10 Smart Ways to Get Your Restaurant Ready for the Festive Season

The festive season is a hectic time of year for everyone, including hospitality owners and managers. It can be incredibly difficult to juggle the needs of your staff, diners, and your bottom line during this time.  

But it can also be a time of packed tables, big bookings, and greater opportunity to boost revenue - as demonstrated in our festive report, Beyond the Booking: Festive Season Success Unwrapped, where 69% of venues say they take significantly more revenue during the festive season. 

There are plenty of different factors to consider to effectively manage the chaos, and we’ve pulled together ten simple tips to help you stay ahead, stay calm, and make the most of the busiest time of the year. 

What is the festive season?

The festive season is a seven-week period at the end of the year marked by events such as Christmas and New Year's Day. During this time, many people take time off work and travel to spend time with their families.  

For hospitality venues, it is often the busiest time of the year. In the UK and Ireland, 80% of restaurants agree that festive season is busier than normal, but 79% still wish it was busier. 

10 ways to prepare your restaurant for the festive season

1. Start early (like, really early)

• Only 18% of early planners said they were never fully booked in the holiday period, compared to 34% of all restaurants surveyed.  
• 82% of early planners make significantly more revenue during the festive period.  
• 10% of early planners did not say they struggled with no-shows, compared to 26% of all restaurants surveyed. 

2. Optimise your margins

There is nothing better for a restaurant than increased sales and turnover, and that is exactly what the festive season can provide. However, you will not be able to make the most of it if your profit margins are not optimised. If you have not taken steps to boost your profit margins, all those increased sales will have a reduced effect on your business.  

A few simple actions can go a long way to ensuring you get even more out of the festive season.  

Some of the best ways to improve your restaurant's profit margin are:

• Optimise your festive menus to include dishes with a high-profit margin.
• Minimise food waste by implementing pre-orders to effectively manage inventory.  
• Limit utility costs.

For more information, check out our complete guide to improving profit margins in your restaurant.

3. Manage the rush with a smart booking system

Bigger bookings need smarter layouts, so use your booking system to reconfigure tables and maximise space without compromising the festive vibe. 

According to ResDiary's data, 24% of early-planning restaurants are fully booked before September. This means that table management can become trickier than usual at this time of year, with over 46% of venues agreeing that it becomes more difficult. This is not only due to more overall foot traffic but also the need to serve larger parties. 

In addition, 44% of venues said they miss out on potential bookings because staff are too busy to answer the phone. This represents potential lost revenue and adds to the overall stress of a busy restaurant during this period.

When it comes to solving issues like these, ResDiary can be a major help. We offer exceptional table management software making handling reservations a breeze. We also include functionality to improve your online bookings processes and can even answer calls for you with ResPhone.

4. Get your team festive-ready

It is important to remember that managers and owners are not the only people in a restaurant who can get stressed out by the festive rush. As the calendar flips closer to the festive season, hospitality workers also steady themselves for the trials and tribulations along the way.

First and foremost, you must decide who will be working on public holidays such as Christmas Day and New Year's Day (if your venue will be open during these times). Try to distribute these holidays and other time-off fairly to keep morale high.

You may also need to hire and train additional staff members to keep your venue functioning over the season. 57% of restaurants in the UK increase staff numbers during service in the festive season.

Go over any procedures which will be different during the festive season, and consider providing general, refresher training in the lead-up.

5. Set a festive atmosphere

Who says preparing for the festive season can't be fun? Unleash your inner interior designer and deck the halls with all manner of Christmas cheer. You could implement a palette of traditional Christmas colours in your dining room, including red, green, gold, and silver. Or, you could get some decorations in brand colours!

Incorporate festive styles of lighting, seasonal wreaths and relevant figurines. Why not go all out and put a Christmas tree in your venue?

Then, there's the music. A great Christmas playlist is essential for setting a festive mood in your venue. You can either assemble your own selection of Christmas hits or take advantage of the huge amount of community-curated playlists on streaming services.

