The holidays can fill your restaurant, but they don’t necessarily fill it evenly. While prime December dates may book up with little encouragement, quieter weeknights and the weeks after New Year’s often need more attention. Planning your restaurant holiday promotions early gives you time to attract bookings for the dates that need them, make the most of your busiest nights and encourage guests to return in January.
That could mean offering a weekday package for office parties with flexible dates, adding optional upgrades to your Christmas Eve menu or giving December diners an incentive to book again in the new year. Together, these efforts can help spread business across the season and keep your team busy after the holiday rush.
Below, we’ve gathered 11 restaurant holiday promotion ideas for Thanksgiving, corporate party season, Christmas and New Year’s Eve, plus ways to bring guests back once the celebrations are over. Organized by occasion and designed to work with your existing team, they’ll help you turn seasonal demand into business that lasts beyond December.
- Friendsgiving group dinners the week before Thanksgiving
- Thanksgiving and Christmas takeout boxes and catering
- All-inclusive office holiday party packages
- A regulars-only thank-you night
- A limited-time holiday menu built on the classics
- A 12 days of Christmas offer, one deal a day
- Gift card bundles with a voucher valid for their next visit
- A themed night on a slow weeknight
- A philanthropic partnership
- Prepaid ticketed sittings for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve
- A new year reset menu in January
Top 11 restaurant holiday promotions
Friendsgiving group dinners the week before Thanksgiving
Some guests crave the tradition without the hosting side of it: no turkey to roast, no borrowed folding chairs, nobody stuck at the sink at midnight. Friendsgiving at a restaurant can give them the opportunity to celebrate without the work.
Build a group dinner-and-drinks package around a family-style menu, priced per person with a set drink allowance. One price makes the offer easy to share in a group chat, while a shared menu keeps the kitchen easily prepped and working from a set list of dishes.
The bigger opportunity is the guest list. Every Friendsgiving booking introduces your restaurant to a group of diners you can invite back for future occasions, making this more than a one-night Thanksgiving promotion.
Thanksgiving and Christmas takeout boxes and catering
Not every guest wants to dine out on the holiday itself. Many are hosting at home and would rather have someone else handle the sides, pies or even the entire meal.
Meal boxes, platters and catering let you generate holiday revenue without taking tables away from dine-in guests. Set an order deadline a few days before each holiday so the kitchen knows exactly how much to prepare, then assign pickup windows to keep the afternoon before Christmas Day or any other holiday from turning into a queue at the door.
If you'd rather offer delivery, DoorDash Online Ordering lets guests order straight from your website or Google Business Profile, with delivery handled by Dashers.
All-inclusive office holiday party packages
Corporate holiday parties are booked by someone with a budget, a headcount and a deadline. Since those decisions often happen in September and October, you should let your package in front of organizers before they start comparing venues. Offer one package which includes food and drinks at a fixed price per person, making the cost easy to understand and the decision easier to make.
The party itself isn't the biggest win. The real value comes afterward, when you can invite attendees back on their own. When your booking process captures attendee information, each diner can become a future potential guest. That’s why you should ask the organizer for a guest list or collect guest details at check-in, then invite attendees back. A Christmas holiday party of 40 could become 40 new people you invite back in January.
A regulars-only thank-you night
Give your most loyal guests something other diners can't book. Pick a slow weeknight in January, once the holiday rush has passed, and invite them by name to a short tasting menu, a complimentary dessert or a visit from the chef. You can even close for the night if the occasion warrants it.
Make the invitation feel personal: "Thanks for a wonderful year, Sarah. We've saved you a table on the 9th for an exclusive event limited to our best customers." If you run a loyalty program, this is a natural reward for your top tier clients.
A night like this is only repeatable if you know who your regulars are. A restaurant CRM like SevenRooms builds guest profiles automatically, bringing together visit history, preferences and, through POS integrations, spend. Tags and Auto-tags then sort guests by behavior and spend, so your regulars, high spenders and VIPs are easy to find when it’s time to send the invitations.
A limited-time holiday menu built on the classics
Holiday diners often look for dishes they only eat once a year. Roast turkey, glazed ham, seafood, gingerbread desserts, eggnog and mulled wine can give a distinctly December feel to a seasonal menu. A few latkes make a special menu relevant to guests celebrating Hanukkah.
