14 ways to show your customers love

Give your guests a unique experience this Valentine’s Day!

Thoughtful restaurant operators know that Valentine’s Day presents many ways to increase profits and notoriety for your restaurant, food truck or catering business. Many of these ideas range from the simple, like giving a rose to each woman on Valentine’s Day and offering a special dessert to something more dramatic, like creating a special, multi-course menu and cross-promoting with florists and musicians.

Some interesting statistics from data science and analytics recruitment firm Smith Hanley, on consumer spending on this national holiday include:

• Americans spend an average of 19.6 billion on Valentine’s Day.
• Individual consumers will spend an average of $143.56.
• An estimated 55% of the population will celebrate Valentine’s Day this year
• About 19% of those will choose to dine out

When it comes to marketing to usual customers or planning to attract new ones, there are several tried and true ways to romance your guests on this special day.

Advertise specials online and encourage reservations. The time to start attracting reservations for February 14th is in early January. The most popular way to do this is through social media, of course. To really stand out nowadays, restaurants are partnering with local businesses to offer a romantic giveaway (wine, flowers, spa…) in exchange for reservations and pre-paid bookings.

Plan an exclusive Valentine’s Day menu. A prix fixe menu is a complete meal of several courses (sometimes with choices) offered for a fixed price. Make things even easier by giving customers the option to pre-pay for this meal and offer a bottle of wine as an accompaniment. Promote love through food by using soft colors, presenting food in heart shapes and using aphrodisiac foods like oysters, honey, bananas and chocolate.

Make a special drink/beverage menu. While a tasty bottle of bubbly always appeals to guests, restaurants may want to tweak their beverage menu a little to include cocktails with flavors like cherry, strawberry and raspberry. Don’t forget to add a non-alcoholic beverage like a goji berry mocktail to give customers a healthy option.

Create a unique experience for guests that encourages wedding proposals and dazzles couples. This can include musical or performance entertainment, beautiful decorations and mood lighting, as well as tableside cooking like pasta tossing, dessert flambéing or simple sautéing on a cart. Creating a memorable, share-worthy experience for guests can elevate your business to new levels. We have included our list of 14 items that can help get you there.

Be ready to woo your customers this Valentine's Day!