15 Promotion Ideas for Restaurants in the UK

Promotions are a great way to engage customers and spotlight everything your UK restaurant has to offer. We’ve put together a list of 15 ways to run restaurant promotions that can increase your sales, boost profits, and create a blueprint for implementing highly successful restaurant marketing campaigns of your own.

What are restaurant promotions?

In short, it's all about creating special offers that get new guests through the door and bring back one-time visitors, turn them into loyal customers, and boost sales. Restaurant promotions in the UK can involve everything from showcasing signature dishes to running happy hour deals, and can take the form of coupons, QR codes, or discounts and incentives delivered via email or your receipt.

Restaurant Promotion Preparation

Know Your Customer Base

It’s impossible for a restaurant promotion in the UK to be successful without first identifying, analysing, and understanding both your existing customers and your target customers. 

Ask yourself: Are you located near office buildings? A stadium? Do your customers tend to be older or younger? Do you attract families? What motivates your customers: having a unique experience, trying new foods, or saving money? Do you attract repeat customers who might be interested in a customer loyalty program? Answer these questions first, and you'll have a much easier time coming up with promotion ideas for your restaurant in the UK that inspire repeat visits.

Look at Your Business Challenges

Restaurant promotions can help restaurants overcome challenges that are unique to their business, and underlying issues are best discovered by diving into the data and analytics from your restaurant's point-of-sale system. 

Is there a section of your menu that isn’t getting any love, or a time of day when your staff are idle? You could try setting up discounts on food items like appetizers aren’t moving or launching a happy hour during off-peak times.  

Revenue vs. Press?

A lot of successful restaurant promotions in the UK have a big-picture aim: to generate press for the business, which can also increase revenue. Marketing initiatives that drive press can sometimes be more impactful than revenue-focused promotions. The brand awareness they generate is invaluable.

Think about it: A promotion featuring discounted menu items for a limited time is only impactful while the promotion is live. But press attention has much greater longevity, and can potentially encourage traffic weeks or months from the original publish date.

Try connecting with a reporter in your local area and coordinating a few press opportunities over the course of the quarter to give your business a periodic boost throughout the year. 

Know Your Margins

It’s important to know the margins of every item on your menu. Generally speaking, it's best to promote offerings with high profit margins as a lead into the rest of your menu. For example, you could just give away a free dessert to all customers for a short timeframe, but it might be more fruitful to offer a freebie whenever they purchase the new burger you’re trying to promote. 

Understanding your margins will help you make informed discounting and purchasing decisions, and identify ways to make your inventory go further.

The 15 Best Food and Beverage Restaurant Promotion Ideas in the UK

• Leverage a Big Local Event
• Charities & Influencers
• Holidays
• Loyalty Offerings
• Bundling and Fixed Price Offerings
• Get Them in the Doors
• Down Time
• Community Events
• Buy in Bulk and Upsell
• Launches & Openings
• Takeout and Delivery Special Event Catering
• Virtual Access Marketing Efforts
• Collaborations With Third-Party Deliverers
• Pop-Ups
• Old School Promotion Tactics

The 15 Best Food and Beverage Restaurant Promotion Ideas in the UK

Tailor promotions to your business by writing down your top 5-10 business challenges, and the top 5-10 things that motivate your customers. Then, connect the dots. 

Here are 15 restaurant promotion ideas in the UK that you should add to your yearly restaurant marketing plan.  

1. Leverage a Big Local Event

Plan a promotion around a big event nearby in your city, town or village – like a local sporting event, concert, or marathon. This helps drive business and generate awareness of your restaurant to a large audience. You’ll essentially be riding off the coattails of that event’s marketing. 

Examples: Offer 5% off to people who have a ticket to a local football game, or £5 off any purchase before a concert that’s down the street.

2. Charities & Celebrities

Bringing in a food blogger or influencer, especially if they’re local, can be an inexpensive restaurant promotion idea in the UK. You can potentially entice them by donating a portion of the day’s proceeds to a charity of their choosing. Joining forces with a big name will not only draw people to your restaurant but also show the community that you care about a good cause. Most food influencers will promote your restaurant on their social media platforms in exchange for a free meal.

Examples: Have a drink special named after the influencer for the day and have them come in to be photographed with it. Then, dedicate half the proceeds from that cocktail to the charity of their choice.

3. Holidays

How can you celebrate the festive season with your customers? What will inspire them to share, link, and tag you in the event content they post on their social channels? Create an event that's so special they can't resist posting about it — and bring their friends back next year.

Examples: Halloween costume contests featuring giveaways or gifts, a different offering for each of the twelve days of Christmas, an ask to share their own love story on social media for a chance at a free dinner on Valentine’s Day, or a Mother’s Day trivia event.

4. Loyalty Offerings

The key is picking a threshold that is high enough for a free meal or a discount to make it worthwhile for you. It helps to get your guests to opt in easily with the use of restaurant loyalty technology.

