Seasonal promotions planned three months out

In late November, a restaurant decides to run a festive set menu. The chef designs it in a week, the supplier cannot get the turkey crowns in time, the menus are printed with a wrong price, the booking page still shows the normal times, and the first email goes out in mid December, when most parties are already booked. The menu is good. The season is half gone. Seasonal promotions that work are planned about three months before they go live.

Three months sounds like a long time for a menu. But a seasonal promotion is more than a menu. It needs a clear aim, a costed offer, ingredients ordered from suppliers, a booking page set up for the right dates, photos, words, a team that knows what it is serving and, above all, guests who hear about it while they are still making plans. Each step takes time, and guests decide early.

This guide covers the four seasonal moments worth a promotion for most restaurants, a three-month timeline for preparing each, what to get ready at every stage and how to measure whether the season worked. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

The work behind a seasonal promotion has its own lead times. A menu needs designing, testing and costing. Unusual ingredients need ordering, sometimes weeks ahead. Prices need setting and printing. The booking page needs the right dates and times. Photos need taking once the dishes exist. And the marketing, from emails to posts, needs to reach guests before they book elsewhere.

Guests, meanwhile, plan early for the biggest moments. Office parties are booked months before December. Families plan Mother's Day lunch weeks ahead. A promotion that is still being designed when guests are deciding where to go has already missed much of its audience.

For most restaurants, four seasonal moments are worth a planned promotion:

For venues where Ramadan and Eid shape the year, they deserve a place too, often as the most important moment of all. Other venues will add their own, such as a local festival or a big sporting event. The aim is a short list of moments that really move your trade, each prepared properly, rather than a promotion for every date in the calendar.

Before choosing moments, look at your own seasonal trade. Which weeks are always full, and which always quiet? When do bookings for the busy dates start to arrive? Which moments brought extra covers last year, and which made no difference?

Your own year may differ from the general pattern. A city-centre venue may be quiet in August when offices empty; a seaside one may be at its busiest. Our guide to seasonal trade: mapping your own restaurant year covers how to build the map that tells you which moments to plan for.

About twelve weeks before the moment, decide what the promotion is for and what it will be. Is the aim to fill quiet weeks, to win party bookings, to raise spend on a busy night or to bring in new guests? The aim shapes everything else.

Then cost it. A set menu at a fixed price needs a food cost, a margin and a price that guests will see as fair. An event needs costs for any extras, such as a guest chef or music. Do the sums before committing. Our guide to offer margin: the sum to do before you publish covers how to check that a promotion pays.

With the aim and the costs agreed, design the menu. Keep it manageable: a seasonal set menu should be something the kitchen can produce well on a full night, repeatedly, not a showpiece that only works for a table of two. Test the dishes, adjust the costs and agree the final version.

Talk to suppliers at the same time. Seasonal ingredients, larger quantities and festive products often need ordering well ahead, and suppliers get busy too. A supplier told ten weeks ahead can plan; one told ten days ahead may let you down.

Eight weeks out, set up the practical side. Decide the dates and times the promotion runs, and set them up for booking, with the right table sizes for the moment: twos for Valentine's Day, larger tables for Mother's Day and parties. Set the price, write the menu descriptions and prepare the printed menus.

Take photos of the dishes once they are final, in good light, so the marketing can show the real food. Write the words for the website, the emails and the posts. Getting these right now saves rushing later.

About six weeks before the moment, announce the promotion, earlier still for festive parties. Put it on the website and the Google Business Profile, post it on social media, tell guests in the venue and send the first email to guests who opted in.

Make the announcement specific: what it is, when it runs, what it costs and how to book. Guests deciding where to go need these facts at once. Our guide to seasonal emails planned before the season covers when each moment's emails should go.

Four weeks out, remind guests. A second email, a post with the dishes, a sign in the window and a word from staff to guests at the table all reach people who saw the first announcement and have not yet booked.

This is also a good time for partnerships: a local theatre for a pre-show menu, a nearby office for party bookings, a hotel for guests who want somewhere to eat. A partner who has a few weeks' notice can mention you to their own customers before the moment arrives.

