3 Post-Summer Ways To Bring Customers Back To Your Restaurant

Promoting your restaurant during the course of the summertime is fairly fun and easy. The warm and sunny weather enables you to open up your patio and the offering of fruity cocktails is usually par for the course. However, when summer comes to a close, many restaurants experience dips in patronage. Understandably, colder weather keeps more people at home.

So what can you do to encourage your customers to come back to your restaurant once the summer is over?

Here are three ideas:

1. Advertise your fall season menu.

Promote the fact that your restaurant offers special menu items during the fall. And, as ChefWorks.com highly recommends, utilize your company’s social media accounts to do it. The site advises that restaurants post delicious-looking photos of their seasonal eats. Doing do presents your place of business as an inviting atmosphere after summer’s end.

“If you are offering pumpkin spice cheesecake for dessert during the fall, create a scene where a plated dessert has vibrant leaves all around it, or is propped next to a row of pumpkins,” suggests ChefWorks.com, “Creating scenes like this for social media will get people in the seasonal spirit, and it will make your seasonal offerings seem more timely and appetizing.”

2. Mix in some Thanksgiving and Halloween spirit.

As we pointed out in our last blog, these two fall-season celebrations are the most popular occasions to occur post-summer. There’s no good reason to not take advantage of that fact. Offer special savings on your menu items during the Thanksgiving holiday, giving families the option of either cooking big meals at home or saving themselves the trouble and dining out. On ChowNow.com, Hayley Thayer champions the act of decorating your restaurant to celebrate Halloween.

“Mix in some Halloween spirit (think spooky decorations and themed flyers) inside your restaurant to thrill your dine-in guests,” she suggests, “Or why not host a costume contest via your social media channels, encouraging customers to post a photo with the hashtag #halloweenathudsons (insert your restaurant name at the end) — in exchange they’ll get a Direct Message with a promo code toward their next order.”

3. Take advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

This year, Black Friday falls on November 23rd, making Cyber Monday November 26th. These two days are notorious for being the two biggest shopping days of the year. Offer special discounts to visitors of your restaurant on these days. As Thayer remarks, you’ll be helping shoppers avoid the added pressure of having to cook meals while trying buy gifts.

“Whether customers are out and about stocking up on gifts, or at home browsing the web, the last thing on their mind is cooking dinner during Black Friday and Cyber Monday,” she believes, “Remind them with a push notification or in-store signage to order takeout from your restaurant in just a few clicks, so they can get back to scoring the best deals.”

At Canadian POS, we make it easy for restaurants to accept payments from their customers. All throughout Canada, restaurant visitors expect to be able to pay for their meals with either credit cards or debit cards right at the tables. For more information about the wireless Poynt Smart Terminal that we offer, please don’t hesitate to call Canadian POS at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost.