Not surprisingly, discounts do help get customers in the door but as a direct consequence, competition in this space has intensified. As restaurants continue to push value in a quest for market share, price wars have emerged as a fact of life.

As long as one competitive rival offers value items, others are compelled to follow suit or risk losing business. Lately, a sort of in-between gray zone has also sprung up between quick service and fast casual when it comes to value. While fast-casual concepts largely sidestep the price conversation, focusing on their product quality, it now seems they want a piece of the low-price pie, with some operators pledging to offer fast-casual quality at a more traditional quick-service price point.

And conversely, quick serves want to better compete with fast-casual and have begun offering higher quality items.

So, with a never-ending discount tug-of-war being played out, how can operators, who also face growing pressure from labor and food costs, compete in the lower price arena?

Here are some things to consider:. Limited-time offers work particularly well at low price points as they encourage visits without the long-term negative impacts of an everyday value menu. LTOs can also include dine-in-only deals, thereby heightening the likelihood that customers will purchase higher-margin items, such as a drink, during their visit.

A food truck is the perfect way to show up wherever the action is and put your brand and food in front of new people in your local area. Food trucks are also relatively low cost, extremely lucrative, and double as an ongoing, mobile source of promotion for your restaurant.

Imagine bringing in that extreme income while ALSO getting a bunch of those customers as repeat business at your restaurant. Perhaps most importantly, they are an example of a brand that leveraged a strong local fan base into becoming a national chain.

This is how you make a secret menu feel special. You can also make this part of a loyalty program, where secret menu items are announced to and even decided by VIP members only. One of the best ways to turn a local fan base into brand ambassadors is to create branded merchandise that they then wear wherever they go.

Well, Chick-fil-A grew to be one of the largest privately held companies in the world by offering a full year of free food to the first visitors to each new location. Every time a new location opened, people would camp out in the nights leading up to the opening, hoping to be one of the winners.

This phenomenon was frequently covered by local press and resulted in millions of dollars in free advertising over the years. You can do just one winner instead. Nearly half of all workers are employed by small businesses.

This includes thousands of potential customers in your local area. A great way to get in front of these customers and generate some viral buzz is to simply show up and provide food for free.

You could provide lunch for the entire staff of most small businesses at a very low cost. Try just showing up with enough food for 20 people, or if that results in some problems, try calling ahead and arranging things with the owner or office manager.

Start with small businesses, but you can also aim to give back to the community while gaining more attention when you provide food for teachers, nurses, and other employee groups that are highly regarded in the community. On the topic of giving back, one of the best ways to gain attention in your community is to give something to that community.

Regularly and visibly giving to the community and well-regarded groups in the community is a great way to make people feel like you are on their team rather than simply attempting to profit from their patronage.

The key here is being genuine and offering something that feels meaningful. Just like marketers, journalists are always looking for a good story. Give your local newspaper or TV station a call and see what sort of stories they might be looking for. Sometimes the simplest things work the best.

These promotion strategies are simple, proven, and can be used over and over again. This is as simple as it gets, but percentage discount promotions are consistently the most profitable campaigns for our restaurant partners here at Owner.

You also want to create some urgency by saying the quantity of offers is limited and on a first come, first serve basis, AND the promotion will only run for a limited time. com platform. For our restaurant partners on the Owner. Our platform then automatically sends out periodic offers to each customer based on their order history.

At this restaurant, people who order Chicken Parmigiana often order the Creamy Garlic Chicken Pasta as well. Our software will take note of that and then automatically send the customer a discount offer for the Creamy Garlic Chicken Pasta about two weeks after their Chicken Parmigiana order.

com was built specifically to address these frustrations and help grow your restaurant business. Promotions are all about getting customers to take action, and few things motivate action quite like a deadline.

Regularly offering limited run items also opens the doors for additional promotions down the road. You can run polls allowing customers to vote on which items to bring back and possibly make voting a perk of your loyalty program , or you can simply take popular items and give them an encore.

Happy hour specials are a niche staple that should be a near-universal practice for restaurants open during the afternoon. They provide an affordable first-contact point for new customers, and they provide an easy focal point for ongoing promotion on social media.

When done correctly, Happy Hour ticket prices often average out higher than lunch tickets. The key is being strategic about the food you offer in addition to the drinks. If you run a more upscale restaurant, try offering scaled-down versions of your dinner menu at an enticing price point while keeping drink prices close to retail.

