Trying to think up some creative restaurant promotion ideas to bring in more people during lunch? Want to get more customers talking about your restaurant? There are so many tasty ways to get the attention and appetite of followers, fans, prospects and customers. If you’re looking for food promotion ideas, you’ve come to the right place! According to retail research firm NPD Group, restaurant traffic is up 1% thanks to discounted prices, dollar menus, and other value-added promotions.
Let’s take a quick look at five fun weekly promotions you can begin leveraging at your own restaurant.
What’s the Password?
Our team is constantly recommending that restaurants improve their relationship with their social media pages. Social media gives you the freedom to try something you normally might not do! One way to attract customers is to incentivize your them for following your pages. Pay attention to how many followers/like you get in a week. Maybe you are 50 followers away from finally hitting that 1,000 mark. Announce to your customers that you will be offering 15% off their next order if 1.) they follow your page, and 2.) you hit 1,000 followers. You can also take the incentive in-store with a simple challenge: “Free fries for anyone who orders takeout wearing their favorites NFL team’s colors!”
Challenge Accepted
Everyone loves a good challenge. Take the time to come up with a fun competition for your customers that revolvs around your food. Are you a BBQ joint with 5 different hot sauces? Encourage customers to order a dozen wings to try all of the hot sauces and have them film themselves eating the spiciest sauce and tag your Instagram page for $10 off their next order. Not only will customers continue to order your food, you will create a fun community of customers who actively participate and post their challenge experience to their friends.
To Infinity and Beyond
Customers love when you go above and beyond to make them feel special. As a restaurant owner, you begin seeing which of your customers are loyal and which are one-and-done. For the customers that are loyal, think about how you can honor their commitment to your food. Add a loyalty program to your restaurant so these customers can get the discounts they deserve for ordering so often. More importantly, communicate to your staff and delivery drivers about this customers VIP status so they can continue to receive the attention and praise they deserve.
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
An easy way to get customer engagement is by running a promotion during a large popular or seasonal event. These events immediately create a quick sense of community and support from local customers. You can offer a discount if your local sports team hits a home run. Or maybe everyone is counting down for the first snow day where you can give away free hot chocolate to the first 100 customers for your first snowfall. Customers love feeling like they’re getting a deal, but communicating that deal can be quicker when working parallel to an interest of the customer.
You Caught my Interest
Everyone is used to immediate gratification nowadays. Almost always, when we want something, we can have it. W With this idea in mind, come up with a fun promotion where a customer has to guess all the toppings on a deluxe pizza correctly to win a free order of that pizza. You can even get more clever by encouraging your customers to guess all of the ingredients to your pizza shop’s secret sauce, and the customer with the closest answer wins a free large pizza each week for a month.
“The most popular thing currently is the dollar menus and the discounted price offers, similar to what Subway is doing with the footlongs for $5,” says Bonnie Riggs, restaurant industry analyst at NPD. According to the group’s findings, 38 percent of all deal visits to quick-service restaurants occurr at lunch.”If we were in different times, that probably wouldn’t be the driving force, but in this current environment, everyone is looking for the best deal,” Riggs says.
