Are you looking for inspiration for October restaurant marketing ideas? You’ve just found the right place.
October is filled with holidays and celebrations, and you can ride along with these to invite more people to dine and place orders at your restaurant.
It’s the right time to let your imagination run wild and come up with marketing tactics that would fit these occasions.
We have compiled October holidays and their corresponding promotions in this article to give you insights and ideas. And with MENU TIGER, it’ll be easier for you to execute them.
Table of Contents
October marketing campaigns you can implement for the whole month
National Pasta Month
New pasta recipe every week
Since October is National Pasta Month, this is a good opportunity for Italian restaurants to promote their special pasta dishes and feature their chef’s signature recipe.
Highlight a themed pasta recipe every week on your menu to make it exciting and increase your customers’ anticipation.
National Cookie Month
Showcase new cookie recipes on your menu
Did you know that October is National Cookie Month? This is a great opportunity to promote the freshly-baked deliciousness of this all-time favorite snack.
Update your menu and highlight different types of cookies—chewy chocolate chip, peanut butter, and oatmeal raisin.
Adding these sweet treats to your menu will make one’s mouth water, making customers order them.
Offer custom toppings
Let your diners customize their cookies by adding toppings of their choice.
Update your interactive menu and create a modifier group for more varied cookie toppings such as rainbow sprinkles, chocolate chips, or dried fruits and nuts.
By doing so, customers can select fancy upgrades for their cookies, especially if they want to try something new to their taste bud.
National Pizza Month
Do you run a pizzeria? If so, this October, get creative and craft unique promotions in line with National Pizza Month.
You only need to be strategic and know your audience well to strike worthwhile deals. With your relevant promotions, you can get more people to your door and increase your sales.
Host an online pizza giveaway contest
Announce the pizza giveaway contest on your social media pages to boost your online exposure.
Have followers share and tag three friends with whom they would like to have a snack over a box of pizza and describe the pizza they would order.
Let participants use hashtags like #nationalpizzamonth, #pizza, #pizzalover, #foodie, and other relevant hashtags to draw attention to your post and encourage more interaction easily.
Run customer pizza recipe promotions
Let customers submit their very own pizza recipe. This promotional idea can encourage customers who are fond of pizza to share their recipe and make it known.
You can do this promotion via email and post the winners on your social media to feature the winning pizza recipe.
The winners will receive a pizza voucher with discount codes valid for a year for dine-in. To credit the winner, you may name the pizza after them.
October marketing ideas for special holidays
October 4- National Taco Day
The 4th of October happens to fall on a Tuesday, which is perfect for Taco Tuesdays. To celebrate this holiday, craft marketing ideas to generate more sales.
You can rely on these following ideas to make National Taco Day a profitable day.
Buy 1 Taco Get 1 free
Everyone loves a good discount. Implement a buy one, get one promotion in celebration of National Taco Day.
Customers can avail of the Buy 1 Take One deal from Saturday (October 1) to Tuesday (October 4).
With this exciting promo, guests will not just have a ‘fantas-taco‘ weekend, but it can also encourage them to buy more to get more, increasing your sales.
Post your tacos
Get your customers to taco bout your promo on social media.
Post a story on your Instagram featuring your delicious looking tacos. To make your post engaging, you can also post reels of the behind the scene preparation of how your tacos are made.
Since most people are on social media these days, this method will make it easier for you to reach a wider audience, generating a buzz online.
October 5- World Teacher’s Day
Discounts and freebies for all educators
In appreciation of all the educators out there, treat them with special freebies such as a free sundae or discounted meals.
No purchase is required. Teachers only need to present their school ID cards or their licenses to avail the offer and enjoy their special day.
October 7- National Frappe Day
Free drinks
Coffee shops, get ready because October 7 is National Frappe Day. You can give away free stuff such as a coffee frappe on this day.
The first 100 customers can score themselves a free coffee frappe. To make it more special, you may offer this for takeaways so that workers can savor the cup of coffee before they start their day.