While BOGO buy one, get one free offers tend to be associated more with fast and casual restaurants, they can be used effectively by virtually any restaurant. The restaurant now has 2, people to reach out to with additional offers, AND a large chunk of those customers are very likely to return.

The reach you get from offering a compelling promotion goes far beyond the actual people who walk in and redeem the deal. These menus and any little freebies or specials you attach with them make for an evergreen source of promotion as well.

Check out this great example from Shake Shack:. Free appetizer campaigns are another type of promotion that work really well for our Owner. com partners but require a bit more effort and intentionality. The key is finding a menu item that has a low cost and brings in a high margin — think chips and queso, fried pickles, fried onions, mozzarella sticks, salads, desserts, breadsticks, egg rolls, etc.

If you can find something that can be given away sustainably, that allows you to consider the campaign for an ongoing promotion.

You can also limit the quantity of the free items given out, creating urgency to take advantage of the offer before it runs out.

Business card giveaways are an old strategy, but just like many of the strategies in this category, they remain effective today. The process is simple: offer customers a chance to win a free meal in exchange for dropping their business card in a bowl. Make the prize a free meal for TWO and then advertise that you select a new card from the bowl every single week.

We want as many cards as possible because our modern twist takes advantage of every card we get. Family-sized meals have been a staple tool in the fast and fast-casual eatery toolbox for decades, but this concept remains underutilized elsewhere on the restaurant spectrum.

As we talked about earlier, people care a lot about the experience of eating out, and that experience is often deeply connected to the people they are eating out with.

When a person sees a meal-for-two-offer, they think about sharing that meal with someone they know. Offering shareable meals and preset, multi-course menus for specific group sizes is a great way to get people thinking about the experience they want to create and envisioning themselves having a great time with people they love at your restaurant.

Offering samples is a great way to drive sales. According to The Atlantic, free samples at stores like Costco can help boost sales considerably.

If you have one or two dishes that always score big with customers, have a staff member outside the restaurant offering bite-sized samples to passersby.

If someone is in the mood for Indian food, they are usually going to choose their favorite Indian place. Your real competitors have the same or similar cuisine, the same or similar mood appeal, and the same or similar location. Local ingredients, foods, and craft drinks tend to be more expensive, but they also tend to be very well received by local customers.

Choosing local suppliers, loudly advertising that fact, and collaborating with them provides a great focal point for ongoing promotion. If you are already sourcing local ingredients, foods, or drinks, reach out to the supplier and invite them to collaborate.

Pro tip: it will be a lot easier to set something up if you have a clear game plan to propose from the beginning. In addition to non-competing restaurants, there are tons of non-competing local businesses in your area that would love to cross-promote with you in order to mutually grow both businesses.

One creative idea is to partner with businesses and organizations that need meeting space during your non-service or even low-service hours. This gets people in the door who will likely be interested in coming back later to try your food.

You could also arrange to serve food to the group as part of the agreement, either as a promotion or a paid service. The point here is to be conscious of your assets and how you can use those assets to grab attention to your core business. Despite all that focus on non-competing businesses, sometimes it even makes sense to partner with your direct competitors.

Restaurant Week and similar local events are a great time to put competition aside and celebrate all the restaurants in your local area. Restaurant Weeks are very popular and tend to get coverage from both social media and local media.

Hand out flyers, offer discounts, and encourage people to come in and try a dish made by the people in their own community. If your restaurant is a great place to work, the entire service staff network in your city, plus all their friends and family, is going to know about it. Get your staff involved in providing ideas for improving the restaurant, and then use those ideas.

Offer individual and team bonuses when possible. Be conscientious with scheduling and allow added flexibility for longtime performers. If you want to really go above and beyond, find out what would be personally meaningful to your top staff and try to give them that as best you can.

Holidays can be a massive source of new business, but they also bring their fair share of competition. Every restaurant in your area is going to be running promotions and specials to compete for that holiday dining dash.

This is a day to pull out all the stops and celebrate someone incredibly important and special. You want to offer a great experience and charge a price that makes this an incredibly successful day for your restaurant. This phrase is intentionally vague but entails a limitless supply of alcohol.

Mimosas or wine are great options here, where you can supply a large amount of drinks at a relatively low budget. Instead of ignoring this or trying to fight it, why not profit from it?

Create a ready-to-grill, take-home package that people can order to make their cookout easier AND higher quality at the same time. You can even offer to grill it yourself for people who want the cookout experience without needing to do any work.

The demographic for this celebration tends to skew a bit younger, however, and while diners are willing to spend money, cost is still a consideration. A prix fixe menu is the perfect fit for this holiday. It lets your customers receive an upscale experience while also providing a fixed price they can commit to before arriving at your restaurant.

