Making Your Restaurant A Go-To Civic Holiday Destination

This coming Monday, August 5^th, most of Canada will be celebrating the Civic Holiday. And while it has different names in different provinces (Simcoe Day in Ontario, Terry Fox Day in Manitoba and British Columbia Day in…you guessed it, British Columbia), it’s a statutory holiday for most. Sorry Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia!

With that said, most of the country will have the opportunity to offer holiday specials to their customers. The Civic Holiday is an especially advantageous time for restaurant owners. Although Canadians love dining out all summer long, an extra day to spend with family and friends gives restaurants opportunities to cash in big time.

So what can you do to make your restaurant a go-to Civic Holiday destination?

Hit up your email list.

Hopefully, you’ve already gone through the paces of securing email addresses from your customers. Creating an emailing list and keeping in touch with your patrons is a tried and true method of garnering long-term loyalty. Send out an email blast letting all of your subscribers know that this forthcoming Civic Holiday weekend, your restaurant will be providing them with the best possible dining experiences.

“Emails are ideal for promoting events or holiday meal specials directly to your guests,” insists Lavu.com, “Email blasts are cheap to send, quick to be delivered, and enormously effective. Guests who have given you their email want to hear about events. Are you organizing a holiday happy hour? Blast out an email! Do you have a special coupon deal? Email everybody!”

Go photo and #hashtag crazy!

This isn’t the first time we’ve heralded the benefits of social media marketing and it certainly won’t be the last. When it comes to food, there are few things more powerful than photos to get people’s mouth watering. Be sure to head to your social media accounts to post vivid pictures of your most scrumptious meals and #hashtag them with specific words and phrases that will help to increase awareness of your Civic Holiday specials.

“Creating Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages are an essential way to promote your restaurant business to a local market,” says Kateri Wozny on GoDaddy.com, “Use these platforms to spread the word about food specials, new food items, recent news and positive reviews. Make sure your food photos are bright and full of coloir so they don’t come off as bland or unappetizing.”

Go guerrilla!

The summertime is the perfect time of year to get outdoors and do a little something out of the ordinary in order to promote your restaurant. As Lavu.com explains it, guerilla marketing tends to involve imaginative and unusual ways of getting an audience’s attention, such as painting crosswalk lines to look like McDonald’s French fries.

“Your preferred style of guerilla marketing depends entirely on your brand and voice,” notes the site, “If you are an ice cream shop, you could make a chalk trail of ice creams that leads to your front door. Pizza parlours could hand out stickers of pizzas with little bites taken out of them, similar to the Apple logo; users may be inspired to adhere them to their laptop covers.”

Allow patrons to pay at the table.

At Canadian POS, we’re proud to offer restaurant owners the Poynt Smart Terminal. There’s no easier way for your customers to pay! Learn more by calling us at 1-877-748-2884 or emailing us at info@localhost.