7 Proven Bar and Restaurant Promotion Ideas to Improve Slow Nights

Each business has a season of slowness. And so, your bar or restaurant is no exception to it. After weekend nights, you usually have slow nights every day. Sometimes, you feel that you shouldn’t keep your restaurant or bar open.

Yeah, nights on Tuesday to Thursday are slow for you. However, there are some ways that can help you improve your slow nights. Here are a few proven bars and restaurant promotional ideas for your assistance:

1. Offer special discounts/offers on drinks

It’s a bar, which means drinks are at the center of it. To enhance slow nights at your bar, you can do two things - personalize drinks and give discount offers. You have known some of your customers well in the last few years. As per their habits, you will have known what wines, beers, champagne, and whisky they prefer to drink. You can use their behavior to personalize drinks by sticking customized labels on wine bottle for your regular customers. Further, you can offer some discounts such as Buy 2 and Get 1 Free, and 20-30 Slash on MRPs.

2. Host live music

People don’t come to a restaurant or a bar only for dining or drinking out. They come here to have a different dining/drinking experience. You can help your customers in this regard by hosting a live music concert on slow nights. Your customers will want to stay longer to enjoy the live concert. And longer stay means increased sales of drinks, snacks, or food items.

3. Hold/sponsor a charity event

In the contemporary world, people want to help the needy whenever they get a chance for it. You can take it as an opportunity to increase your sales on slow nights. For holding or sponsoring a charity, you need to contact a charity that is highly popular in your town/city. Local charity works the best for education, kids programs, and health. To keep the footfall increased, you need to change the charity/NGO every week.

4. Put a testing night at your bar or restaurant

Apart from potential customers, your loyal ones want to have some excuses to come to your bar or restaurant. They want to have something exciting at your eatery or bar. You have two options to hold testing nights.

In the first option, you can hold a food-based testing night. On that occasion, cook and serve the dishes that are usually not on your restaurant menu. Invite your loyal customers and request them to share their opinions on the newly served dishes. Such patrons will inform all persons of their network on the newly tested dishes.

As the second option, you can hold testing nights for drinks and tobacco pipes. Order the wines, beers, smoking pipes of the brands you have not at your bar. Based on the received feedback on the testing night, decide what you should keep at your bar and what changes you should make while serving your customers.

5. Organize game nights

You already know people come out at night for having a different dining or drinking experience. And so, you should be a supportive hand for your patrons in this regard. Make a few changes in your bar/restaurant setting and allow your customers to play games like ping pong, billiards, table tennis, and snooker. As they get engaged in playing their favorite games, they will love staying at your restaurant or bar for a longer period. And their longer stay will provide you an opportunity to serve them with their favorite drinks, snacks, or dishes.  

6. Promote your best-selling cocktails or dishes on social media and search engines

 You know well that it's the digital age. People love searching a local restaurant/bar or knowing other opinions about a dish/wine before arriving at a bar or restaurant. To influence such customers, you need to have a strong digital presence. Optimize your bar and restaurant on search engines and social platforms to be found when such customers make any searches for a cocktail or dish you serve.  

7. Partner for profit

 You should have a partnership with your competitors. Consult a few of them and try to know what you and your competitors have. Make a comprehensive understanding with one another and request for the exchange of customers. Refer your customers to them when you have not a particular cocktail or dish and ask them to do the same. You can share a small amount of profit with your competitors for the exchange of customers.  

Conclusion

 The world around you is flooded with numerous ideas that can help you to enhance the slow nights at your bar or restaurant. You just need to explore them and try to find out what ideas can help you a lot. It is expected that you might have to make several requisite changes while applying the ideas mentioned above or the one you find from other sources.