Offer upsells like wine pairing, main course upgrades, or special desserts to increase your average ticket size and make more money from the big spenders who visit your restaurant.

Reach out to as many as you can and find one that is interested in collaborating with you. Look for a mutually beneficial collaboration that is going to help both businesses grow together, and make sure both companies are contributing to the promotion and being featured in any advertising you both run for the event.

Customers love the convenience of simply showing up and experiencing the menu without needing to make wine decisions at each course. Start by choosing two or three signature dishes and then choose either one glass of wine or one bottle that best compliments the food.

For example, your menu might offer three glasses of champagne, as well as a description of what dish they go with and why they pair well together. Those who celebrate it tend to do so with the entire family, and you can encourage families with children to choose your restaurant on Easter by providing them with a special, kid-friendly menu that is intentional rather than an afterthought.

The key here is to go a step beyond the normal kids fair of chicken fingers, fries, burgers, and pizza.

Offer something exceptional but still accessible to young kids and then advertise it heavily leading up to the event. This is an especially great promotion option for restaurants looking to attract families year-round.

Halloween is all about fun. Halloween events are more about decoration than anything else. For the entire month of February , the popular Heart-Shaped Pizza returns, with your choice of toppings.

every bite is a taste of perfection. Although prices can vary by location. The meal deal includes two Adult Fresh Food Bars, which famously feature guest favorites created from original recipes , including freshly-prepared entrées, seafood, sides, salads, fresh fruits, vegetables, soups and much more.

It includes one bar bite to share, choice of salad or soup per person, choice of entree per person and a dessert to share. In addition, Bar Louie is featuring the From Paris with Love Martini made with Grey Goose Le Citron vodka, Chambord raspberry liqueur, a dash of Fleurs De Prairie and pineapple juice, available only for a limited time.

Pricing and participation may vary by location. Additional exclusions apply. See your local Bar Louie for details. To earn points for dining, including through To Go placed on the website, and redeem tasty rewards, guests can download the My Red Lobster Rewards App and sign up for the free loyalty program.

The Yes, Chef Burger features two all-natural Angus Beef patties hand-smashed with chargrilled onions, and melted American cheese. The new burger with the Hollywood name is is available for dine-in, pickup, or delivery, with easy online ordering on the website or app.

Download the BurgerFi app for Free Fresh-Cut Fries on your first order. Through March 6, the chain is celebrating its 60th Anniversary with cent Snack Tacos, at participating locations.

They are usually priced at 99 cents, so you can get three for the price of two. The discounted tacos are only available via the Del Yeah! Rewards app. These wildly delicious tacos are only here until March The new Fiesta Sauce is a creamy, savory, seasoned sour cream dip with jalapeños, onion, garlic, tomato and cilantro.

Download the Mobile App and join Bigger Bolder Rewards for free food and exclusive offers today. New menu items — The sandwich chain is introducing Sidekicks, a collection of three new footlong sweet and savory snacks, available any time of day. Complemented with the fresh flavors of lettuce, tomatoes, caramelized onions and horseradish mayo, this new sandwich is expected to become a new favorite among customers.

The chain has extended its Free Fries Friday is every Friday through December to closing time. The Magnificent Seven® features two eggs, two Applewood smoked bacon strips and three buttermilk pancakes.

Perkins is open late for all night owls with a special limited-time offer of Half Price Apps. Through Feb. A Handmade Pan Pizza may be redeemed for an additional charge. The ice cream chain brings back its popular Coneheads sundaes with a different one for January, February and March.

Starting Feb. The new Golden Carolina BBQ Tenders are drizzled in a signature tangy and mildly sweet Golden Carolina BBQ sauce and served with choice of two Country Sides, plus, buttermilk biscuits or corn muffins.

The new Golden Carolina BBQ Tenders will also be available as a flavor option for the customizable Tenders Trio Platter, another great choice for the Big Game or Big Dance watch parties. Also — It is rare that we publish information of a celebrity endorsement with a restaurant chain, but beloved global superstar and philanthropist Dolly Parton is different.

The program is free and easy to join and just for enrolling, members receive a complimentary appetizer. To sign up, visit any Cracker Barrel location, the Cracker Barrel app or CrackerBarrel. They surely are giving you the Rockstar treatment!

