Easter is a family-filled holiday that combines thoughtfulness on the holiday with fun activities like egg hunts and chocolate bunnies. This happy holiday can provide restaurants with an increase in profits if you take advantage of some of the activities that happen during the holiday. Here are some of our tips to increase your sales for Easter weekend.
Think about what most families will be doing during Easter weekend. Some families might go out to dinner Saturday before Easter. For this, create a special dinner offer where families can order a ham dinner at a special price to get people to skip making a meal before the holiday and enjoy a night out that doesn’t break the bank. This also gives your restaurant an opportunity to win over more recurring customers. Be sure to advertise private party rooms and reserving for large groups during this holiday so families know they will always have a spot at your table.
On the day of Easter, many families will be in church services until 10-12. This is the perfect time to host an after-church brunch special. Encourage people to stop by and enjoy some specially created Easter-themed lunches or breakfast dishes at a discounted “Happy Hour” price. You can also offer a similar dinner special on Easter evening as well.
Since Easter is focused on family and children, you want your restaurant to be more family-friendly than usual. Consider letting kids eat free all weekend long and be sure to include lots of Easter-themed activities for the family. You can offer a simple egg painting station with hard boiled eggs, either for free, included with certain meal offerings, or for a cheap price. If you have the patio square footage, you can also host an egg hunt with special discount or gift card prizes to your restaurant for those who find the most eggs or a certain kind of egg. You can get really creative with different small events your restaurant can offer families.
We already talked about the rush of people you will probably have in the after church crowd. To encourage those people to come to your restaurant over others, you want to amp up your brunch game. You can create new dishes that are themed for Easter with eggs, ham, and chocolate or an all you can eat option for existing dishes that fit with the Easter theme. You can also offer a “Hoppy Hour” pricing from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for appetizers, drinks, or certain dishes to get people in the door. Since Easter involves a great deal of chocolate, consider offering a special chocolate dessert dish only for Easter weekend or make your existing chocolate desserts discounted for the brunch crowd.
Since increasing sales to your restaurant usually means increasing traffic, you want to be smart about scheduling your employees. You will want more people on staff during that heavy brunch period you will be advertising on Easter as well as the night before. It is also a good idea to schedule a couple of people on standby in case things get really busy during the weekend. Looking at your sales from the previous Easter weekend will give you a good goal to hit for this year’s profit and will help you decide how much help you will need during the weekend.