Turn the menu into packages or limited-time offers, paired with a seasonal beverage tasting to make the experience feel special. Settle on the holiday menu by early November so your team has time to calculate the cost of each dish, take photos and promote them via social media and email before holiday bookings pick up.
A 12 days of Christmas offer, one deal a day
One campaign, 12 days, 12 offers. A free appetizer on day one, a free dessert on day four, a second main at half price on day nine: each offer is simple, but together they give guests an exciting reason to open your messages every morning.
This format works especially well for email and text messages because the offer changes each day. This gamifies the experience, prompting guests to enjoy seeing thenext offer is, giving you 12 chances to bring them back to your restaurant during the holiday season.
Keep the kitchen load manageable by building each offer around dishes that are already on your menu and capping redemptions per day. Set these special offers to drive bookings on nights that need them, rather than giving away an offer on a night that’s already full.
Send each day’s offer by text as well as email. Text campaigns average a 24x return and $1,800 per campaign, with Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve ranking as the two best-performing campaigns of the year, per the SevenRooms 2025 US Restaurant Trends Report.
Gift card bundles with a bounce-back voucher
A holiday gift card helps bring December revenue forward and can put a January or February visit on the calendar. The demand for these types of presents is palpable: 59% of U.S. adults planned to give restaurant gift cards over the 2024 holidays, according to the National Restaurant Association. As guests are already buying restaurant gift cards, the question is whether they buy yours.
Give the buyer a bounce-back voucher with each gift card, such as $20 back with every $100 card. Protect your margins by making the voucher valid only from mid-January through the end of February and limiting it to weeknights, for example. Don’t forget to check your state's rules on promotional gift cards before launching the offer.
A themed night on a slow weeknight
Start by analyzing the empty slots in your booking calendar, then choose the theme . An ugly sweater night, a holiday movie at the bar, a bartender cocktail competition or a festive trivia night can all give guests a reason to book a Tuesday or Wednesday in December that would otherwise be practically empty.
Keep the menu short and the costs controlled. Three or four themed dishes and one signature cocktail are enough to make the night feel special. Here’s a fun idea: reserve some of the budget toward a prize or a few giveaways to give guests another reason to show up.
A philanthropic partnership
December is a natural time to give back, and a charity partnership lets guests support a cause while dining out. You could donate the proceeds from a signature cocktail for the month, or contribute a set amount from every order of a specific dish to a local food bank, for example.
A fundraiser night with a raffle can work too, once you've checked your state's raffle rules. Agree on the details with the charity in advance, including how they'll promote the event to their own supporters. After all, their audience can help you reach new guests.
Prepaid ticketed sittings for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve
Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are the two easiest dates of the year to sell in advance. Guests plan these nights weeks ahead and often expect a set menu or experience.
Sell each sitting as a prepaid ticket that includes a prix-fixe menu, a welcome drink and a fixed price. If you run two sittings, give the first one a firm end time so the next group can be seated on schedule. Prepayment also protects your busiest nights from last-minute cancellations and no-shows.
Promote both nights on their own event landing pages, with the menu, seating times and price in one place. That way, guests know exactly what their evening includes before they book. Share each page by email, on social media or through a QR code.
A new year reset menu in January
Since January is a slow month for many restaurants, an effective tactic to start the year is to attract the guests who visited you in December. Options like a post-New Years’ reset menu of lighter dishes and low-or-no-alcohol drinks can give diners a reason to come back once the holidays are over and New Year’s resolutions kick in.
Make the invitation personal by referencing their last visit, the holiday party they attended or a dish they ordered. January's seasonal specials are more likely to incentivize someone to come back when it feels like a continuation of a personal relationship rather than a generic promotion.
Four steps to run successful holiday promotions
Realistically, eleven holiday promotion ideas for restaurants are more than any team can or should run in one season. Pick three or four that adjust to your menu, your venue’s capacity and your clientele’s taste, and take each one through these four steps:
1. Choose promotions your kitchen already knows how to deliver
Start with two questions: Can your kitchen execute the promotion with the staff and equipment you already have? And does it help fill a night that needs more bookings? A ticketed tasting menu on your busiest Saturday would fail the second test because you'd be selling seats that would likely fill without the promotion.
Ticketed sittings, party packages and regulars' nights are easier to manage with event management tools that work alongside your reservation system. Each event can have its own pricing, capacity and custom landing page, without creating a separate booking process for your team.