Getting Michael Bublé or Mariah Carey going in your restaurant is the perfect way to capture a holiday theme and the excitement of this time of year. Just make sure you have the correct licenses to play music in your venue first though.

6. Cook up a festive menu

As a restaurant, one of the best ways to ring in any kind of special occasion is with your menu itself. A festive menu is a great way to celebrate everyone's favourite time of year, and something that has become a staple of the hospitality industry during the holiday season – with most customers looking for one. 

Here are a few ideas for themed items you can add to your Christmas menu:  

• Classic holiday dinners such as roast turkey or honey-glazed ham
• Yule log
• Christmas cocktails incorporating candy canes and holly for decoration
• Mulled wine
• Eggnog

On top of taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the season, there are other alterations you can make to your menu. You may want to ensure all your dishes can be cooked very quickly to prevent bottlenecks in the kitchen and keep turnover high.

Also, using a menu that features fewer items than your usual range can help customers choose more quickly and tighten up your kitchen operations. These changes can go a long way in this hectic time of year.

7. Avoid no-shows

No-shows are a major irritant for hospitality venues no matter the time of year.

During the busy holiday season, no-shows can be incredibly costly, as you reserve large tables for groups that never appear. A whopping 75% of surveyed restaurants require deposits in the festive season to avoid no-shows. So, if you have not taken this step in your venue, it might be time to seriously consider it.

You can also mitigate the impact of no-shows by improving your capacity to handle walk-ins. Once again, ResDiary can be a major help to your venue. W8List™ is an app that helps form an orderly queue of waiting diners, boosts seating efficiency and even allows you to prioritise VIPs.

8. Offer Christmas restaurant vouchers

You do an amazing job of providing a brilliant hospitality experience to your diners. Why not give your loyal customers a chance to gift a voucher to your restaurant to their loved ones this Christmas? Or, their family and friends might realise it's the perfect gift for them. 

No clue where to start when it comes to offering gift cards in your venue? ResDiary can help out when it comes to creating, promoting, selling, redeeming, and reporting on vouchers. It is the perfect way to incorporate this revenue-driving holiday promotion into your venue.

9. Implement deals

With so many restaurants interested in boosting their levels of foot traffic during the festive season, it is important to stand out from the pack. Festive promotions are the perfect way to do just that.

Tie your deals in with your new Christmas menu. For example, you can offer 2-for-1 Christmas cocktails with dinner or allow kids to eat free on certain days or times with the purchase of any festive specials. 

As it is the season of giving, including your brand-new gift cards as a throw-in with every specified amount spent is an excellent way to enhance the festive cheer. 

While the festive season is a great time for charity, you need to ensure that you are not giving money away. Closely track how much money you are spending and making back as you implement these deals.

Discover more restaurant promotion ideas here.

10. Level up your marketing

The festive season is a marketing utopia. Customers are ready to spend, spend, spend, and there is an incredible range of marketing channels to draw upon to promote your business.

From social media, to email marketing, to more traditional forms of advertising; show off the festive spirit of your venue and offer holiday-themed competitions or giveaways. Engagement is key; make sure your customers feel like they are truly part of the experience.

And be sure to leverage your new festive promotions in your marketing so your diners understand how much value is on offer at your venue. You might even engage with a local charitable organisation offering food or other supplies to those in need. This helps to give back and illustrate the importance of your establishment to the local community.

Need a hand when it comes to your marketing? Allow ResDiary to help you attract customers, including our integration with DesignMyNight, as well as our built-in email marketing solutions and Acteol CRM integration. We've got everything you need to get the word out about your venue this festive season.

Prepare for the festive season with ResDiary

As with any busy period in your venue, organisation is key to ensuring success during the festive season. ResDiary offers a suite of functions and integrations to ensure your venue has everything it needs to thrive during this period.

Book a demo today and find out how ResDiary can help your restaurant capitalise on everything the festive season has to offer.

Ready to turn insights into action?

Download ‘Beyond the Booking: The Festive Season Unwrapped’ now and gain access to exclusive statistics, actionable strategies, and expert analysis tailored to today’s hospitality industry.