Ready to add a little spark and boom to your restaurant profit? Independence Day is not only a fun holiday celebrating the freedom of the United States. It is also an excellent opportunity to increase restaurant sales. When you brainstorm and implement Independence Day sales strategies, you will both increase sales on the holiday and create an opportunity to draw more new patrons into your restaurant, converting them to repeat customers. To help you create a strategic sales plan that is perfect for your restaurant’s budget and forecast, here are some ideas to help kickstart your 4th of July creativity.

Go Full Patriotic

The most important thing you can do to increase 4th of July restaurant sales is to make your establishment look the part. This will help with promotions and to create a better experience that will encourage people to buy more. The decorations should be red, white, and blue everywhere. Think about flags in centerpieces, foil decor, changing the lighting, colored candles, and more. Focus on creating a fun patio atmosphere as well to really reflect the outdoor spirit of the holiday.

Not only should the decor reflect patriotic colors, but the food should as well. Create special menu items that are centered around patriotism. To attract families, try offering inexpensive desserts and snacks that are red, white, and blue for kids to munch on. Likewise, you can create a special patriotic dessert menu that features the red, white, and blue colors and reflects the summer season by being chilled. Lastly, what is more American than grilling out for Independence Day? Focus on creating a delicious grilled menu offering that is celebratory of the summer. To get ideas for some great patriotic menu items to celebrate the holiday, check out our blog on July menu options.

Implement Marketing Sales Strategies

One of the cornerstones of your Independence Day sales strategies should include marketing. Promoting the features, decor, and 4th of July party at your restaurant is what will help draw people in to increase those sales. Here are four ideas to get you started.

• Focus on a key image for all marketing. In addition to including patriotic colors in all of your promotions, choose a key image to create consistency across all of your Independence Day marketing promotions. Try photographing a dish you will be serving with an American flag or other patriotic imagery in the dish. Bonus points if the dish itself is red, white, and blue!
• Pair up with other businesses. Find another business in the community to pair up with for your 4th of July bash. This could be in the form of co-sponsoring the event at your restaurant or offering their goods throughout the holiday. By partnering with someone else in the community, you will receive extra cross-promotion to your establishment.
• Promote online ordering. Some people are very busy on the holiday and may not have time to sit down for a meal in a restaurant. Likewise, they may not have time to cook themselves. This is where online ordering comes into play. Promote the items on your menu in conjunction with your online ordering capabilities so families can take their meals with them to a fireworks show.
• Run a social media contest. Take to Facebook and increase visibility to your restaurant by running a social media contest. Encourage people who visit your restaurant to check in to your Facebook page with a photo in your establishment. To create incentive, offer a 10% discount on their meal when they check in. You can also randomly select one photo to be the winner and receive a free meal. The more people who post photos and check into your Facebook page will allow word about your restaurant to spread to others.

Ensure Complete Scheduling Coverage

There will be an increase in traffic to your restaurant during the holiday as well as many of your employees taking off work to go celebrate with friends and family. This creates a tricky scheduling balance. You want to ensure you have enough coverage to handle the increases in traffic (especially if you are promoting online ordering) without having to call people in who are off. Consider scheduling waitstaff to be on call during the holiday promotional period or offering incentives to those who were previously scheduled off.

Record and Forecast for Next Year

Hopefully your manager’s logbook goes back to last year and you can see what kind of sales, weather, coverage, and promotions you had last year. If not, or if the information is incomplete, ensure you are recording all of these data points this year. Having this information on the books will allow you to improve your Independence Day sales strategies for next year.