Creating special holiday menus is a great way to attract customers and sell high-profit items!
Here are eight tips for building and designing your holiday menus!
1. Keep it simple: Limit the number of items. Focus on a few high-profit dishes that fit the theme of the holiday. Including only a handful of items will make it easier to steer customers towards the most profitable items.
2. Highlight special ingredients: Feature unique or premium items. Holidays can be a great time to mix things up by serving items that don’t “fit” onto your normal menu and creating premium dishes to help customers celebrate the special day while bringing you increased profits.
3. Create balance: Offer a mix of traditional favorites and innovative dishes to appeal to different customer preferences. Some customers may prefer the standard recipes for traditional holiday fare. Others may want to try a new twist on the old favorites, so try introducing holiday ingredients into other dishes or alternative ingredients into holiday dishes.
4. Emphasize house specialties: Draw attention to signature dishes. The limited holiday menu is a great place to feature your best items. Consider offering special, premium versions or deluxe combos of your house specialties to showcase these items and raise profit margins.
5. Offer holiday meal packages: Selling combo deals and meal packages is a great way to simplify the ordering process for you and your guests while also increasing ticket totals.
6. Include beverage, appetizer and dessert pairings: Suggest holiday-themed drinks, wine pairings and appetizer and dessert specials with menu items. These add-ons are all great profit generators, so don’t forget to include them on your special menu. Premium specialty beverages, appetizers and desserts can be even more profitable.
7. Use festive language: Incorporate seasonal words and descriptions and have fun incorporating the holiday into your menu! Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT can make this easy. Give ChatGPT a item description, for example and ask it to rewrite it in the theme of the holiday. (Just don’t forget to proofread any AI-generated text to make sure it doesn’t contain incorrect ingredients
or other errors.)
8. Add color and fun artwork: Incorporate holiday colors and imagery in the menu design to enhance the festive feel. When designing your limited-time menu, be sure to use the colors of the holiday to catch your guests’ eyes. Make your holiday menu look fun so that your customers can’t resist!
Most importantly, remember to start early with your planning and promoting to ensure you make the most of your specials!
Looking for more ideas? Check out this blog from Kraft Heinz Away From Home about Seasonal Menu Planning!