2. Promote each offer to the guests most likely to book it
Restaurant holiday marketing often relies on email and text, where a message to your entire list is easy to send (and just as easy to ignore). Operators say driving repeat visits (38%) and increasing spend (36%) are their top promotional goals, yet only 30% target promotions to specific guest groups or behaviors, as the SevenRooms 2026 US Restaurant Trends Report shows.
Different guests, such as the corporate booker from last year's party and the couple who return for every anniversary, shouldn't get the same message. SevenRooms US platform data shows targeted, automated emails drive 16x more revenue per email than mass sends. That’s why building your segments in October can pay off throughout the season.
Guest tags make those segments easier to build without a spreadsheet. Tags such as “Vegetarian,” “Local resident” or “Seasonal regular” tag on guest profiles based on visit history, giving you ready-made audiences for each promotion and a corresponding tailored message: party packages in October, the holiday menu in early November and the reset menu in the first week of January.
Marketing automation can then send messages based on guest behavior, such as a thank-you after a first holiday visit or a birthday offer in December.
3. Protect the booking before the date arrives
On dates with a high demand, a no-show means losing a table you could have sold to someone else. Use deposits, prepayment and a clear cancellation policy for Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and large parties to protect that revenue.
Keep the booking flow simple. Add a Reserve button with a tracking link to your Google Business Profile and social media profiles, sending guests directly to your booking page from various channels. A white-labeled widget keeps your branding, pricing, terms and cancellation policy in one place, while PCI-compliant payment processing handles deposits and prepayments securely.
The booking is also a chance to increase the spend amount before guests arrive. Offer upgrades such as a champagne toast or window table, and use a seating algorithm to make the most of available space across both sittings.
4. Follow up in January with a reason to return
December brings in guests you might not otherwise reach, from the office party crowd to the couple who discovered you on New Year's Eve. Tag each guest with the date and occasion of their visit, such as “NYE 2026,” so you can reach them with a relevant offer later.
The second visit is even more valuable: repeat diners spend 27% more than first-time diners, according to SevenRooms US platform data. That makes January the right time to bring December guests back.
Set up an automated message to reach each guest a few weeks after their December visit, with a specific reason to return: the reset menu, a bounce-back voucher or a weeknight table for two. Use email marketing for your January newsletter and text marketing for a shorter, time-sensitive offer.
Run all four steps from one platform with SevenRooms
Every step above only works if guest data is captured in all steps from booking to follow-up. A restaurant CRM brings that information together in one profile, including bookings, visits and guest tags.
SevenRooms connects all four steps on one platform. Event management lets you sell ticketed sittings and party packages alongside regular reservations, with prepayment and upgrades built into the booking process. Marketing automation, email marketing and text marketing then let you reach each guest segment from the same profiles.
The same approach works beyond the holiday season. Apply these four steps to the national food days throughout the year: choose the right occasion, promote it to the right guests, make booking easy and follow up with a relevant reason to return.
A promotion can fill the room once, but the follow-up and targeted data are the factors that decide whether a first-time guest becomes an ongoing customer. See how SevenRooms brings your bookings, guest data and marketing together, so that every guest has the perfect incentive to come back.
Restaurant holiday promotions FAQs
When should restaurants start promoting holiday bookings?
Start in late summer. Larger companies can begin planning their holiday parties as early as August or September, so put your party package in front of organizers early and have your festive menu ready before October ends. Starting early gives your restaurant a chance to capture bookings before guests choose another venue.
What are the most profitable holiday promotions for restaurants?
Prepaid ticketed sittings, all-inclusive party packages and gift cards. All three can bring in revenue before the service takes place. They also help reduce the impact of no-shows and last-minute cancellations.
Do holiday discounts work for restaurants?
A BOGO deal, a free meal or half-price holiday specials can fill a dining room, but they can also train guests to wait for the next deal. Prepaid sittings, limited-time menus and reservation upgrades give guests a reason to book without lowering your prices.
How do you prevent no-shows on holiday bookings?
Take a deposit or card details at booking for high-demand dates, and set a clear cancellation policy. Send a reminder a few days before the reservation, followed by a final confirmation the day before.
How can a small restaurant compete with chains during the holidays?
Not by outspending them. Focus on what a smaller restaurant can do better: invite regulars by name, create personal experiences and use guest data to make offers feel relevant. A regulars-only night, for example, gives loyal guests a reason to choose you over a larger chain.
