There’s plenty of great reasons to hold an event in your restaurant. Events are an awesome way to engage (and excite) your audience. They can boost sales, and even help push specific dishes you’ve been trying to sell. They’re also an attractive way to pull in some new customers, and turn them into repeat customers.

Ready to start planning your restaurant’s next event? Here’s four ideas to get you started.

Seasonal Party

Whether you’re welcoming its beginning, or celebrating its end, holding a party in honor of the current season is an easy go-to event option. A “Fall Fling” or a “Summer Soirée” may be just what you need to boost sales in the upcoming weeks.

Here’s a few examples you can include for your seasonal party.

  • Seasonal food and drinks. If you have seasonal specials, now is the time to push them hardest.
  • A buffet. It doesn’t have to be a full-featured buffet. You can call it a “seasonal tasting bar” and fill it with seasonal hors d’oeuvre and salad selections.
  • Seasonal Music (i.e. Holiday music for Winter, tropical music for the Summer, etc.)

Sports Viewing Party

Couple a sports viewing party with some alcohol deals, and you’ve got yourself a very successful event.

Big sporting events, fight nights, national championships, etc. are easy choices to base events around. One of the more effective types of sports-themed parties is when it’s tailored to your local teams. That way, you can go all out on decorations and party favors in support of a specific team. Do enough events on a consistent basis and you could even entrench your restaurant as a favorite spot for local fans looking to watch the game.

Concerts

The word concert might sound a tad grandiose for the cheap band that you hired to play for the evening. However, as long as the music is good, your patrons are well-fed, and the drinks continue to flow, you’ll have a hit of an event on your hands.

To really establish your restaurant as a successful venue for live music, try varying up the acts you bring in as much as possible. There’s a local spot I like to frequent that’s well known for bringing in artists from all around the state on a consistent basis. Sure, you’ll see the same artist more than once if you go often enough, but it’s always nice to see a new act. “Variety is the spice of the life” is a great mantra to abide when it comes to live music.

Tastings

Food, wine, beer, and beyond, tastings are hard to resist. They’re a great way to drum up some extra business, while also gauging interest in some of your offerings.

Different types of tastings will attract different demographics, and accomplish a variety of purposes. For example, wine and beer tastings will inherently attract an older crowd (21+). You might see couples, groups of friends, and beer/wine connoisseurs. They’ll also put the spotlight on your restaurant’s wider alcoholic selections.

A food tasting might potentially target an entirely different demographic, depending on how you frame it. Perhaps you’re introducing an updated menu with brand new options. You could hold a tasting event, targeted at regulars, featuring some of your menu’s newest cuisine.

Boost Attendance With CoGoBuzz

With CoGoBuzz, our state-of-the-art marketing service, we’ll promote your restaurants events digitally. One of the most important parts of holding an event is doing the promotion, and CoGoBuzz makes it totally effortless. Leveraging advanced WiFi, SMS, and Email solutions, our service gets the word out on your events ahead of time, so that you can ensure you’ll have a high turnout.

To learn more about CoGoBuzz, check out the rest of our website!

What does your restaurant’s event schedule look like? Sound off in the comments!