For many, Halloween is one of the most widely anticipated events of the year. Whether it’s for decorating houses with pumpkins and ghostly decor or dining out and enjoying a spooky night at a bar or restaurant.
When it comes to Halloween, consumers spend more every year. In 2023, consumer spending in the United States reached an all-time high of $12.2 billion during the Halloween season.
Per person spending also reached an all-time high last year at $108.24, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF).
For restaurants, Halloween is an opportunity to create unique and memorable dining experiences for new and regular guests alike.
From Halloween-themed restaurant settings to limited-time food and dessert menus, there are many ideas to explore.
The secret is to start early. With only a month to go before the spooky season, we’ll show you how to prepare your restaurant and excite guests for Halloween.
Apart from setting up your venue with ghoulish decorations, the best way to increase your restaurant’s sales is with a Halloween-themed menu.
With a Halloween menu, you can
Boost revenues and sales
One of the top reasons to consider doing something ‘special’ for Halloween is to increase your sales and revenues. Whether it’s a seasonal menu or simply a Halloween setting, you can experiment one year and improve the next.
Either way, it’s an opportunity to give guests a different dining experience. If it’s your first time doing a Halloween event, consider using automated guest surveys to get guests’ impressions and reviews of your efforts.
Attract new customers
Offering special foods or beverages can attract new guests to your venue. It’ll also entice regulars to come back and explore your Halloween-themed restaurant offerings.
An increase in guests may result in a larger number of walk-ins or if you have a ticketed-event policy, you can get more restaurant reservations.
Create excitement around your brand
When it comes to dining, guests may sometimes focus on their favorite dishes. But with special events like Halloween, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day, it’s an opportunity to create excitement around your brand.
This can increase the number of new guests who visit your venue and prompt regulars to visit you even more.
Generate UGC for your restaurant
Halloween and other seasonal events are a great opportunity to improve your marketing with user-generated content (UGC), from new guests and regulars alike.
Guests will love taking pictures with their Halloween-themed dishes, beverages, and desserts. Even more so if they’re dressed up for the occasion!
You can also give them more incentive by offering a 10% discount or simply asking them to tag you if they share their experience on social media.
Further reading: 21 Restaurant Marketing Ideas to Drive Guest Spending in 2024
Boost reservations for special events and menus
There are essentially two ways to run Halloween-themed restaurant events. One is to rely on walk-ins and special offerings via third-party platforms like Tripadvisor and Zomato. The other is to get guests to make reservations.
This also depends on whether you’ll be running your Halloween menu for a single day, on October 31st, or for the entire final week of October.
Apart from your dine-in venue setting, it’s easier to give your menus a Halloween twist.
You can create a small Halloween menu for your restaurant, available besides your regular menu.
Or you can offer seasonal options like Halloween drinks or desserts.
Halloween dessert menu
One of the top ways to offer guests something new is to add a Halloween flavor to your dessert menu.
It’s easy to recreate some of your fan-favorite dishes with a Halloween twist.
Bakeries do this well with donuts, cakes, and cupcakes covered in orange, lime green, black, and sometimes purple. All in the spirit of Halloween. Some even go as far as to create a witch on a broomstick on some of their top-selling products.
As a restaurant, you can do the same for some of your top desserts. You can also offer new, limited-time desserts with Halloween names like Goblin cookies, ghoulish pumpkin pie,…etc.
Halloween beverage menu
Can’t do desserts? Or want to pair desserts with beverages? Create a few Halloween-themed beverages. It’s easier to create these with cold beverages, wines, and Halloween cocktails.
According to research by LightspeedHQ bars saw a 15% boost in total sales along with a 26% rise in ‘total number of tickets’ on Halloween 2023.
A quick Google search will give you tons of ideas to explore and quickly add to your menu.
Halloween appetizer menu
Your appetizer menu is another opportunity to create limited-time Halloween food items. The change can be a simple rearrangement of the food on plates, adding some sizzling sauces,…etc.
Halloween main course menu
This will require some pre-planning. But you can create a couple of Halloween-themed main course dishes.
You can choose to create a one-page or two-page Halloween menu and include all the seasonal dishes and beverages.
Here are a few tips to help you start your Halloween planning and make the most of the spooky season.
Market early
The secret to a successful restaurant marketing campaign and any marketing efforts is to start marketing early.
Once your team is in agreement about creating a Halloween dining experience, it’s time to get into the details to set up everything right.
