Turn your quiet days into busy ones

Offer mid-week standard discounts and upload them to your social channels to encourage your followers to come to your outlet – this can be a good way of encouraging customers to visit more frequently in your quieter times. Meal deals can be a brilliant way of getting customers not only to come in, but also keep them at your outlet for longer and therefore encourage them to spend more.

Think about offering bar snack and drink pairing deals to encourage upselling at time of buying. Maybe a Pepsi Max and Grab Bag of Walkers Cheese & Onion? Or a pint and pork scratchings? This will encourage people to spend a little more to get a snack along with their drink. The options are always expanding and snacking throughout the day is on the rise – make sure a grazing menu is available at all times.

Be the hub of your community and make it the place to go for local groups. Use your location as an asset. Offer these groups somewhere to meet after their activities and they will keep coming back and become regular customers.

Offer local businesses the space for lunch time and day time meetings. Consider creating meeting packages for customers including food and drink options so they are fully catered for during their stay.

Have you considered putting on events in the week for these groups? For example a charity coffee and cake morning which can be linked with an already established charity event e.g. Macmillan Coffee Morning. Read on to find out more about putting on your own events for the wider community.

Considering your customers, it may be that putting on your own events will be the most effective at making your days busier. In the summer holidays, many parents take time off work to be with their kids during the week – so take advantage of the good weather (fingers crossed) and put on sports days.

Is your aim to improve your week-night footfall? In the spring/summer, put on your own evening gin/beer festival with a local brewery or distiller, or run your own bonfire night and fireworks in the autumn with sparklers and hot-dogs to create excitement among your customers.

Quizzes are a good way for all outlets, however big or small, to become a central hub in your local community. Host a quiz night on the night that is typically your quietest and see your sales instantly boosted.

• Make sure you get a good quizmaster – engaging, funny (and also firm!)
• Ask a variety of questions so that all of your customers feel included/catered for – there is nothing worse than going to a quiz and not knowing any answers
• Get a visible scoreboard in your outlet – this will encourage people to visit again and again to see if they can become the leader or better their score from the previous week
• Arrange regular breaks to allow people to go to the bar/order drinks throughout (after all, you are putting on this quiz to boost sales)
• Try hosting a theme night – make sure the theme is fairly universal to cater for your audience, but could you do a Eurovision themed quiz night the week of the competition?