What does your Restaurant/Shop do for the Holidays & New Years?

[pessosices]

Hey Foodie Friends!

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

I hope y'all are enjoying and maybe even getting a little time off.

Speaking of which, here's my Question for y'all:

What does your Restaurant/Shop do for the Holidays?

Do you stay open, or close down?

Do you do any Holiday Specials? 

Do you decorate or play fun music?

Do you do any giveaways?

Do you ignore it all together?

Looking forward to hearing all about your holiday spirit!

[danuhof]

We did a holiday gift card promotion; purchase a gift card for $100 and receive a $20 gift card for yourself. We close down for Christmas and New Years Eve as people are not usually out shopping for food those two days. It was not easy figuring out how to do the promotional gift card. 

[pessosices]

That's a fantastic promotion @danuhof !

Yea, that's a little tricky. With Square eGift Cards, it's easy to set up an automatic promotion to take $ or % off of a gift card purchase, but you for a free extra gift card you would have to manually set up a 100% off discount to apply to the $20 Gift Card.

Hope it all went smoothly!

[Maurice8th]

Being that I run an online chocolate chip cookie business, my train of thought is tied into conversion strategy. The moving parts of 

holiday marketing is steeped in discounts on gift baskets and in person vendor events ( even THAT is a major shake up in  these 

pandemic times ) and CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT! 

Maurice Tyson

Owner of Miss Myrtle's Chocolate Chip Cookies

 https://missmyrtlesccc.biz

[pessosices]

Thanks for sharing, @Maurice8th !

Really cool to get an online business' perspective on this!

I love thinking about it in terms of conversion and discounts, events, and content really sounds like a great strategy.

How did it work for you?

[Maurice8th]

Hi, Pesso! The current climate in NYC this past month wasn't what I expected. Vending at pop up shops was harder with similar product like mine, so fortunately, my platform https://missmyrtlesccc.biz will always be there to take some of the stress of bringing inventory from one location to the next and not knowing if foot traffic would be there. 🍪

[pessosices]

I'm sorry that it was rough, @Maurice8th .
Yea it was very weird with some really hot days and then a bunch of really cold ones!
My shop is over in Bayside, Queens.

I'm glad you have the site and the steady consistency from it - and the relief of not having to haul inventory.

Best of luck with it all - we're rooting for you!

[grovetealounge]

We operate a tea lounge and cafe and are open Mon-Sat, closed on Sundays for a day of rest and we can go to church.  Operationally, we stay open for a 1/2 day on the "Eve's" (Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve).  We are then closed on Christmas Day and New Years Day.  Late October/early November we put a signup sheet out for our staff so they can list the priority of what days they want off (day before Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Christmas Eve, and New Year's Eve).  Everyone is expected to work at least 1 shift around each of the holidays to make things fair for everyone and we do our best to honor everyone's preferences the best we can! Practically, this looks like each staff member working either Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving and then working EITHER Christmas Eve OR New Years Eve.  Some staff don't care and don't mind working all those days which is allows us even more flexibility :). Having Christmas and New Years fall on a Saturday was really nice for our staff because they all got 3-day weekends to have some much needed rest and time with family

Additionally, we decorate both the inside and outside of our shop for the holidays sometime early-to-mid November and leave it up until sometime in January when we can get around to taking everything down after hours.

We typically roll out specialty seasonal drinks for the holidays and even have some fun themed baked goods or desserts that we sprinkle in throughout the holiday season which are all made in-house!  Things like holiday-flavored vegan pop-tarts, Christmas-flavored vegan/gluten-free donuts, etc.

[pessosices]

Thanks so much for sharing all of this awesome info @grovetealounge !

Those are solid ways to have some time off around each of the holidays, and great that it landed that way this year to have even more time off!

That's a really great idea to have a signup sheet in advance to take time off, and to lay the expectations that they'll still work at least 1 shift each time. 

Those decorations sound spectacular and those seasonal offerings sound incredible too! 

I'm glad you have a good groove down and make a great environment.

[mynameiscurt]

We typically are closed Dec 24- Jan 1. We have seasonal/holiday flavors (gelato shop) rotating Nov 1- Dec 23 along with a promotional game. 

This year, we closed Dec 24-26, and are taking a 2 week break beginning Mon, Jan 3. New Years resolutions/ cold weather + gelato... usually our two slowest weeks of the year, and we picked up a good bit of business the week between Christmas and New Year's because everyone is out milling around/ not really working. We will probably continue with this model going forward.

[pessosices]

Thanks @mynameiscurt - great to get another frozen desserts business on here!

Love the seasonal flavors and a promotional game sounds really cool! How does the game work?

2 weeks off sounds great and I'm glad things picked up before closing down. I'm glad you found something that worked for you!

[maija123]

We are a farmers market bakery that rents a commercial kitchen to bake our goods.  At the farmer's markets, we would decorate our tables for the holidays.  We had 3 weeks off between our last December market and our 1st January market, we used that time to update our online presence and catch up with paperwork, relax etc.

[pessosices]

Thanks for sharing @maija123 !

I love the idea of decorating your farmer's market table - super cool!

That's so great that you had some good time off and used it productively to work on the online world and get some projects done, but also relax. That's huge!