Restaurant promotion ideas that keep customers coming back

You pour your time and money into your restaurant, so it’s natural to expect success in return. However, that’s not always the case for restaurant owners.

While you can open your doors, you can’t force people inside. It takes a strategic promotion approach to bring customers to your restaurant so you can make sales.

Half the battle is coming up with creative ideas. Let’s face it: there are some bad promotions. Just open your local magazine and you’re likely to find plenty of awkward and confusing deals. 

You don’t want your marketing efforts to go to waste. Instead, find out how using the best restaurant promotion ideas can lead to more orders. 

Why promotions matter for restaurant success 

Your food might be off-the-charts amazing, but that won’t matter unless people try it for the first time—and keep coming back. The adage “if you build it, they will come” is the oldest lie in the book. Word of mouth is powerful, but it takes time to build a loyal following. First, you need to win those potential customers.  

If you can create a consistent flow of customers and grow at the same time, you can rest easy knowing that your restaurant is on a healthy track.

There are a few ingredients, however, that you need to make to make promotions work:

• They need to reach your local audience: Are you exposing your brand in the places and through the mediums your audience is familiar with?
• They need to capture attention: Does the promotion actually encourage customers to make a decision? 
• They need to lead to a sale: Do customers actually order from you? 
• They need to encourage repeat visits: Are customers coming back? Are they spending more?

You can expect positive growth if you can check these off your promotion to-do list. But before you start brainstorming marketing ideas, you can put down your pencil and relax—we’ve done the work for you. Start with the special offer ideas below to kick-start your marketing campaign.

5 top restaurant promotion ideas

1. Buy one, get one free (BOGO)

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BOGO deals are classic promotions that always seem to work. People love free items, whether it’s a free dessert or a side dish, and if you combine the free item with a guaranteed sale, it’s a win-win for both you and the customer.

Restaurants can offer discounts and promote deals like “dinner for two” so customers get a meal for free when they purchase an entree. Or, if you want to be more conservative, you can try offering a popular side dish like wontons as a BOGO deal with the purchase of another side. This can encourage customers to branch out and try a menu item they might not purchase otherwise.

BOGO incentives are a great way to attract new customers and influence current customers to try new things. Search social media platforms with hashtags like #BOGO for inspiration. 

2. Limited-time offers

These promotional deals are perfect for driving a sense of urgency. If customers can only get the deal on a holiday or within a certain time frame, they’re more likely to act on impulse and try your takeout service. 

You can test BOGO deals with limited-time offers. Or, you can pick a day—like Tuesday—and offer a meal for half off. There are plenty of different ways you can try limited-time deals.

Limited-time offers also eliminate risks for your restaurant. Not sure how a deal will go? Offer discounts once, set a period of time, and see how customers and target audiences react. Have a new menu item? Offer it only for a specific month, for instance, and package it as a deal with a popular menu item to introduce it to your customers.

3. Happy hour specials

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Slow hours mean slow cash. These are times you’re missing an opportunity to increase revenue for your restaurant. Although lunch and dinner habits may be out of your control, impossible-to-skip deals aren’t.

For example, a sushi restaurant can offer a two-roll special during typically slow times that saves customers 15% to 30% off regular prices. This will attract a lot more people who wouldn’t otherwise order. You’ll make more sales and run your restaurant as you’ve always wanted.

4. Loyalty programs

Loyalty programs are an excellent strategy for local restaurants wanting to retain customers. Whether through an app or an old-school punch card, you can track visits and give customer rewards. After their tenth visit, for example, they get a discount or a free item—maybe even a gift card.

The hardest part of successful restaurant marketing is acquiring new customers. You get a better return on investment (ROI) when loyal customers keep ordering and do it often.

5. Holiday restaurant promotions

Finally, take advantage of restaurant holiday promotions. Popular holidays like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and New Year’s Day are huge seasonal promotion opportunities. You can run family meal promotions to get people to choose your restaurant for their holiday celebrations over the others.

Restaurant holiday promotion ideas include:

• Egg roll promotions for National Egg Roll Day
• Promotions for National Pizza Day, even if it’s a creative twist on your cuisine 
• Thanksgiving catering packages or combo meals for American and Canadian audiences
• Family meals for Christmas Day
• Valentine’s Day package for two, including heart-themed decorations or heart-shaped customizations
• Free sides, appetizers, or pairings with a purchase for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day
• BOGO or a free birthday meal for customers who are members of your loyalty program

During busy times, the more you can streamline your restaurant operations, the more orders you can take. For example, you can partner with Tarro to handle all your phone orders and even delivery so you get every order that comes in, no matter how busy the restaurant is.