For a limited time , enjoy the new Southern Comfort Specials Menu additions, which pay homage to the rich culinary heritage of the American South. It joins other seafood favorites on both the SHRIMP YOUR WAY and Ultimate ENDLESS SHRIMP menus. Choose two shrimp choices to start, then keep the critters coming with additional shrimp selections until you are satisfied.

Each Ultimate Endless Shrimp meal is accompanied by a choice of side and, of course, warm Cheddar Bay Biscuits.

Insider tip: avoid grabbing the extra biscuit to leave room for endless amounts of shrimp. Children ages 12 and under now can enjoy a free kids meal on Mondays with the purchase of an adult meal at participating, exclusively for dine-in guests. The Free Kids Meal is valid with any in-restaurant adult meal purchase.

Bundle menu items: Bundling items together is a way to provide convenient meals to groups while driving larger ticket sizes. Restaurant Flat dollar discounts on individual menu items or items in specific menu sections. Bundle offers featuring menu items grouped together like “buy this, get that” 1. Restaurant BOGO (Buy One, Get One) · 2. Combo Deals · 3. Time-Based Discounts · 4. Percentage-Based Comps · 5. Calendar-Based Discounts or Specials · 6. Dollar

Discounted menu selections - Missing Bundle menu items: Bundling items together is a way to provide convenient meals to groups while driving larger ticket sizes. Restaurant Flat dollar discounts on individual menu items or items in specific menu sections. Bundle offers featuring menu items grouped together like “buy this, get that” 1. Restaurant BOGO (Buy One, Get One) · 2. Combo Deals · 3. Time-Based Discounts · 4. Percentage-Based Comps · 5. Calendar-Based Discounts or Specials · 6. Dollar

And discounts work best when customers know they are available. Nobody wants to miss out on a chance to save some cash. Take, for example, a case where your store receives fewer customers during Monday lunchtime hours than on other days. Your store is less busy during that time, and sales are low.

What can you do to attract customers and increase sales for the said time? Add some discounts! That is right. Discounts can attract both new and existing customers to your store. But then you need to ensure they are only available for the hours when you do not have a lot of customers. Enter GonnaOrder store schedules , and you are in total control.

You can choose when your discounted items appear on the customer menu with dedicated store schedules. A schedule can be for an hour or a full day. Besides using schedules to apply discounts to items when the store is not busy, you can use this concept to create menus for special days of the year.

For this case, you need two schedules. The schedules allow you to separate menu items and display discounted items at specified times.

We want to promote discounted items during lunchtime hours on Monday. The time could be between and Hrs on Monday alone. The time remains the same for the second schedule, but the schedule is active for all days of the week except Monday.

The next step is to create the discounted products that you will use to promote sales. You can put the items in the same category, making them easier to control.

For every item you create, remember to assign a discount. Each item can have a different discount type or value. The last step in the process is to associate the discounted store items with the Monday lunch special discounts schedule you created earlier.

If you bundle the items in the same category, there is no need to associate each with a schedule separately. Instead, you can associate the category with the schedule.

Below this setting is an availability restriction field that associates an item with a schedule. Choose the Monday lunch special discounts schedule you created in the previous section and save. The Tuesday — Sunday lunch schedule should allow you to remove the respective non-discounted items from the Monday menu.

You should associate it with all individual non-discounted items to ensure they are not displayed on the menu on Mondays. Unlike the discounted items, these can be distributed in different categories.

Therefore, you may need to associate each with the given schedule. You can learn how to configure item availability based on schedules from our help center. Your catalog shows all the items listed in your store regardless of the controlling schedule and menu settings. However, the customer menu adapts to schedules and settings.

Therefore, the store menu will show the discounted items on Monday and the non-discounted items for the rest of the week. Scheduling discounts allow you to attract customers in durations when your staff would, otherwise, be less busy.

It can also help you create special menus for days special to your customers. More customers are likely to flock to your store on Mondays to take advantage of the discounts in the example case. Consequently, this can increase your sales for the given day since customers might as well add more items to their orders.

And to be clear, you don't need to implement everything on this list just doing a few of these things can really make a difference for your business! Most of the ideas in this guide focus on taking simple actions that will result in moderate bumps in attention.

Many can be done repeatedly and only take a few minutes to set up. These viral promotion ideas will require a bit more creativity, time, or investment. Hell Pizza had its biggest sales day of all time during this promotional event and saw an overall increase in sales at a time when the local economy was struggling.

This is a great example of how running a challenge-type event for your customers can grab attention and increase sales. At the same time, these types of accounts tend to grow so quickly that k followers nowadays is considered pretty small.

