Trivia is an old staple for restaurants and bars. And for good reason. Hosting a trivia night is a great way to improve sales, especially on nights during the week when business slows down.

Hosting a trivia night week-to-week creates a compelling reason for customers to come in on a recurring basis. Friends will form groups and come in every week to check out new topics, eat, drink, and have a good time.

Ready to make trivia night a smash hit in your restaurant? Read ahead to find out how.

Start By Finding The Right Topics

Who’s your demographic? Depending on the makeup of your audience, your trivia topics can range wildly. If you’re running a sports bar, you’ll probably have different trivia nights for football or basketball. On the other hand, if you’ve got a barcade, your trivia nights might be themed around retro video games. Don’t just throw topics at the wall to see what sticks. Consider your audience, cater to their interests, and you’ll surely set yourself up for trivia success.

Another way to find good topics is to consider current cultural trends. For example, you may want to theme your trivia nights around upcoming movies in long-running franchises (e.g. a new Star Wars) or new seasons of popular TV shows. There’s also cultural events like the Olympics or the Academy Awards that have long histories to draw from for potential trivia questions.

Trivia Checklist

  • Have a few attractive deals on offer. Trivia works well enough on its own, but don’t forget that people are still coming to eat and drink. A good trivia night is matched with deals to tie the whole evening together.
  • Incentivize it with prizes. It wouldn’t be much of a competition if there wasn’t a prize on the line. You can offer gift cards, merchandise, and even free food.
  • Hire a charismatic host. Your trivia host can make or break your entire trivia night. If your host has never held a microphone in their life, you might want to reconsider.
  • Make sure people aren’t cheating. When it’s question time, you can ask participants to place their phones face-down in the center of the table. It’s important to keep things fair!
  • Don’t have trivia last the whole night. Sporcle, a popular trivia website, says that the average trivia night lasts around two hours. You can even break it up into multiple rounds so that people don’t have to commit to the full time.

Promote Trivia Night With CoGoBuzz

Want to make trivia night as big as it can be? You’ll need to promote it. And that’s not always easy. Fortunately for you, we’ve got an affordable (and effective solution). It’s called CoGoBuzz. Our state-of-the-art marketing service digitally promotes your restaurant’s events, deals, and entertainment of all varieties, including trivia night, directly to your customers’ mobile devices.

Leveraging advanced WiFi, SMS, and Email solutions, CoGoBuzz engages customers right when they connect to your in-store HotSpot. We then create repeat customers by building a relationship at the digital level. For instance, our service comes loaded with a fully-digital, text-based loyalty program. With CoGoBuzz, you can promote trivia night with just a simple text message!

On top of that, CoGoBuzz automatically produces full customer profiles for every customer that logs in to your in-store HotSpot, and then integrates them with your favorite marketing list, such as HubSpot, MailChimp, and Constant Contact. Understanding, engaging, and promoting to your customers has never been easier.

Click here to learn more about CoGoBuzz!

Has your restaurant or bar tried hosting a trivia night? Sound off in the comments!

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