Blog / March 20, 2023
7 Restaurant Marketing Promotions for Easter and Passover
Bianca Esmond
The spring season is ahead — and so are the Easter and Passover holidays. Brunch anyone? If you want to capitalize on these holidays, you’ll plan sprawling menus and events guests can enjoy in-house or at home. There’s no stopping the Easter Bunny and Elijah from coming into town, so you’ll need to schedule your marketing promos now. Below, we’ve listed seven restaurant marketing promotions for Easter and Passover that are sure to drive sales this spring.
Table of Contents
1. Make Online Ordering Available
2. Offer a Prix Fixe Easter Brunch or Passover Dinner Menu
3. Host an Easter Egg Hunt or Egg Decorating Content
4. Bring In the Easter Bunny
5. Sell Tickets to a Matzo Ball Soup or Hot Cross Bun Cooking Class
6. Give Away Easter-Themed Goodies
7. Donate to a Charity
Easter and Passover FAQs
1. Make Online Ordering Available
Jewish people from all over the world celebrate the Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt, and the Easter Bunny tends to make house calls. As a restaurant owner, make it easy for diners to celebrate at home with Easter- and Passover-themed meal kits available for online ordering 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 order so guests can put the finishing touches on these dishes at home.
Don’t forget higher-margin items like to-go cocktails and bottles of wine or champagne. Cater to groups and families by offering batch cocktails or wine packages that’ll make their events extra special. 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 on Passover or Easter.
2. Offer a Prix Fixe Easter Brunch or Passover Dinner Menu
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, deliciously crusty glazed hams, flakey gefilte fish and pale pink bellinis — you know, for aesthetics.) Laurel Brasserie and Bar is planning an Easter meal at set prices per head, while Haystacks in Texas is serving brunch with several Easter specials on the menu.
Spago Beverly Hills is keeping the tradition alive, offering a sprawling Passover Seder spread and gathering for the 37th year in a row.
Bonus: Direct-booking reservation tools can take the stress out of waitlists and seating charts, while also ensuring a seamless user experience. Whether you’re planning big events like these or streamlining everyday dining, digital tools help creatively showcase your dining options and experiences. Schedule a demo to learn more.
3. Host an Easter Egg Hunt or Egg Decorating Contest
At your venue:
After tearing through Easter baskets in the morning, every parent craves an opportunity to get sugar-hyped kids out of the house. Why not invite them to your establishment? Follow Ochre’s lead and set up an egg decorating station onsite (set up in one centralized location 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.
Pro tip: 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 a birthday or anniversary date. Then, use SevenRoom’s hospitality CRM system to create custom guest profiles that power your marketing efforts.
Via social media:
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.
4. Bring In the Easter Bunny
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, Primo in Orlando has dubbed itself the place to be on Easter Sunday — they’ve got music, brunch and the bunny all in one place.
Playbooks & Guides
5. Sell Tickets to a Matzo Ball Soup or Hot Cross Bun Cooking Class
Grab your chef and conduct a cooking masterclass that walks guests through all the steps to making fluffy matzo balls or light-as-air hot cross buns for Passover and Easter. 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.
Pro Tip: Don’t forget to promote your event 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.
6. Give Away Easter-Themed Goodies
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.
7. Donate to a Charity
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:
- Encourage guests to donate canned goods, toys, or another item in exchange for a reservation for a future event or a free appetizer.
- Sell tickets to an exclusive Easter dinner or Passover meal and donate all or some of the proceeds to charity.
- Donate themed meals to a local food bank. (Donations tend to drop off after the winter holidays, even though food insecurity is a year-round issue.)
- Organize a 5-K, car show, egg hunt or live music event that benefits a local charity.
Easter and Passover FAQs
What is a Traditional Easter and Passover Dinner Menu?
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 shanks, 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.
What is the Most Popular Easter Activity?
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.