Top 5 Online Holiday Restaurant Trends

The holidays are one of the busiest seasons of the year for your restaurant. It's a time for additional profit gains through alternative revenue streams. Make sure you're prepared. We see spikes in online gift card sales—326% for the month of December—2x more event tickets sold and a 221% increase in catering revenue. We know the holidays are just around the corner, so here are some holiday trends which your restaurant can implement online.

Restaurant Gift Cards

Consider the following, we saw that the average gift card purchase amount around the holidays is around $100. Offering gift cards through your restaurant’s website is an easy way for guests to purchase gifts for friends, family and colleagues. The number one type of gift card sold over the holidays is a restaurant gift card, which on average produces an ROI of 124%. Of those, 68% of people will spend more than the gift card amount, increasing revenue.

Holiday-Specific Classes

The ability to sell tickets for events online is an easy way to bring in alternative forms of revenue while offering guests close access to your team, especially around the holidays. Pondicheri, in Houston, TX and New York offers a fun, interactive Thanksgiving prep workshop that teaches attendees to cook delicious and colorful Indian dishes vs. traditional Thanksgiving meals.

Promoting Private Events

Around the holidays, there is a significant increase in private events. Friends and family congregate and create memories over meals. From work parties and festivities to date nights, it’s the time of the year to cash in. Restaurants use their websites to promote daily specials and inform guests of any news or happenings. This is all done through popup alerts and private events pages that highlight what the restaurant offers. New York City’s Hearth uses popup alerts to entice guests to book private event space for the holidays.

Holiday-specific Catering Menus

If guests aren’t holding events inside your space for the holiday season, they may look for catering offsite or for pickup. This is a great opportunity to bring in high-margin revenue and easy cashflow for your business. Promoting holiday-specific catering menus allows you to prepare best for the season in regards to inventory, regulate the volume of orders and dedicate time and resources to fulfillment. The Busy Bee Cafe in Atlanta, GA uses its online catering store to not only promote holiday-specific menus but to sell them online as well—providing additional access for guests, especially in our current on-demand, digital and mobile forward world. 

Prix fixe Holiday Dinners

Around the holidays, people travel around their cities, across state lines even internationally to visit friends and family. Often times, guests choose to eat out since it’s sometimes easiest when hosting. Prix fixe holiday dinners are always a great option to offer your guests. By selling tickets online, guests can reserve their space ahead of time, creating easy cash flow for you, while also giving your team optimal prep time to order the right amount of inventory, know you’ll have guests dining with you and even provide a unique dining experience. Le Coq Rico promotes their prix fixe, all-inclusive Thanksgiving dinners—especially in a city like New York, where people tend to eat out more often than not.

Interested in ensuring your restaurant is prepared for the holidays? Get in touch with our team to learn more about how restaurant websites can drive revenue and foot traffic.