The rise of food bloggers and micro-influencers has been a mixed bag of experiences for restaurant owners. Every other week, we hear a new story about entitled influencers walking around demanding freebies.

But in reality, the vast majority of these individuals are just regular people who are passionate about food and working hard to create content to build what is essentially a media business. The key to this type of restaurant marketing is understanding how to align your incentives with the influencers you are trying to work with.

One of our partners named Leo Mattias — owner of Cilantro Lime in downtown Los Angeles — has nailed this formula. He reaches out to micro-influencers like Mexi Papa and offers to name a new menu item after them while inviting them for a fully filmed, behind-the-scenes tour.

In many cases, these types of collaborations only cost the restaurant some time and effort. What can we learn from 33 million people watching a video of random guys turning fast food into a giant lasagna? One of the great things about social media is you no longer have to guess about what draws attention.

All you have to do is look around to see what gets people excited. Hundreds of brands like Epic Meal Time have created multimillion-dollar media empires with over-the-top, showstopper meal creations that are more about the spectacle than the meal itself.

Is there a showstopper dish you could create in-house that could really get people talking? Sit down with your chef and see what you can come up with to make a splash on social media. This restaurant promotion idea can potentially combine the benefits of both a showstopper meal and a micro-influencer.

Today, thanks to sites like Youtube, Tiktok, and Instagram, there are millions of amateur, semi-pro, and professional chefs with large online followings. A large percentage of these chefs are solely online content creators and have never worked for a restaurant.

They are struggling to monetize their following, and many of them are looking for ways to establish their cooking legitimacy offline. This is a great opportunity for local restaurants to partner with popular online chefs who are looking to make offline moves that build their brand. This type of promotion has a ton of upside and very little downside, and I could see it being a staple strategy for restaurants five years from now.

In a low-margin industry like restaurants, the best promotions maximize perceived value while minimizing cost. This is a concept the gambling industry has perfected, and we can take a page out of their book with a promotion where the house always wins.

Promotions like this are fun, funny, and endearing, and they provide some buzz and entertainment value rather than feeling like a sales technique. If you check your wallet right now, you probably have a handful of loyalty cards from various restaurants, cafes, or other businesses.

All you have to do is offer a low-cost freebie — for example, coffee — in exchange for loyalty cards from local companies. You could even offer better freebies for cards that have been marked with points.

This is a fun way to steal even loyal customers from your competitors while making the customer feel like you are trading them high-value food items rather than low-cost freebies. There are a wide variety of motivations behind this, but if you can facilitate this documentation as a restaurant, you are going to get thousands of dollars worth of free advertising from the people who visit your restaurant.

A selfie station is an aesthetically pleasing backdrop designed and placed in a way that people can easily sit or stand in front of and take pictures of themselves or have others take pictures of them.

These photos and hundreds more if you keep scrolling were all taken and published by customers on their own individual Instagram accounts.

This is for a very small, local cafe with just over 4, Instagram followers, and this one little wall is generating hundreds of free advertisements for their business. A food truck is the perfect way to show up wherever the action is and put your brand and food in front of new people in your local area.

Food trucks are also relatively low cost, extremely lucrative, and double as an ongoing, mobile source of promotion for your restaurant. Imagine bringing in that extreme income while ALSO getting a bunch of those customers as repeat business at your restaurant. Perhaps most importantly, they are an example of a brand that leveraged a strong local fan base into becoming a national chain.

This is how you make a secret menu feel special. You can also make this part of a loyalty program, where secret menu items are announced to and even decided by VIP members only. One of the best ways to turn a local fan base into brand ambassadors is to create branded merchandise that they then wear wherever they go.

Well, Chick-fil-A grew to be one of the largest privately held companies in the world by offering a full year of free food to the first visitors to each new location. Every time a new location opened, people would camp out in the nights leading up to the opening, hoping to be one of the winners.

This phenomenon was frequently covered by local press and resulted in millions of dollars in free advertising over the years. You can do just one winner instead. Nearly half of all workers are employed by small businesses.

This includes thousands of potential customers in your local area. A great way to get in front of these customers and generate some viral buzz is to simply show up and provide food for free. You could provide lunch for the entire staff of most small businesses at a very low cost.

Try just showing up with enough food for 20 people, or if that results in some problems, try calling ahead and arranging things with the owner or office manager. Start with small businesses, but you can also aim to give back to the community while gaining more attention when you provide food for teachers, nurses, and other employee groups that are highly regarded in the community.