For example, the marketing team needs to coordinate with the restaurant manager to take photos of the new foods or menu. They also need to prepare a calendar and marketing campaign for the event or week.
The restaurant marketing campaign can include:
Contents of the Halloween menu
Where they will post the content
Other platforms they will use, such as email, SMS, or WhatsApp
If they’ll make special offers across third-party booking platforms like Zomato
How they’ll attract new and recurring guests
Platforms you can use to get online reservations, such as Reserve with Google and Facebook and Instagram.
Create a digital menu
Skip the costs and time needed to create a print menu. Speed up your restaurant operations and marketing with a beautiful digital menu, featuring all your dishes and beverages.
If you’re using Servme’s software, you can create any number of digital menus. Simply design the menu, add images, a description, and relevant information.
Turn the menu ‘on’ so guests can see it when they scan the QR code. You can turn it off when the season is over.
Create Halloween visuals for marketing
There’s no need to spend hours on creating Halloween designs. Make sure you have a ready-list of marketing tools for your restaurant.
These tools should include go-to design platforms like Canva and Visme, along with social media scheduling tools.
Give guests a sneak peek of what’s coming
Excite your guests ahead of time by creating mouth-watering visuals and giving them a sneak peek of what’s waiting for them when they dine in during Halloween.
If you’re a bar or boutique restaurant with plans of holding a Halloween-themed party, let guests know they should come in costume!
Determine the length of your Halloween menu
Consider having your menu available for the full week leading up to Halloween.
This way you can get more reservations and walk-in guests and boost your sales for this usually-one-day event.
Notify regular guests via your CRM
Sharing your visuals on social media is part of every marketing strategy and campaign. But as a venue, your restaurant CRM is ideal for bringing back regular guests.
Use your CRM to segment guests based on location, such as local and international guests, and send an SMS or WhatsApp message to local numbers.
Make sure you include all relevant information, such as
Dine-in options
Restaurant working hours
Link to your menu (if available)
Directions to your venue (via WhatsApp)
Are you excited about creating a Halloween experience at your venue or F&B group for guests? So are we!
Here are a few ways to speed up operations and preparations ahead of the big day or week.
The following tips can be done using reservation and table management system, like Servme. As a Servme customer, you can do all of the following, and more, from your dashboard. And it’s not just for Halloween.
Payments & event management
Secure a portion of your revenues in advance with restaurant event planning software and reservation fees.
Get guests to book online, in advance, so you can manage your operations easily and avoid overbooking or empty tables.
Whether you’re planning a single Halloween night or a whole week of ghostly food and fun, Servme’s reservations features have you covered.
Further reading: 5 Ways to Secure Advance Revenue with Restaurant deposits
The Servme widget
Servme’s reservation widget comes with many perks and features. From collecting online bookings to helping you build guest profiles in your CRM.
You can collect information such as guest name, phone or mobile number, email, allergens, and even dietary requirements, and food preferences.
The guest notes feature allows guests to communicate their special requests or preferences in advance. This information is added to their guest profile for a tailored experience and easy follow up.
WhatsApp and SMS
Servme helps you communicate with guests faster with WhatsApp Business for Restaurants and SMS marketing features.
Further reading: The Complete Guide to SMS Marketing for Restaurants
Email marketing features
Don’t have guests’ phone numbers? No problem! Use Servme’s email marketing features to share your upcoming Halloween menu, special events, and more.
You can also create your restaurant’s email newsletter and create various email marketing campaigns during the year.
Make sure you create catchy Halloween-themed subject lines to get guests and readers to open your emails.
Reservation, waitlist, and table management
Besides event management, Servme’s reservation system helps you manage online and offline reservations and waitlists.
You can also use the SMS or WhatsApp feature to alert guests they’re moving up the line in your waitlist.
Need to accommodate a large group? Servme’s automated table combinations feature lets you find the best tables to combine and seat guests in seconds.
Wrapping it up
Halloween is one of our favorite seasons at Servme! It’s fun, spooky, and restaurants can go wild with their ideas.
Every year many of our customers, including hotels, single-venue, and multi-location restaurants, celebrate Halloween in style!
They use Serve to manage their marketing and operations, including shifts, tables, reservations, waitlists, and more.
Don’t let the pressure of wanting to do something special for Halloween put you off or extinguish your excitement. Create delightful dining experiences for your guests with ease.
Mohammed Rafy
Marketing