Examples: Buy nine coffees and get one free, purchase every beer on the list and get 10% off beers for the year. 

5. Bundling and Fixed Price Offerings

Some restaurant POS systems can help you see how your menu items are faring in inventory reporting, which helps you set up promotions. If a certain dish isn’t exactly flying out the door, attach it to one of the more popular ones at a discounted price. 

Examples: A reduced-price set menu featuring a mix of top performers and dishes that need a boost.

6. Get Them in the Doors

Another surefire promotion idea for restaurants in the UK is to heavily discount a section of your menu that’s filled with items that aren’t typically eaten by themselves – like sides, starters, and soups. These promotions are often called the “get them in the doors” because they're used to get someone in to make their first purchase and then pushes them to buy more. Make sure to post deals like this online – social media marketing is free and typically effective!

Examples: Discount salty crisps or chips that’ll inspire someone to buy beers or a soft drink.

7. Down Time

Run promotions during slow times to draw customers in when your restaurant is near empty and staff is underutilised. You can also run promotions for your online ordering or food delivery too, like free delivery or deals on slower days.

Examples: Run drink specials, trivia, or music events on slow nights like Tuesday or Wednesday, offer discounts that start at 4 p.m. and end by 5:30 p.m., or try out a late-night menu. You can test and learn with this promotion idea for your restaurant in the UK! 

8. Community Events

Allowing local organisations to use your space taps into their network, and – as a bonus – they’ll do all the promoting for you. If you don’t want to host an event, consider doing a profit share for the group in need. Donate part (or all) of the profits you make during a specific time period.

Example: Donate 50% of profits from your Thursday happy hour to funding the local sports team. Pro tip: Add specific hashtags for the day so you can utilise guests’ social media posts as well!

9. Buy in Bulk and Upsell

Similar to loyalty promotions, the key here is knowing the average amount customers spend on a certain item and then offering a small discount if they spend slightly more. 

Examples: Knock five pounds off an appetiser with the purchase of a £50 or more gift card, or give away a free beer for every two orders of scampi.

10. Launches & Openings

Time promotions with the launch of new menu items or the openings of new locations. It’s a great way to earn a bit of money back for obvious investments. 

Example: To highlight the opening of a second (or third) location, invite regulars to attend the soft opening and preview new menu items.

11. Takeout and Delivery Special Event Catering

Customers who appreciate your food may want to hire you to cater more than just a two-person dinner. Try creating a set holiday takeout and delivery menu — guests are willing to splurge this time of year, and the convenience of not having to cook for the holidays (but still enjoy a cosy meal at home) is priceless. 

Example: Have your restaurant offer a full Christmas roast for takeout and delivery, or keep those family-style roast dinners available year-round and email guests around their birthdays with this kind of offering at a small discount.

12. Virtual Access

Whether it’s through video, augmented reality, or some other platform, insights on your menu or bar prep can increase the emotional investment customers have in your team, your business, and your food. 

Example: You can offer video tutorials on how to cook favourite dishes or even offer a virtual tour of the kitchen pre-opening. These can be add-ons or special offerings to customers who visit your restaurant regularly or spend a certain amount.

13. Collaborations With Third-Party Deliverers

Is your restaurant still trying to get in-person attendance back to where it was pre-pandemic? Is your new location in a not-so-easy-to-find part of town? A third-party delivery partner can work with you to offer customers discounted dishes in a mega-wide radius, helping to promote your restaurant and certain menu items. With Toast's Third Party Integrations, those orders will come straight to your POS (no more juggling tablets). This way, you can reach new customers who are located a little further away.

Example: Designate one menu item as delivery-only and promote it heavily on your social media.

14. Pop-Ups

A pop-up or food truck parked in a popular area allows people to experience your menu in non-traditional surroundings.

Example: Take your new or most popular items to an outdoor brewery, nearby farmer’s market, or another open-air setup to engage customers and promote menu items.

15. Old School Promotion Tactics

We’re definitely in a digital age, but that doesn’t make old-school outreach obsolete. Word of mouth does exist!

Example: One marketing strategy is to send direct mail that previews new menu items. They can contain discount codes to be used when brought back to the physical location. Email marketing is a more modern way of accomplishing this as well!

Inspired? Get planning!

The best marketing initiatives are planned and prepared in advance — that's where a marketing plan comes in.

Download your personal restaurant marketing plan template to plan your marketing ideas on a calendar. This way, you won't be caught without a promotion idea for Mother's Day, summer peaks, or the holiday season. 

Now that you have your promotion ideas for restaurants in the UK, it’s time to put them to good use! 

Related Resources

• The Guide to Restaurant Social Media Marketing in the UK 
• How Much Does It Cost to Open a Restaurant? 
• How to Design a Restaurant Floor Plan, Layout and Blueprint
• 43 Unique Restaurant Ideas to Inspire Your Theme or Concept
• How to Make a Restaurant Menu Design With Examples