Overview
Most restaurants, wineries, cafes, bars and retail stores are looking for ways to drive traffic to their location. Hosting events is a great way to drive traffic by making your location a destination, and doing them regularly is also a great way to drive frequency and make regulars out of your customers.
Details
Breaux Vineyards has a great example with their Fourth Fridays event. The fourth Friday of each month they have an evening event with live music, wine and food specials, and this month they even included a new wine release. Breaux also does a great job of doing other events each month and really making their winery a destination all the time! Their events are always fun, welcoming and definitely make you want to return.
Having a theme for your events (live music, book club, wine tasting with the expert) and doing it on the same day each month (first Friday, third Thursday, every Tuesday) are great ways to easily promote your event in store, in local calendar listings and on social media. It also keeps them top of mind with your customers.
Here are some other great ideas for regularly occurring events:
- Host a daily sale each week (“this Friday, all new books are 10% off!”)
- Host a monthly super sale (“last Sunday of every month – everything 20% off!”)
- Host a monthly education event (seminar or class)
- Stay open later one night a week to attract a cocktail crowd (if you are a restaurant that caters to more midday customers)
Make sure you pick a theme and date relevant to your customer base, get it scheduled and start promoting it!
See the Making Your Location a Destination Guide for the comprehensive approach to this topic.
