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Eleven Restaurant Marketing Promotions for Easter and Passover
Bianca Esmond
5 min read
Mar 8, 2024
Bianca Esmond
5 min read
Mar 8, 2024
With Easter spending averaging $192 per person in 2023, it’s time, once again, to capitalize on the annual tradition. For many, the Easter and Passover holidays center around food — brunch anyone?
To make your restaurant the place to be this year, plan sprawling menus and events guests can enjoy in-house or at home. There’s no stopping the Easter Bunny and Elijah from coming to town, so you’ll need to schedule your marketing promos now.
Below are 11 restaurant marketing promotions for Easter and Passover that are sure to drive sales.
Encourage guests to book reservations for a yummy Easter brunch or Passover dinner at your venue. Holidays laden with tradition are perfect opportunities to impress with a prix fixe menu you can scale as needed. (Think: creamy quiches and benedict, deliciously crusty honey-glazed hams, flakey gefilte fish, fluffy mashed potatoes and pale pink bellinis — you know, for aesthetics.)
Haystacks in Texas is serving brunch with several Easter specials on the menu, while Homestead Restaurant is serving a share-style menu of housemade bread and dips, locally sourced seafood and meats, and themed sweets.
Spago Beverly Hills is keeping the tradition alive, offering their 40th annual sprawling Passover Seder spread. In addition to dinner and service, each guest will enjoy Kosher wine pairings and traditional desserts packaged to go.
Since the Easter Bunny tends to make house calls, why not make it easy for diners to celebrate at home with Easter dinner and Passover-themed meal kits available for online ordering, curbside pickup and delivery.
Pull together traditional menu items like lamb and glazed carrots for Easter or brisket and matzo ball soup for Passover. Add a recipe card to each takeout order so guests can put the finishing touches on these dishes at home.
Allow guests to customize their reservations with irresistible a la carte upgrades and prepaid add-ons they can select during your reservations and booking flow.
Incorporate higher-margin items you can honor for both dine-in and takeout requests, like a champagne toast, personalized desserts or bottles of wine, giving guests access to special touches they’re looking for when celebrating a holiday.
Cater to groups by offering family-style batch cocktails, to-go drinks and wine packages that’ll elevate their Easter dinners and events.
After tearing through Easter baskets in the morning, parents will want an opportunity to get sugar-hyped kids out of the house. Why not invite them to your establishment with an onsite egg decorating station or easter egg hunt, like at The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess.
We suggest setting up in one centralized location, (outdoors if possible), rather than at each table to avoid making a mess.
If you’d rather keep guests in their seats, design an Easter Egg hunt on paper kids can search for and color on at each table. Similarly, trivia cards or fill-in-the-blank games can entertain guests of all ages. Integrate a contest guests can enter to win a complimentary meal or another offer.
Use Easter as a reason to engage with your followers. Drop ‘Easter eggs,’ otherwise known as hints or clues, into your existing social media posts. Offer prizes for those that can crack the code, like gift cards to your restaurant, discounts on takeaway orders or a special bottle from your wine cellar.
Create a social-worthy and Instagrammable photo op by inviting the Easter Bunny to your restaurant. Dress the bunny in your company swag, create a logo-rich backdrop and encourage families to snap a family picture. The more people that tag your business, the greater your reach.
For example, Ysidora in San Juan convinced the bunny to attend its family-friendly, three-course pre-fixe brunch menu on Easter Sunday — the perfect setup for whole family photos.
Grab your chef and conduct a cooking masterclass that walks guests through all the steps of a traditional Passover or Easter menu, such as making fluffy matzo balls or light-as-air hot cross buns.
You can do this at your venue or virtually via social media. TikTok marketing is so effective that even Wolfgang Puck has been known to post a cooking lesson or two on the platform.
If you opt to go the live route, use an event widget that helps you customize every detail — including distinct pricing tiers or time slots. With the right technology in place, you can easily market and pre-sell unique events and experiences directly to your guest database.
Collect reservation deposits ahead of time with PCI-compliant payments even if a customer doesn’t show up for the experience. Just ensure your no-show policy is clearly defined on your events page so customers aren’t upset when you deny a refund request.
If your venue can support it, avoid cooking your full menu and opt for a themed brunch buffet instead. Stock up on eggs, bacon, potatoes, salads and pastel-colored desserts that are synonymous with the holiday.
Even better, make your brunch (or dinner) buffet its own activity. Pre-plan a few food action stations, like the party 1 Kitchen Nashville is hosting, and allow guests to put the final touches on their own Easter feast.
Easter baskets aren’t just for kids. Give your customers an easter basket full of themed goodies your guests can easily associate with your restaurant, like a mini bottle of your “special sauce” or condiment, a fan-favorite dessert menu item or a gift card to your venue. The more creative, the better. Just be sure to plan this well in advance. Making tens (or hundreds) of gift basket goodies is a big undertaking that will require your whole team’s help.
Work with your bartenders, sommeliers and mixologists to craft drink pairings for all your popular to-go entrees and appetizers, giving diners more options to spend money with your restaurant.
Serve festive and decorative mocktails and cocktails as an upgrade or a stand-alone offering redeemable on Easter weekend. Then, share it on social media and encourage guests to snap a picture enjoying the drink and tag your venue.
Or, host an entire cocktail-themed Easter event like The Globe Perth. They’re hosting a weekend of Easter brunches that includes two hours of free-flowing prosecco, a DYI bellini station, chocolate fondue fountain and a welcome Easter cocktail.
For one afternoon only, convert your bar room (or other event space) into an elegant high tea room.
Living Room Bar in Brisbane invites guests to enjoy two hours of endless tea and coffee paired with sweet and savory small bites. Should sippers want to add more flair to their experience, they can pre-order a crème “eggstraordinare” or glass of champagne when booking.
At your venue, maybe the Easter Bunny stops by for a visit or you erect a family photo backdrop perfect for capturing those precious Easter outfits.
Incorporating charity initiatives into your event calendars helps market your business and support your local community. A few Easter and Passover charity ideas for restaurants include:
The traditional Seder plate tells the story of the Exodus using food items like a hardboiled egg, herbs, wine, lettuce greens, matzo, meat, and roasted bone. Many menus include lamb chops, horseradish, eggs, a green salad, and wine. Traditional Easter dinners involve many of the same ingredients: lamb (or other pork variations), eggs, bread, vegetables, and wine.
Egg hunts are the most popular Easter activity. In many societies, eggs symbolize new life, and the tradition is thought to date back to 16th century Germany in which the Easter Hare, now known as the Easter Bunny, would hide eggs for children to find.
Holiday or otherwise, make sure your reservations tool is equipped to capture revenue in advance. With SevenRooms, you can create customized widgets that include optional add-ons or upsells guests pay for ahead of time, so you can order and staff accordingly.
When engaging with your guests at your venue, find ways to encourage them to offer up key details you can use to boost the guest experience, like an email address and birthday or anniversary date. Then, use SevenRoom’s hospitality CRM system to create custom guest profiles that power your marketing efforts.
Don’t forget to promote your Easter or Passover celebration across every direct channel, including your website, marketing emails and social media, to ensure you reach as many customers as possible. You can also incorporate scarcity marketing tactics, like a limited-time offer (LTO), to drive urgency and generate sales.