Two weeks out, prepare the team. Hold a tasting of the seasonal menu, so everyone knows what the dishes are, how they are made and what is in them, including the allergens. Explain the promotion: what is included, how it appears on the bill and what to say to guests who ask.

Plan the staffing for the busy dates. Seasonal promotions often bring more covers on particular nights, and a team that is short-staffed on the busiest evening of the season will struggle to deliver what the promotion promised.

In the week the promotion goes live, check everything. Are the menus printed correctly? Is the booking page showing the right dates and times? Does the till show the seasonal dishes with the right prices? Is the stock in? Does every member of staff know the menu?

If you can, run the menu once before the first busy night, for the team or a few regulars. Small problems, such as a dish that takes too long at the pass or a description that confuses guests, are far easier to fix before the first full night than during it.

The festive season is the biggest seasonal moment for most restaurants, and it needs the longest preparation. Festive bookings come in three waves: parties, often booked in September and October; Christmas Day and the festive weeks, booked in October and November; and New Year's Eve, booked a few weeks ahead.

Plan each wave separately, with its own menu, prices and marketing, and start the party preparation in the summer. Our guide to festive bookings: open the diary in September covers the bookings side in detail.

January and February are quiet for almost every venue, which makes them a natural moment for a promotion. A winter set menu, a supper club, a reason to come out on a cold weeknight or a promotion that fills the tables between the festive season and spring can make a real difference.

Plan the quiet-weeks promotion in the autumn, alongside the festive season, so it is ready to go in the first week of January. Remember that gift cards bought in December often come back in these weeks too. Our guide to restaurant gift cards: money now, covers later covers how they fill the quiet months.

Spring brings several occasions: Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Easter. Each has its own guests and its own tables. Valentine's Day is mostly couples and tables for two; Mother's Day and Easter bring families and larger tables, often at lunchtime.

Plan them together, around ten to twelve weeks before Valentine's Day, so each has its menu, its prices and its marketing ready in time. The dates of Mother's Day and Easter change from year to year, and Mother's Day differs from country to country, so check them early.

Summer promotions depend on the weather and on where your guests are. A terrace, long evenings, a summer menu and holiday visitors can make summer busy; offices emptying and regulars going away can make it quiet. Plan for both.

Prepare the summer promotion in spring: the terrace set up, a summer menu designed, photos ready and an email waiting to send when the forecast turns warm. Keep it flexible, because the first sunny weekend rarely arrives on the date you planned.

For venues where Ramadan shapes the year, it is often the most important seasonal moment: iftar each evening, larger family and group bookings and a busy period after sunset. Ramadan moves about eleven days earlier each year in the Gregorian calendar, so its dates must be checked every year.

Start planning about three months before Ramadan begins: the iftar menu, the timing of service, staffing for the evening rush and how to take group bookings. Plan the Eid promotion at the same time, for the days that follow.

The best seasonal promotions add something rather than cutting the price: a festive set menu, a Valentine's tasting, a Mother's Day lunch with a glass of something for the table, a summer evening event. They give guests a reason to come without lowering the price of the regular menu.

In marketing terms, promotion covers every way of telling people about an offer and persuading them to try it, and a seasonal moment gives it a natural reason. Promotions that add something also suit the moment. Guests booking for an occasion want it to feel special, not cheap. Our guides to promotions that fill the right seats and fifteen restaurant promotion ideas that are not 2 for 1 cover the options.

A seasonal set menu needs a price that covers its costs, earns a fair margin and feels like good value for the occasion. Start from the food cost of each course, add a realistic allowance for waste and extras, and compare the result with what guests spend on a normal visit.

A set menu priced well below normal spend gives margin away; one priced well above may put guests off. For most occasions, a price close to what a guest would normally spend on two or three courses, with something special added, works well.

Seasonal menus often need ingredients the kitchen does not normally use, in larger quantities than usual. Order early, confirm deliveries in writing and plan for the busiest days. A shortage of the main dish on the busiest night of the season is one of the most damaging things that can happen to a promotion.