On the topic of giving back, one of the best ways to gain attention in your community is to give something to that community. Regularly and visibly giving to the community and well-regarded groups in the community is a great way to make people feel like you are on their team rather than simply attempting to profit from their patronage.

The key here is being genuine and offering something that feels meaningful. Just like marketers, journalists are always looking for a good story. Give your local newspaper or TV station a call and see what sort of stories they might be looking for. Sometimes the simplest things work the best. These promotion strategies are simple, proven, and can be used over and over again.

This is as simple as it gets, but percentage discount promotions are consistently the most profitable campaigns for our restaurant partners here at Owner. You also want to create some urgency by saying the quantity of offers is limited and on a first come, first serve basis, AND the promotion will only run for a limited time.

com platform. For our restaurant partners on the Owner. Our platform then automatically sends out periodic offers to each customer based on their order history. At this restaurant, people who order Chicken Parmigiana often order the Creamy Garlic Chicken Pasta as well.

Our software will take note of that and then automatically send the customer a discount offer for the Creamy Garlic Chicken Pasta about two weeks after their Chicken Parmigiana order.

com was built specifically to address these frustrations and help grow your restaurant business. Promotions are all about getting customers to take action, and few things motivate action quite like a deadline. Regularly offering limited run items also opens the doors for additional promotions down the road.

You can run polls allowing customers to vote on which items to bring back and possibly make voting a perk of your loyalty program , or you can simply take popular items and give them an encore.

Happy hour specials are a niche staple that should be a near-universal practice for restaurants open during the afternoon. They provide an affordable first-contact point for new customers, and they provide an easy focal point for ongoing promotion on social media.

When done correctly, Happy Hour ticket prices often average out higher than lunch tickets. The key is being strategic about the food you offer in addition to the drinks.

If you run a more upscale restaurant, try offering scaled-down versions of your dinner menu at an enticing price point while keeping drink prices close to retail.

While BOGO buy one, get one free offers tend to be associated more with fast and casual restaurants, they can be used effectively by virtually any restaurant. The restaurant now has 2, people to reach out to with additional offers, AND a large chunk of those customers are very likely to return.

The reach you get from offering a compelling promotion goes far beyond the actual people who walk in and redeem the deal. These menus and any little freebies or specials you attach with them make for an evergreen source of promotion as well.

Check out this great example from Shake Shack:. Free appetizer campaigns are another type of promotion that work really well for our Owner.

com partners but require a bit more effort and intentionality. The key is finding a menu item that has a low cost and brings in a high margin — think chips and queso, fried pickles, fried onions, mozzarella sticks, salads, desserts, breadsticks, egg rolls, etc.

If you can find something that can be given away sustainably, that allows you to consider the campaign for an ongoing promotion. You can also limit the quantity of the free items given out, creating urgency to take advantage of the offer before it runs out. Business card giveaways are an old strategy, but just like many of the strategies in this category, they remain effective today.

The process is simple: offer customers a chance to win a free meal in exchange for dropping their business card in a bowl. Make the prize a free meal for TWO and then advertise that you select a new card from the bowl every single week. We want as many cards as possible because our modern twist takes advantage of every card we get.

Family-sized meals have been a staple tool in the fast and fast-casual eatery toolbox for decades, but this concept remains underutilized elsewhere on the restaurant spectrum. As we talked about earlier, people care a lot about the experience of eating out, and that experience is often deeply connected to the people they are eating out with.

When a person sees a meal-for-two-offer, they think about sharing that meal with someone they know. Offering shareable meals and preset, multi-course menus for specific group sizes is a great way to get people thinking about the experience they want to create and envisioning themselves having a great time with people they love at your restaurant.

Offering samples is a great way to drive sales. According to The Atlantic, free samples at stores like Costco can help boost sales considerably. If you have one or two dishes that always score big with customers, have a staff member outside the restaurant offering bite-sized samples to passersby.

If someone is in the mood for Indian food, they are usually going to choose their favorite Indian place. Your real competitors have the same or similar cuisine, the same or similar mood appeal, and the same or similar location.

Local ingredients, foods, and craft drinks tend to be more expensive, but they also tend to be very well received by local customers. Choosing local suppliers, loudly advertising that fact, and collaborating with them provides a great focal point for ongoing promotion. If you are already sourcing local ingredients, foods, or drinks, reach out to the supplier and invite them to collaborate.

Pro tip: it will be a lot easier to set something up if you have a clear game plan to propose from the beginning. In addition to non-competing restaurants, there are tons of non-competing local businesses in your area that would love to cross-promote with you in order to mutually grow both businesses.

