MARKETING—Restaurant Week Promotions

| BY MAYA DOLLARHIDE | “Restaurant Week” events are common across the United States. Food lovers enjoy the opportunity to try new restaurants at a good price, and restaurants often benefit by attracting new customers. But overall, are these events worth your while?

Many restaurant owners think so.

“Restaurant Weeks bring new customers in and create a buzz with the regulars. Everybody loves a special night, a treat, and showing the newbies what to order,” says Dora Herrera, co-owner of California’s Yuca’s Pasadena and Yuca’s Hut Los Feliz. Her family—with matriarch Socorro Herrera at the helm—has been cooking award-winning Yucataninspired dishes since 1976.

Both locations participated in this year’s Dine Latino Restaurant Week in April, which was sponsored by the non-profit Latino Restaurant Association (LRA) and focused on promoting Mexican and Latin restaurants in the greater Los Angeles area.

Many different organizations plan and sponsor Restaurant Week events throughout the country, which typically take place during spring and fall.

In Chicago, the destination marketing organization Choose Chicago runs Chicago Restaurant Week every spring. In Beaumont, Texas, the Beaumont Convention & Visitors Bureau runs #EATBMT Restaurant Week, while the job of organizing Restaurant Week in Placentia, California falls to that city’s Chamber of Commerce. Regional or local restaurant associations like the LRA handle planning in some locales. And local media sometimes take over planning: Restaurant Week in New York’s Hudson Valley is the purview of the Valley Table magazine.

Belonging to or partnering with the sponsoring organizations or associations often is the only requirement to participate; in the case of the Hudson Valley event, however, restaurants pay $800 to be part of the event.

Multi-course lunch and dinner specials are the most common offering found on Restaurant Week menus. Sometimes the dishes are from the regular menu, sometimes they’re new creations a chef or owner might want to try. In most cases, event organizers set rules participating restaurants must follow.

For example, restaurants participating in Austin Restaurant Week—which will return this August in Austin, Texas after a

–DORA HERRERA, Yuca’s Pasadena and Yuca’s Hut Los Feliz

2020 hiatus—will be required to offer $20 prix fixe meals for lunch or brunch and $35 or $50 options for dinner.

Choose Chicago instructs restaurants to offer multi-course meals priced at $25 for brunch or lunch, and $39 and/or $55 for dinner (excluding beverages, tax, gratuity, and delivery fees). This year, diners had the flexibility to experience Chicago Restaurant Week, which ran from March 19 through April 4, through indoor and outdoor dining, or at home with delivery and takeout options.

Other organizers are more flexible about the meal pricing, but all recommend that the restaurant offer some kind “deal” to attract diners.

Whatever the choices, there are three basic “rules of the Restaurant Week road”: The meals should represent a good value, showcase the kind of quality cuisine your restaurant is known for, and still be priced in a way that adds a few dollars to your bottom line.

Other tips?

Include at least one vegetarian or vegan dish so diners on special diets have an option. And don’t make things too complicated, says Herrera, who offered machaca, cochinita pibil, and milanesa de res on Yuca Pasadena’s spring Dine Latino menu, then threw in free house-made guacamole and chips for every customer who bought a plate and a drink during the promotion.

“We try to keep things simple,” says Herrera, who suggests first-time Restaurant Week participants in particular keep it simple, too. “The service, especially during restaurant week, is important. You want to treat every diner as a favorite VIP, and I recommend that restaurants, especially during Restaurant Week, offer a tasty loss leader.”

Successful Restaurant Weeks are not only the result of restaurants’ participation; promotion is an essential part of a winning event, too. The good news is that most organizations that sponsor the events handle much of the PR.

The Valley Table promotes Hudson Valley Restaurant Week with promotions in the New York Times, the Poughkeepsie Journal and other local publications, as well as on social media. That promotion pays off: Organizers report that 92 percent of participating restaurants see an average of 25 percent more sales during the week.

The LRA heavily promotes Dine Latino, as well.

“We wanted to give restaurants as much support as possible for April’s Dine Latino, so we created national and local press releases, plus social media, of course,” LRA co-founder Lilly Rocha says. “In addition, we gave all participating restaurants a kit with all the graphics and logos to use. We leave planning the specials and menus up to the restaurants for Dine Latino, but we help them with the marketing to advertise the good work they are doing. We promote all types of Latino cuisine, and our job is to help get people out there to enjoy it. We want this week to help Latino restaurants get back on their feet, as Latino owners are facing critical needs.”

Promotions will continue with the Dine Latino event planned in conjunction with Latin Heritage Month and scheduled for September 28 - October 3.

Some Restaurant Week, events also include charitable contributions and co-promotions that can help boost press coverage.

In Austin, each meal or drink purchased during Restaurant Week helped the Central Texas Food Bank’s programs that serve nearly 50,000 people each week. And in Chicago, Choose Chicago partnered with the Shedd Aquarium to bring attention to plastic pollution, which impacts aquatic animals across the globe. In the lead-up to the 2021 Restaurant Week, three of the aquarium’s Magellanic penguins visited Shaw’s Crab House, one of several Restaurant Week participants that have committed to reducing their single-use plastic footprint via Shedd’s Let’s Shedd Plastic program for restaurants.

But don’t leave all the promotion up to the organizers. Be sure to promote your restaurant’s specials on your own social media and advertising and consider making a teaser video to show off what you’re going to offer.

The marketing concept behind Restaurant Week started as a New York Citybased promotional event in 1992 by Tim Zagat of the famous Zagat’s Guides. Its success swept across most of the U.S., providing an opportunity for diners to enjoy specially priced dishes from their favorite restaurants and also to find new spots to patronize.

Maya Dollarhide is a New York-based freelance writer.

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