Agree with suppliers what happens if something is unavailable, and plan a substitute dish in advance. A kitchen that knows its fallback can switch calmly; one that discovers the problem on the night cannot.

Seasonal promotions bring busy nights, and busy nights need people. Plan staffing as early as the menu: which nights will be fullest, how many covers each will bring and how many people the floor and the kitchen need.

Book extra staff early, because other venues are looking for them too. Train them before the busy nights, not on them. And protect your regular team from burnout: a season that leaves the team exhausted in January has cost more than it earned.

Seasonal emails are one of the most effective ways to tell guests about a promotion, because they reach people who already know and like the venue. But they work best alongside other channels: the website, the Google Business Profile, social media, signs in the venue and a word from staff.

Plan the channels together, on the same timeline, so guests hear the same message wherever they look. A seasonal menu announced on social media but missing from the website confuses guests who go looking for it.

After each moment, measure what happened. How many covers did the promotion bring, compared with the same period last year? What was the margin on the seasonal menu? How many new guests came, and how many have returned since? Did the busy nights run smoothly?

Compare with last year rather than with a normal week, because seasonal moments are always different from ordinary weeks. A festive season that brought more covers than last year, at a healthy margin, with a calm team, was a success.

Keep a file for each seasonal moment: the menu, the costs, the prices, the supplier orders, the staffing, the marketing and the results, with notes on what worked and what did not. Next year, start from the file rather than from a blank page.

The file turns each season into practice for the next. A venue that has kept its festive file for three years knows exactly when to start, what to order and which nights fill first, and its seasonal promotions get easier and more profitable every year.

An invented brasserie has always planned its festive menu in November, and has always struggled with late bookings and supplier problems. It starts planning in early September: the aim, to fill December party nights; the costs and the set menu agreed by mid September; supplier orders placed in early October; the booking page set up and the photos taken by mid October.

It announces the party menu in late September, with reminders in October, and runs a tasting for the team in late November. Party bookings arrive earlier than ever, the supplier delivers on time and the team knows the menu before the first party arrives. The brasserie keeps a festive file, and starts the next year's planning in August.

In servearound, a seasonal set menu can be built on the menu with its own price, and menus, categories and dishes can be scheduled by dates, days of the week and time windows, so festive dishes appear only for the weeks they run. Only one menu runs at a time per venue, so menu schedules must not overlap; a seasonal category or dish scheduled within the main menu avoids that. Booking rules set the times offered for each shift and how far ahead tables can be booked.

Campaigns can be drafted early and scheduled up to ninety days ahead, and the templates include seasonal emails, from the Christmas menu and parties to Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Easter, summer menus, Ramadan iftar and Eid. Reservation analytics show covers by day and hour and how much notice guests give, so last year's season shows how early to open the bookings. servearound does not take deposits today, and stock tracking and rotas are coming, so for now supplier orders and staffing are planned outside it. See Campaigns.

About three months, and earlier for festive parties.

For most restaurants: the festive season, the quiet weeks after it, spring occasions and summer. Add Ramadan and Eid where they shape the year.

About six weeks before the moment, and earlier for parties.

Usually not. Promotions that add something, such as a set menu or an event, suit occasions better.

Start from the food cost, add a fair margin and aim close to what guests normally spend, with something special added.

The menu, the allergens, what the promotion includes and how it appears on the bill, from a tasting two weeks before.

Compare covers, margin and new guests with the same period last year.

A seasonal file with the menu, costs, orders, staffing, marketing, results and notes.

Seasonal promotions work when they are planned about three months before they go live. Choose the few moments that really move your trade, usually the festive season, the quiet weeks after it, spring occasions and summer, plus Ramadan and Eid where they shape the year, and start from your own seasonal trade rather than a general calendar.

Decide the aim and cost the offer at twelve weeks, design the menu and order from suppliers at ten, set up bookings, prices and photos at eight, announce at six, remind at four and prepare the team at two. Prefer promotions that add something, staff the busy nights early, use seasonal emails alongside other channels, compare results with last year and keep a seasonal file so each season makes the next one easier.