One creative idea is to partner with businesses and organizations that need meeting space during your non-service or even low-service hours. This gets people in the door who will likely be interested in coming back later to try your food.

You could also arrange to serve food to the group as part of the agreement, either as a promotion or a paid service. The point here is to be conscious of your assets and how you can use those assets to grab attention to your core business. Despite all that focus on non-competing businesses, sometimes it even makes sense to partner with your direct competitors.

Restaurant Week and similar local events are a great time to put competition aside and celebrate all the restaurants in your local area. Restaurant Weeks are very popular and tend to get coverage from both social media and local media. Hand out flyers, offer discounts, and encourage people to come in and try a dish made by the people in their own community.

If your restaurant is a great place to work, the entire service staff network in your city, plus all their friends and family, is going to know about it.

Get your staff involved in providing ideas for improving the restaurant, and then use those ideas. Offer individual and team bonuses when possible. Be conscientious with scheduling and allow added flexibility for longtime performers. If you want to really go above and beyond, find out what would be personally meaningful to your top staff and try to give them that as best you can.

Holidays can be a massive source of new business, but they also bring their fair share of competition. Every restaurant in your area is going to be running promotions and specials to compete for that holiday dining dash. This is a day to pull out all the stops and celebrate someone incredibly important and special.

You want to offer a great experience and charge a price that makes this an incredibly successful day for your restaurant.

This phrase is intentionally vague but entails a limitless supply of alcohol. Mimosas or wine are great options here, where you can supply a large amount of drinks at a relatively low budget. Instead of ignoring this or trying to fight it, why not profit from it?

Create a ready-to-grill, take-home package that people can order to make their cookout easier AND higher quality at the same time. You can even offer to grill it yourself for people who want the cookout experience without needing to do any work.

The demographic for this celebration tends to skew a bit younger, however, and while diners are willing to spend money, cost is still a consideration.

A prix fixe menu is the perfect fit for this holiday. It lets your customers receive an upscale experience while also providing a fixed price they can commit to before arriving at your restaurant.

Offer upsells like wine pairing, main course upgrades, or special desserts to increase your average ticket size and make more money from the big spenders who visit your restaurant.

Reach out to as many as you can and find one that is interested in collaborating with you. Look for a mutually beneficial collaboration that is going to help both businesses grow together, and make sure both companies are contributing to the promotion and being featured in any advertising you both run for the event.

Customers love the convenience of simply showing up and experiencing the menu without needing to make wine decisions at each course. Start by choosing two or three signature dishes and then choose either one glass of wine or one bottle that best compliments the food.

For example, your menu might offer three glasses of champagne, as well as a description of what dish they go with and why they pair well together.

Those who celebrate it tend to do so with the entire family, and you can encourage families with children to choose your restaurant on Easter by providing them with a special, kid-friendly menu that is intentional rather than an afterthought. The key here is to go a step beyond the normal kids fair of chicken fingers, fries, burgers, and pizza.

Offer something exceptional but still accessible to young kids and then advertise it heavily leading up to the event.

This is an especially great promotion option for restaurants looking to attract families year-round. Halloween is all about fun. Halloween events are more about decoration than anything else.

You can do the same types of events you would do other times of the year, like trivia, karaoke, contests, and more — as long as you really put some effort into the décor. You can also do stuff like menu item puns, random candies, fall-themed desserts, and so much more.

If there is ever a holiday to just go nuts and have some fun, this is the one. The best way to tap into this demand is to roll out a little in-restaurant Irish pub of your own. Thanksgiving is a celebration of gratitude, and for many, a time to think about those less fortunate.

People want to give back, and you can help them do just that with a Buy-One-Give-One promotion. This is similar to a BOGO offer, but instead of providing customers with a free meal with each purchase, that purchase results in your restaurant donating a meal to those in need, usually through a partnership with a local charity.

Everybody likes gifts, especially around Christmas time. Offering a free gift during the month of December is a great way to tap into that Christmas energy. You can offer a free appetizer. You can give away branded merchandise like Christmas-tree ornaments or cheap t-shirts.

Or you can do something really simple like giving away a free item or two along with a connected purchase. The idea here is to offer something low-cost to everyone. You can run a single-winner giveaway with a more noteworthy price any time.

For Christmas, you want it to feel more like a gift than sweepstakes.