October 14- National Dessert Day
Free dessert for those who will sign up for the loyalty program
Indulge your customers with their favorite desserts to increase your customer base.
To do this, offer a free sweet and salties desserts to customers who will sign up for your newsletter or avail a membership card. This will help you grow your loyalty program and collect customer data.
You can advertise this promo on social media to increase customer engagement.
October 27- National American Beer Day
Hold a National American Beer Day happy hour
American workers spend more than $3,000 per year on afterwork drinks. That’s equivalent to over 650 bottles of beer.
Bars and pubs can take advantage of National American Beer Day by offering half-price nachos, discounted pints, cocktails and other items.
Hold this promotion at the end of the workday to attract workers and a younger crowd. You can implement happy hour within your given time. For example, happy hour starts at 5 pm until 2 pm.
Discounted items are a crowd pleaser, so you can expect more customers to get to your door.
October 28- National Chocolate Day
No one can resist the sweet and creamy goodness in every bite of chocolate. In fact, in America alone, the average person consumes approximately 12 pounds of chocolate in a year.
This National Chocolate Day, give a promo to cater consumers’ sweet tooth. Create a special deal for both kids and adults and satisfy their cravings.
Offer choco drinks at a lesser price
Offering a hot choco drink on your menu is just perfect in time as the weather gets colder. Guests can enjoy chilly winds with a cup of hot chocolate at a reduced price.
If you see that striking this offer is effective, you can extend this promotion for the whole cold season.
Sell box of chocolates and display them in an accessible spot
Be flexible with your marketing efforts. Try other ways to drive revenue for extra income, like displaying branded chocolates in your place.
To make it attractive, you can wrap them with fancy colored paper. This can catch the guest’s attention, influencing them to purchase.
Just make sure you display them where people will easily notice them.
Add special chocolatey treats to your menu
Add a new category on your digital menu for a set of chocolate inspired goods.
On this day, you can offer chocolate chips, chocolate flavored ice cream, and chocolate cake.
Remember to include quality images to make it tempting and attractive to the customer’s eyes.
With these special choco-inspired products, it can satisfy the sugar cravings of your customers.
October 31- Halloween
Who would forget Halloween? You can do more until the last day of October with your Halloween promotions.
You can craft your creative Halloween deals, but if you are looking for inspiration, take a look at the following ideas:
Create Halloween themed menu items
Gear up your Halloween menu and offer a slew of seasonal dishes like pumpkin soup, pumpkin pudding, tomato soup, and apple cider beef stew.
In your digital menu, create another category like “Halloween specials” for diners to easily identify new menu items.
Offer tickets with a minimum purchase
Capitalize on local community events and incorporate them into your Halloween marketing ideas. For example, you can look for a local ghost tour and buy enough tickets.
Give these tickets away to customers who reach a certain amount of purchase. This can encourage customers to spend more in order to meet the minimum purchase requirement for a free ticket.
Organize a Halloween costume competition
For a fun and spooktacular Halloween, organize an open-to-all costume party. This will attract people to your restaurant, which can then help boost sales.
Attendees with the best costumes will receive gift cards and discount coupons.
How do you attract customers with your October promotions
Now that you have ideas for your promotions, your next step would be to figure out how you can attract customers to avail or make a purchase.
Here are a few suggested ways and channels where you can reach your target audience:
Online promotions
Social media is an effective platform for promotion. It has a huge potential to reach more people.
You can post your food holiday promotions on your social media pages. Encourage your followers to share your posts so that more people will see them.
It would be ideal to post them a day before or a week before to increase awareness. To make it appealing, include quality and enticing photos.
Offer free WiFi
Sixty-one percent of customers prefer restaurants that have WiFi access. Also, 53 percent of diners would not mind being alone at a restaurant, cafe, or bar as long as there is free WiFi.
Free WiFi is likely to attract a large number of customers, especially those who are active on social media. They often take photos of their food and upload them, which can help with your promotion.
