cooking class for their members or expanding the happy hour and possibly doing a seated brunch after class.

Benefits: For Schuster, it’s all about cross promotion and expanding his reach. But other benefits include positive community engagement and breaking out of the normal routine for staff who enjoy the change of pace.

Why It Works: The restaurant is flexible with menu ideas to accommodate guests and works incrementally, expanding based on feedback and the success of an initial event. Because they are neighbors, the partnership also helps to build a stronger community.

Santé and Salon d’Art

An upscale resort restaurant & the fine art exhibitor

Fifteen years ago, Suleyman C. Cooke, owner of Salon d’Art, approached the restaurant Santé at Sonoma’s Fairmont Mission Inn & Spa with the idea of bringing artwork into public spaces. Cooke met with management and reviewed a portfolio of work to determine what would be a good fit. Cooke curates art on paper, which is featured as décor in the restaurant and also available for purchase. Additionally, the hotel offers lobby space for a weekly pop up where Salon d’Art displays and sells art.

Benefits: The restaurant gets ever-changing fine art curated for their concept at no cost and a very competitive concessionary fee on any sales. The gallery in return gets exposure to a new audience and doesn’t incur overhead for retail gallery space.

Why It Works: The success of the long-term program is thanks to a symbiotic relationship. “We share the same clients and they are already having a positive experience when they are dining in the restaurant,” says Cooke. [Read more…]

3 Ways to Give Guests a Smoother, More Personal Experience

Great hospitality is all about attention – to detail, timing, and the whole guest experience. It’s about anticipating a guest’s wants and needs before they’ve even thought to ask.

To learn more about how restaurateurs delight guests, keep tables turning, and run a smooth front of house, we talked to the pro teams of three restaurants: LB Steak in San Jose, California, and Mission & Market and Il Giallo, both in Atlanta. Read on for their expert tips and (free!) tools that benefit both the guests they serve and their bottom line.

Know the status of every table in your dining room.

Great hosts and managers know how to walk the dining room, taking note of where each table is in their dining experience. Maybe they’re waiting on entrees, or just paid the check. Savvy hosts keep track of table progress without even leaving the host stand – with automatic table status updates. That means hosts can welcome guests right when they walk in the door and give them accurate wait times, without having to constantly walk the dining room, and front-of-house staff can turn tables faster.

Stephen Racheff, General Manager at Mission & Market, says with automatic statusing he walks around the dining room about 40% less than he used to. “As long as you have your POS integration set up properly, it will update it for you to show the host where they’re at [in the meal] without having to update it.”

For Serena Harkey, LB Steak’s General Manager and sommelier, the extra visibility helps her run a leaner, more efficient front of house.

“It definitely maximizes the efficiency of our host stand,” she says. “It was very visual before and took a lot of legwork from the host team. We used to run a three-man team at the host stand, and I’m now able to do a two-man team because I don’t need one person constantly walking around doing visual updates – the system is literally doing it for us.

“Now we can better gauge the quote time we’re giving to our walkin guests, and the secondary person can be more present and readily available to greet guests. It’s made a huge difference.”

At Il Giallo, automatic table statuses free hosts up to focus on welcoming guests rather than walking the dining room. “The benefit is the guest coming in and having someone there to greet them,” says owner Leo Moura. “They don’t need to leave the door.”

Anticipate what your regulars want.

Now that you can spend more time with guests, get the right information at your fingertips to surprise and delight guests by staying one step ahead with service. Knowing their favorite cocktail, who served their table last time, or what they spent and when helps you recognize regulars and big spenders and make them feel appreciated.

Serena regularly reviews a guest’s previously ordered items before they’re seated. “That allows our servers to know our guests – and their wants and needs – before they’ve even sat down at the table,” she says. “We’re able to build on that relationship by offering things that they’ve already experienced here and hopefully have enjoyed.”

The LB Steak team keeps track of food and drink preferences in OpenTable guest notes, then delivers those notes to servers in advance so they know what to offer guests when the they arrive. That way, the server can see when a guest has ordered Pinot Noir in the past and recommend a new one to try. “It makes it effortless for the server to give the guest an experience we already know that they like.” [Read more…]

2019 Restaurant Holiday Trends to Jump On