Is discounting in January helping or harming your restaurant?

As we embark on what could be perceived as “the hardest month of the year” for the restaurant and bar industry, I can’t help but get frustrated with the same excuse I hear every year from restauranteurs - that sales tumble after the overindulgence of the festive period as customers tend to keep their pockets closed. This doesn’t need to be the case and I’ll tell you for why… 

Unlike those select few restaurants which continually have solid openings to the year (massive pat on the back), it seems that most tend to panic and leave behind their core values by dropping their pants on price.

I've already received over 15 different mailers this year from restaurants whom I perceive to be absolute knockouts when I visit, offering me anything between 20-50% off food or my bill for the month of January. Whilst this initially may sound attractive, it did get me thinking that surely restaurants of this calibre should either stick to their guns (you're already great) or try to be more creative, rather than simply discounting their cuisine in the search for January footfall.

For me, the effects of discounts can be lasting, as essentially your loyal followers become accustomed to your discounted offering and you begin attracting bargain hunters who are really only there for a cheap bite and a glass of tap water. They tend to not be the type of customers you want and certainly won't remain loyal. You only need to look at the sites who have closed within the past year and what they were offering, to see that pretty much 99% of them were running year-round discounts in some form. Food for thought (no pun intended).

This got me thinking that surely there's an opportunity to cut through the noise and use this month to our advantage. “But how?”, I hear you asking?

Instead of offering a kickback to our loyal followers, we’ve decided to use January as a time of engagement, to energise our current customer base and attract new customers who fall directly into our target market. 

We kicked the year off by partnering with the wonderful Vilarnau Winery to gift two lucky winners with a ‘money can't buy’ experience on an all-expenses trip to Barcelona (can’t think of a better way to beat those January blues!). 

As part of this, we created a website landing page and matching creative, informing our loyal and new customers of this experience via social media, e-marketing and paid ad spend – tracking their brand loyalty from the moment they registered their interest online to their redemption at the restaurants. 

By asking our customers to sign up via a digital sign up form, we were able to let them know that they had to dine at any one of our restaurants during January to be in with a chance to win this exciting experience. And rather than giving away discounts on meals, we added value to each redemption by offering each customer a glass of Vilarnau Cava and a small starter platter for a table up to 6 guests. 

So far we've had over 600 sign-ups!

Moral of this story: Don’t offer discount, just opportunity.

You can check out our January campaign HERE