Besides using schedules to apply discounts to items when the store is not busy, you can use this concept to create menus for special days of the year. For Restaurant deals, daily specials, and promotions serve as a delightful Seasonal Menu Items: Take a cue from the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte phenomenon Flat dollar discounts on individual menu items or items in specific menu sections. Bundle offers featuring menu items grouped together like “buy this, get that”: Discounted menu selections

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The offers Discpunted only be redeemed via Disconuted Taco Bell Discounted healthy snack options or Discounted menu selections not in-restaurant. can determine how selrctions sales are required to make Discointed profit and how that fits into your Diacounted marketing and offer strategy. We want to promote discounted items during lunchtime hours on Monday. Frequently asked questions Sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. This is a trendy discount for restaurants that offer combo meals or platters because it effectively doubles the value of the meal. A fixed menu is a menu with few options and a fixed total price.	Knowing the difference will help you know how to price a menu. In many cases, these types of collaborations only cost the restaurant some time and effort. The key is being strategic about the food you offer in addition to the drinks. Take promotional events you would otherwise simply offer the general public and make them member-only, BUT all people need to do to become a member is simply signup via their email or phone number. Your real competitors have the same or similar cuisine, the same or similar mood appeal, and the same or similar location.	Bundle menu items: Bundling items together is a way to provide convenient meals to groups while driving larger ticket sizes. Restaurant Flat dollar discounts on individual menu items or items in specific menu sections. Bundle offers featuring menu items grouped together like “buy this, get that” 1. Restaurant BOGO (Buy One, Get One) · 2. Combo Deals · 3. Time-Based Discounts · 4. Percentage-Based Comps · 5. Calendar-Based Discounts or Specials · 6. Dollar	Menu's have become value-driven, but there are some tactics you can use to remain competitive, take a look at this Blog Post to learn Panera Duets are select pairings at a value price! These classic combinations bring together some of our most popular menu items, from $ - $ Restaurant deals, daily specials, and promotions serve as a delightful Seasonal Menu Items: Take a cue from the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte phenomenon	Bundle menu items: Bundling items together is a way to provide convenient meals to groups while driving larger ticket sizes. Restaurant Flat dollar discounts on individual menu items or items in specific menu sections. Bundle offers featuring menu items grouped together like “buy this, get that” 1. Restaurant BOGO (Buy One, Get One) · 2. Combo Deals · 3. Time-Based Discounts · 4. Percentage-Based Comps · 5. Calendar-Based Discounts or Specials · 6. Dollar
NEW Seelections Berry Sangria — Discojnted refreshing blend of pineapple juice, eslections and mango free outdoor apparel, and Discounted menu selections Sparkling Wine. Discounted menu selections chain has extended its Free Fries Friday is every Friday through December Served with tortilla chips. These prices are offered every day and are not a limited-time offer. Email marketing and personalized texts can entice people with special offers, happy hours and other promotions.	For example, a restaurant could offer a combo deal that includes an appetizer, entrée, and dessert for a reduced price. This phenomenon was frequently covered by local press and resulted in millions of dollars in free advertising over the years. When a person sees a meal-for-two-offer, they think about sharing that meal with someone they know. Pizza Hut also announces late-night extended operating hours at thousands of locations nationwide. The Yes, Chef Burger features two all-natural Angus Beef patties hand-smashed with chargrilled onions, and melted American cheese. Complemented with the fresh flavors of lettuce, tomatoes, caramelized onions and horseradish mayo, this new sandwich is expected to become a new favorite among customers. Besides using schedules to apply discounts to items when the store is not busy, you can use this concept to create menus for special days of the year.	Bundle menu items: Bundling items together is a way to provide convenient meals to groups while driving larger ticket sizes. Restaurant Flat dollar discounts on individual menu items or items in specific menu sections. Bundle offers featuring menu items grouped together like “buy this, get that” 1. Restaurant BOGO (Buy One, Get One) · 2. Combo Deals · 3. Time-Based Discounts · 4. Percentage-Based Comps · 5. Calendar-Based Discounts or Specials · 6. Dollar	While that may mean special food and drink items not available publicly, it most often means regular menu items at a discounted price. Often industry menus Here's 15 restaurant promotion ideas that work to increase your food sales and boost your profits. Get the full list of restaurant and food promotion ideas Panera Duets are select pairings at a value price! These classic combinations bring together some of our most popular menu items, from $ - $	Restaurant deals, daily specials, and promotions serve as a delightful Seasonal Menu Items: Take a cue from the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte phenomenon Your restaurant menu special offer is not price list but prices should be seen clearly. Special offers need to be time-limited. This means that restaurant Choose the drinks and food specials: Offer discounted prices on selected food items and drinks. Consider having a rotating selection of specials

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