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Celebrating Halloween at Your Bar or Restaurant

Oct 20th 2017 - Guest Blog, 

Celebrating Halloween at Your Bar or Restaurant

Celebrating Halloween at Your Bar or Restaurant

 celebrating Halloween at your bar or restaurant

With Halloween less than two weeks away, it’s time for bars and restaurants to start planning their holiday celebrations. Whether you want to go all out for October 31st or you’re not a big fan of the holiday, making even a small effort to acknowledge the day can help satisfy your customers. The following list includes just a few ways that your foodservice can incorporate Halloween festivities.

Dressing Up

celebrating halloween at your bar or restaurant - dressing up

Wearing costumes isn’t just for kids on Halloween. By encouraging your staff and customers to dress up for the day, you’ll help ensure everyone is in the Halloween spirit. Just make sure each costume is appropriate and won’t offend anyone in the restaurant. Your servers’ costumes should all be comfortable and not restrict their movement in any way. After all—providing excellent service should always be a top priority.

To reward customers who wear costumes, you might want to offer meal or drink discounts. Another idea is hold a best costume contest. Allow customers to enter a contest judged by your staff and reward the winner with a gift card or credit toward a future meal.

Decorations

celebrating halloween at your bar or restaurant - decorations

Another option is to outfit your bar or restaurant with classic Halloween decorations. Items like jack-o-lanterns, skeletons, ghosts, candles, tombstones, mummies, and fake spider webs can help add to the ambiance. By dimming your lights a little more than usual, you’ll give the environment a spooky atmosphere.  Decorating with black and orange balloons is another inexpensive way to enhance Halloween spirit in your bar or restaurant.

Music

celebrating halloween at your bar or restaurant - music

Changing your regular music playlist to something that features more Halloween-themed tunes can help set the tone for your celebration. Classic songs like “Monster Mash,” “I Want Candy,” and “Witchy Woman” are just a few of the many options. Theme music to scary movies like “Halloween” can also excel at setting an appropriate tone.

Menu Items

celebrating halloween at your bar or restaurant - halloween menu

Get creative by renaming your drinks and meals so that they honor the holiday. Instead of spaghetti with marinara sauce, change the dish’s name blood-covered worms. Rather than a whiskey sour, offer drinkers a witchy sour. The possibilities for changing names are nearly endless. Consult your staff and see what ideas they might have.

Candy

halloween candy

What’s Halloween without candy? Even if you already offer post-meal mints, providing diners with free candy is an inexpensive gesture that will put you in good favor with your customers. Since a significant percentage of the population is allergic to nuts, keep that in mind when deciding what candy to offer.

Marketing

halloween marketing

To get a good turnout, you’ll need to make it known that your bar or restaurant will be celebrating Halloween. Post fliers in and around your restaurant and also utilize the many avenues of social media to help spread the word. Servers, bartenders, and hostesses should inform patrons who are leaving about the Halloween festivities planned for the near future.

Holidays like Halloween give restaurant and bar owners opportunities to differentiate themselves from their competition. By going above and beyond what your patrons expect, you’ll make a great impression and encourage them to come back in the future.