How to Prepare Your Restaurant for the Holiday Rush

With the holidays fast approaching, your restaurant is about to face one of its busiest seasons. While you’ll likely generate a significant amount of revenue during this time, you may also deal with a lot of customer complaints because packed nights can result in slow service. Your employees may also get burnt out amid the hustle.

A well-prepared restaurant can weather even the most crowded of nights, so here are the practices your restaurant can use to ensure that you’re ready for the blizzard of hungry diners coming in this holiday season.

Best Restaurant Practices During the Holiday Rush

1. Look Back on Last Year’s Holiday Rush

If this isn’t your first time preparing for the holiday season, look back on your restaurant’s performance during the past year’s holiday rush. Historical business analytics data is one of the most reliable sources you can use to forecast your restaurant’s performance during the next crucial period.

Identify the issues you’ve experienced back then and determine how you’re going to avoid them this time around. Look back on your holiday SOPs as well to answer critical questions such as:

• Did you greet your customers differently during the holidays?
• Did you change any of your services or routines?
• How did you address difficult customers amid the rush?
• How did you serve customers when kitchen operations slowed down?
• How did you handle working with new staff members during your busiest season?

If your restaurant is new and hasn’t experienced the holiday rush yet, determine the busiest time you’ve had so far to be able to answer the questions above.

2. Implement Holiday Hours

Many customers, especially families, reserve tables weeks in advance during the holiday season. If you want to close your restaurant for the holidays, inform your customers about it at the earliest possible time. Announce your temporary closure on the communication channels your customers use, such as e-mail, social media, or SMS. Don’t forget to put up signs on your restaurant’s front door and windows, too.

On the other hand, if you want to make the most of the holiday rush, implement holiday hours that align with your employees’ plans. Some of them may want to go to work for the extra tips, while some may take much-needed days off. In any case, jot down your staff’s holiday schedule to determine if you’ll have enough manpower for the holiday season. If you’ll need extra hands, hire help ahead of time to be able to train them thoroughly before the holidays officially kick off.

3. Craft a Special Menu—or Shrink Your Menu Altogether

According to FSR, 50% of diners will choose a unique holiday-themed meal from October to January, so the holiday season presents an opportunity to get more creative in the kitchen.

You can also shrink your menu to limited-time offers if that would be more cost-efficient. Focus on seasonal ingredients to keep food costs in check. That way, you can also keep your menu prices under control, so it’s a win-win for your customers and your business.

Another option is to do both; offer only the special menu during the busiest hours, and then the rest of the items during the slower hours. Limiting menu items during the lunch or dinner rush can speed up prep time and service, while offering all menu items during slow hours lets you have more dishes to draw sales from.

4. Increase Inventory Items

While shrinking your menu is a good idea, shrinking your inventory is not. If last year’s sales exceeded your targets by a considerable margin, it’s safe to assume that it’s going to happen again this year, especially if you’ve been noticing significant improvements in your recent reports.

However, be careful not to overstock to minimize wastage. Using a cloud-based inventory management system can help avoid this scenario; it lets you track your stock levels digitally, automatically updating them once an item has been used. This piece of restaurant technology can ensure that your inventory stays reasonably stocked, as it also prepares purchase orders for you whenever you need to.

5. Update Your Marketing and Reservation Platforms 

With your holiday hours adjusted, your menu decided, and BOH and FOH teams prepared, you can now update your marketing platforms, from your website to your physical store. If you’ll accept reservations, make sure to add all necessary information to your reservation platforms to avoid miscommunication. Then monitor reservations closely to prevent overbooking your tables.

Update your social media pages as well with holiday-themed creatives. This would be a great way to upsell your items or promote your special menu. If you’ll also launch holiday promos, announcing them with visually stimulating photos can make it catch more attention.

6. Consider Offering Private Catering Services

Private catering services can help your restaurant boost business during the holiday season, especially if you’d temporarily shut down your restaurant. Catering at a private event can let you work with fewer staff members while giving diners a bespoke experience. Moreover, it provides networking opportunities, allowing you to target new customers for your private catering services.

7. Offer Gift Cards

Offering gift cards lets you give back to your customers and receive marketing benefits in turn. And the best part is, customers don’t have to eat at your restaurant to get them. You can totally offer gift cards in your online ordering platforms, be it your direct platform or a third-party app.

Here are some gift card ideas to consider:

• Get a free $10 gift card when you order special menu items worth $50
• Get your dessert for free when you purchase a gift card
• Enjoy 20% off on your next visit/order when you purchase a gift card today

You can integrate advanced promotion tools into your cloud POS system to support custom promos, which come in handy if you have multiple branches.

Gift cards can also be offered to your loyal customers. Look into your restaurant CRM to identify the customers with the most loyalty earnings, then send them personalized messages.

8. Include Your Off-Premises Channels in Your Holiday Promos

Even if people like going out to eat during the holidays, many will still stay at home and order food delivery. Postmates deliveries actually increased by 95% between Thanksgiving and Christmas from 2017 to 2018. And with the pandemic soaring the demand for online ordering and delivery, you can expect just as many online orders as two years ago, if not more. 

If you have an in-house rider fleet, you may need to hire more riders to maximize the delivery orders you can accommodate. Consider also that the holidays may be a good time to opt for an in-house fleet altogether since third-party riders will surely have their hands full. An in-house fleet will let you avoid expensive commissions and help you gain more control over their workload, turning in even more profit as a result.

Don’t forget your takeout, pickup, and drive-thru (if you have one) channels as well. Customers in these channels can also be eligible for your promos and given access to your special holiday menu.

Conclusion: Prepare for the Best—and the Worst

The holidays can be an exciting time for your restaurant, as they’re usually the peak season and the best time to experiment with ingredients. But on the flip side, it’s also stressful, especially for your staff. Even if you’re well-prepared, your servers can still fall behind sometimes because there’s just no telling how customers will behave when the restaurant deals with a mountain of orders at the same time.

So as the holiday season approaches, prepare for the best and the worst. Anticipate high sales figures while exercising extra patience to remain calm and collected amid the holiday chaos. 

However, you should also maintain a high standard and train your staff to meet those standards. Perfection may be impossible, but your professionalism in handling problems can make up for the occasional blunders, and your customers will notice that, reflecting on the feedback they’ll leave your restaurant.