Good thing about MENU TIGER is that you can generate a WiFi QR code. You can download these QR codes and display it in an accessible spot in your establishment. This way, customers won’t have to ask for the WiFi password because they will only need to scan the QR code for WiFi connectivity.
Offering a free WiFi can be your competitive edge over competitors with slower internet connections and those who do not offer this service.
Loyalty program
This October, tap your loyalty members by incorporating food holidays into your loyalty program to encourage repeat business.
Send loyalty members an email with a subject line such as “It’s National Cookie Month! Have you tried our special cookies yet?”
This can stir their curiosity, encouraging them to open the newsletter.
Email marketing
Sending out emails is an excellent and fast way to promote deals and/or discounts for food holidays to your targeted customers this October.
In a survey conducted, 79 percent responded that email marketing is “important” or “very important” for their business.
You only need to know how and when to execute them to ensure their effectiveness.
With MENU TIGER, it will be incredibly easy to access newsletter subscribers and use them for email marketing.
Exciting features of MENU TIGER to boost sales this October
MENU TIGER is a must-have tool for restaurants of different sizes because it is packed with useful features that can help improve your bottom line.
Among these features are digital menu ordering system, a built-in restaurant website where you can run promotions and an option to highlight bestsellers and popular food items.
Having MENU TIGER as your online tool will assist you with marketing tactics, especially during holidays.
You can manage your menu well and tailor it based on the customer’s preferences.
Highlight menu items in your menu
One relevant feature of MENU TIGER that you can use to grow sales is highlighting special dishes. Doing so can indirectly influence customer purchasing decisions.
When you feature a menu item, it will be easier for customers to notice it once they are redirected to your ordering page.
To feature a food item on your MENU TIGER account, follow these steps:
On your dashboard, go to MENU and click FOODS.
Then, choose the FOOD CATEGORY of the item to which the item belongs and find the food item on the list. When you find the item, click the EDIT icon beside it.
After that, scroll halfway down and look FEATURED, then tick the box.
Lastly, click UPDATE to save the changes made.
Run scheduled promotions on the restaurant website
With MENU TIGER’s custom-built restaurant website, you can run scheduled promotions. This feature is a great help during special occasions and limited-time celebrations.
Follow these steps to know how to set up scheduled promotions on your website:
On your system dashboard, go to the WEBSITE section. Then on the bottom part, click PROMOTIONS.
Under PROMOTIONS, click the ADD button on the upper right. Fill in the NAME and the DESCRIPTION of the promotion.
Upload an image of the promotional banner.
Note: The required size is 400px x 230px.
After that, choose the scheduled Date and Time of the promotions for START DISPLAYING and STOP DISPLAYING.
Next, choose the type of discount you will offer, either AMOUNT or PERCENTAGE, and set its VALUE.
Then, choose what APPLICABLE FOODS you will include in your promo offer. Check the “APPLICABLE FOR ADD-ONS” box if the item is also available for add-ons.
Finally, remember to click the SAVE button.
Add modifier group
For more sales this October, you can update your digital menu by adding choices and add-ons using MENU TIGER’s feature, where you can add modifier groups. Here’s how to do it:
Go to the MENU section and click the MODIFIERS subsection.
Hit the ADD button, then fill in the required section, such as the NAME of the modifier group. Choose the TYPE either it’s OPTIONAL or REQUIRED.
Tick the box ALLOW SAME CHOICE MULTIPLE TIMES if you allow customers to order the item multiple times.
Input the name of the modifier option and set the price. Finally, Hit the SAVE button.
Make the most of October with MENU TIGER
October is a food holiday-filled month, providing a great opportunity for food businesses to curate effective marketing promotions.
And with a QR code menu interactive software such as MENU TIGER, operations will be smoother, faster, and more convenient.
Having a QR code menu will help you better implement marketing techniques, create tactics to entice more customers, and structure your menu into an attractive and engaging one.
Go to MENU TIGER today and start your 14-day free trial on any plan.
