FEBRUARY – A Short Month with Tons of Restaurant Marketing Opportunities

February is a very short month right?  We only have 28 days in the month but I think it actually has the most going on of any month and it’s kind of wild when you think about it, this year unparticular.

The obvious holiday that everyone things about for February is Valentine’s day. I won’t spend a lot of time on it. You should definitely be planning a big day, figuring out a great promotion or package.  Really you should turn the whole month into Romance Month and get people to celebrate the whole month.  Other big ones to look out for this February are the Super Bowl which is on the 8^th and furthermore for sports fans the winter Olympics that run the 12^th to the 28^th.

Check and see if you have these on your calendar:

Boy Scout Day

‘Boy Scout Day’ which is on the 8^th , they are celebrating their 100^th Year!! If you know a Boy Scout troop you might want to do something with that.  So if you’re talking about the Boy Scouts of America and you’ve got a bunch of Boy Scouts, maybe you can host a Boy Scout dinner or something like that.

Groundhog Day

You could do a promotion.  If he sees his shadow you get X and if he doesn’t see his shadow you get X and you could have some real fun with that.  That’s a very tongue and cheek holiday to play off of.

The 15^th is President’s Day so it also plays into the whole Valentine’s weekend.

The thing you need to be conscious of with Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s birthday, Valentine’s Day; they all play around each other in the month and when they do that, you’ve got to look at when they fall.  You’ve got to look at when the holidays are because that stuff definitely affects your business.

If you’re in a business community and Monday’s a great day for you, all of a sudden businesses and banks and everybody are off and that could affect your business.  So one, it’s going to affect your scheduling and you’re staffing and how you plan but it also is an opportunity for you to maybe work against that.

So if you know that Monday is a tough day for us and everybody’s out and nobody comes in and whatever they do, you can play against that and you can actually tie a promotion in to counteract that and maybe you do some type of special where if you come in and bring your family and you get a certain prize or a discount or you get to spin a wheel.

Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras is that Tuesday the 16th so you’ve got this couple’s type of weekend but then Mardi Gras is a fun party and get out and jazz and you guys at the 191 Prime, jazz; that’s a holiday that screams your name.  You can definitely play off of Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday and the whole thing.

Ash Wednesday

You certainly can play Ash Wednesday off of any type of church promotion so if you’re running your church promotion on Sunday, you’re running it on Wednesday; Ash Wednesday is a great day to play off of if you’re going to do the church promotion thing too.

National Cherry Month – You’ve got Valentine’s Day with a red theme and you can certainly have your chef come up with some specialty dessert that centers around cherries and maybe it’s a heart shape.  Cherry cheesecake; you could buy a little mold and make these little cherry cheesecakes that these guys could share at the end of their meal.

Other days/items to plan around:

• Black History Month
• Bubble Gum Day
• Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 7
• Winter Olympics February 12 to 28^th
• Chinese New Year, Sun. Feb. 14
• Low Vision Awareness Month
• National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. February 22–28

So that’s some fun stuff there for the month of February.

There are even a whole bunch more but that should get you started. I could write 12 page report on what to do with all the events (Oh yeh, I already did)  I write a monthly marketing planner that my members and I use to plan out our marketing 3 months in advance.

I even run a Restaurant Marketing Planning call every single month with members from all over the country and we talk through items like this and a ton more.  If you are interested in “Getting Ahead and Staying Ahead” of your Restaurant Marketing then you should join me on these calls.

Click Here for More Details, you can even listen to the whole February call for FREE!

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