FAST UK DELIVERY
Free on orders over £100
Free on orders over £100
10 Halloween marketing ideas for cafes & restaurants + examples
By this time, your business should already have started rolling out Halloween marketing campaigns. Before the month ends, take advantage of this great opportunity to capitalise on Halloween and grow your reach, customers, and sales.
Here are 10 top tips to capitalise on the Halloween season.
1. Get into the spirit
Give people something to talk about by decorating your premises with cobwebs, candles, pumpkins, and other seasonal favourites. Set up decorations outside so customers can notice you from afar.
Get your team involved too. When your staff embrace the festivities and even dress up in costumes, you can be sure that customers will be more engaged with you and possibly sharing their experiences to others.
2. Spooky menus
Update your menu to reflect the spirit of Halloween. You can add new recipes to the menu or rename some best-sellers for a limited time. Not only does it give customers something to talk about, but it gives people an incentive to visit and try your menu.
Even big-name coffee chain Starbucks offers a secret Halloween menu with best-sellers such as the Witch’s Brew Crème Frappuccino and the Frappula.
3. Fun activities
Pumpkin-carving sessions, scary movie nights, and even Halloween-themed afternoon teas always go down a treat for the whole family. Not only do these provide great marketing opportunities, but they can also be organised without much time and money.More ideas include:
- Fancy dress party
- Halloween ball
- Scavenger hunt
- Cocktails evening
- Arts and crafts session
- Ghost tour
- Charity zombie walk
- Halloween bingo
If time is of the essence, you can take a backseat and let event organisers use your location for their event. Event organisers across the country seek places to hire, and attendees will be likely to become your customers. Reach out via directories, websites, and social media.
If in search of a full restaurant transformation, look no further than London-based Asian restaurant Sexy Fish for inspiration. The restaurant transforms for a one-night Halloween extravaganza, complete with live entertainment and spooky treats.
4. Child-friendly and pet-friendly fun
Share the scares for your little guests with a variety of family-friendly, and pet-friendly, activities which will leave lasting impression, and maybe scary, memories. A pumpkin patch theme and a pumpkin-carving station are always a hit.
More ideas include:
- Trick-or-treating
- Fancy dress parties
- Pumpkin-carving
- Face-painting
- Arts and crafts
- Haunted bouncy castle
5. Seasonal packaging
Update your food and drink packaging to leave a lasting impress with customers.
Choose colours such as black, orange, red, and green to compliment your menu, setting, and décor. Black paper cups, black and white striped paper straws, and coloured tablecovers, among many other catering supplies, help give the spooky impression.
6. Fancy dress
Hosting a fancy dress party will add a unique twist to usual business. Throw a competition for the best-dressed ghouls and monsters, with prizes up for grabs to the winners. And make sure staff are involved in the fun too.
For inspiration, visit The Jinnie, an independent village pub and restaurant located in Staffordshire. It hosts live entertainment as well as seasonal Halloween and Christmas parties. It also organises Halloween inspired games and drinks for visitors, as well as fancy dress nights.
7. Discounts
Halloween is another opportunity to offer discounts and promotions on your products and services. This is a low-effort way to increase sales and attract new customers. You can promote your Halloween discounts through your website, social media, and even local advertising.
Discount ideas include:
- Buy one get one free promotions
- Promotional codes with amount discounts
- Free shipping promotions
- Product bundle discounts
- Extra discount or free dessert for customers wearing costumes
8. Competitions and freebies
Competitions and freebies are great ways to keep customers happy and engaged with your business.
People put a lot of effort into their Halloween costumes every year, so why not reward their hard work? Run a social media campaign asking your customers to share pictures of their costumes and give a prize or voucher to whoever you think has the best costume.
More ideas include:
- Hold a pumpkin carving competition
- Offer free drinks and snacks as incentives
- Welcome trick or treaters and give vouchers to parents/guardians
9. Update your website
Your website is the main source of information. It makes your business credible, it raises brand awareness, it improves customer experience, along with countless other benefits.
A website is accessible all the time, so you can post regular updates and announcements on it and customers can be notified easily. It is the easiest way to keep customers updated about what the business is doing and upcoming plans.
Be sure to promote any Halloween events and activities on your website. It could be in the form of a blog post or a slider image on the homepage. You can also decorate your website to a Halloween theme.
10. Share the scares
Be sure to share any news you have on other platforms other than your website.
Use Google My Business, and social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok to share your activities.
You can also ask customers to tag you in their social media posts and create your own hashtags so visitors can use them when they share posts and stories. This will increase your outreach and help their family and friends find you too.