Implementing promotions that work

Now let’s go back to our list on making promotions work. With the tips above, you’ve already created a marketing plan to:

• Reach your local audience: check 
• Capture attention: check
• Land a sale: maybe? 
• Encourage repeat visits: it depends

If you want to land a sale and get repeat orders, you need the capacity to take those orders and offer a great experience.

That won’t happen if your team misses calls or gets orders wrong from the stress of trying to keep up with demand—or if customers have a rushed, poor experience.

One way to prevent this is to outsource orders so that your promotions make a difference. For example:

Solutions like Tarro help you create a better customer experience while eliminating the pressure of takeout orders. At the same time, you don’t have to worry about staffing headaches like making sure your front desk has enough employees to take all the phone calls, or scrambling to replace staff who stop showing up because they’re overwhelmed.

Tarro’s team of agents can take charge of your phone ordering. Multiple customers can call simultaneously, and Tarro answers each call in three seconds or less, so you can say goodbye to missed calls. It’s affordable, too—you only pay when an order comes in. Your team gets an automated printout of the exact order right where they are, whether that’s in the kitchen or at the front counter.

Plus, Tarro can handle delivery. Before, relying on third-party services like DoorDash and Uber Eats would cut into your margins, and with apps giving out deep discounts and brands competing on the platforms, it wasn’t easy. Joe Guszkowski, senior editor of Restaurant Business says, “While low-priced offers can help attract new customers, those orders are typically less profitable. And they can train customers to always expect a deal.” Tarro is a much more affordable and reliable delivery method than other apps.

Restaurants can create their own in-house delivery experience. By using Tarro, you can increase your margins and offer better service through direct delivery experiences. Not only can Tarro take the order, but it can also send a driver to pick it up and deliver it to the customer.

Services like Tarro leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and human agents to streamline order-taking, which makes growth driven by promotions possible.

Real-world success from promotions and optimizing services

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When Mr. Sun acquired YAMA Sushi, business wasn’t so good. To top it off, he had other challenges.

Mr. Sun says, “My poor English made it hard for us to take orders properly, which affected our business. Also, we were short-staffed, and the front desk staff [was] not adequate. Hiring is one thing [but] they leave again, and we have to replace them and start all over again.”

In everyday scenarios, this is a real and difficult challenge for restaurants. But Mr. Sun decided to do something different. He decided to find a partner to help him overcome these barriers and create a business model that would promote, attract, and land customer sales (on repeat).

Mr. Sun chose Tarro to grow his restaurant business.

Mr. Sun saw results pretty quickly. He couldn’t help but laugh when he shared the story of a regular customer: “[He] seemed to eat [our Godzilla roll] for months every day for lunch.”

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Eight years later, everything has changed. Mr. Sun says, “Our business has taken big strides forward [and our] revenue has increased by at least half. Our customers are happy, so we get a lot of repeat business.” He goes on to say that Tarro’s customer manager keeps in touch, asking how things are going and if there are any issues, and says that “it’s the right amount of feedback.”

Not only has Mr. Sun benefited from customer growth and repeat business, but he’s also now experiencing a rising generation of customers and becoming a cornerstone of the community. Mr. Sun says the children of his customers, who he’s seen since they were two or three years old, are now coming in as teenagers. This multigenerational growth solidifies his future—all thanks to great promotions, positive takeout ordering experiences, and customer satisfaction.

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These holistic approaches bring customers in, create engaging takeout order experiences, and allow businesses to offer great food along with a top-notch experience, which can grow business for years.

Partner with Tarro to build promotions and campaigns

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All of these promotion ideas sound great. They work. But when it comes down to it, it’s another massive responsibility on your plate. As the owner, you are responsible not only for the promotion but also the orders, service, cooking, employee management, maintaining the right POS, and finances…it’s too much. And it’s impossible to do it all well.

When you outsource your marketing, you can run your restaurant without having to worry about attracting new business. Tarro provides SMS (text) marketing to inform customers about promotions and remind them to order from you. Tarro also provides printout marketing materials like brochures, flyers, and more to share your promotions with your target customer base, loyal callers, and customers.

With Tarro, SMS marketing is free the first year. Tarro does it all: writing marketing messages, creating campaigns, and launching your promotions risk-free.

Book a meeting with Tarro to learn how you can streamline your marketing strategy, increase brand awareness, and streamline phone ordering and delivery. Customize your plan based on your needs, and see your sales increase.

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