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The holiday season is upon us, providing restaurant owners several opportunities to engage customers with holiday themed promotions and campaigns. In addition to Hannukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s Eve, December is host to several festive ways to promote your restaurant’s products and services.

December 9 - National Pastry Day

Pastries are a category of baked desserts that feature fluffy or flaky dough, fruits, and custards. Popular especially in European cuisine, pastries are a perfect addition to a morning coffee or as an after-meal sweet.

​This National Pastry Day, enhance your holiday campaigns by providing customers special offers for pastries bundled with qualifying food, drink, or gift card purchases, or as a “thank you” to customers who spend over a specified amount in-store or through your restaurant’s Masa+ Online Storefront.

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By implementing Masa+ multi-store Gift Cards, restaurant owners enable customers to conveniently purchase, redeem, and recharge physical and digital gift cards, keeping the business top of mind during the holidays and throughout the year. With no swipe fees, processing fees, or costs for the Masa+ eGift Card solution, restaurants using Masa+ eGift Cards instantly increase sales revenue for single and multi-store operations.

The holidays are all about giving and gift card purchases allow customers to share their favorite restaurants and bars with loved ones and friends. When received as a gift, customers that place orders with gift cards almost always spend more than the card’s value. When used alongside Aldelo Express Self-Service Kiosks and Masa+ Online Ordering, restaurant owners enable faster and easier gift card-based payments in any dining environment.

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Thanksgiving Day is one of the most popular U.S. holidays. Each year on the fourth Thursday of November, millions of Americans travel to share a meal with their family and friends. In the days surrounding Thanksgiving Day, many customers turn to their favorite local restaurants for convenient and complimentary food and drink items that save them time – and spare them additional kitchen clean-up. As a result, restaurants can gain additional customers by promoting their restaurant’s online ordering, takeout, and delivery services this November.

Aldelo Express POS is a E2E cloud-based restaurant technology platform that supports both in-store and off-premises restaurant services. Using iPad and Android-based point-of-sale hardware, merchants choose from a variety of merchant-facing and customer-facing ordering and digital payment solutions that work together to run a complete restaurant operation. This includes several native cloud POS modules and features such as:

• Delivery Module, including Order Dispatching, Driver Tracking, and Digital Mapping
• QR Code-Based Masa+ Online Ordering and Digital Payments
• Native Inventory and Recipe Module
• “Matrix” Menu Module for Creating Hundreds if Menu Items in Minutes
• Advanced Pricing Module for Easy Digital Menu Management
• Third-Party Integration Solutions
• And More

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November is most commonly associated with Thanksgiving. More Americans travel to be with friends and family on Thanksgiving Day than they do for Christmas, New Year’s Eve, or any other popular holiday. As a result, many restaurants promote their business through Thanksgiving-themed dinner specials, food and drink bundles, desserts, and gift card campaigns.

Here are 3 additional ways to market your restaurant this November:

Día de Los Muertos (or Day of the Dead) - November 1-2

From ofrenda (offering) altars and sugar skulls to bright marigolds and colorful papel picado (perforated paper), Dí​a de Los Muertos is a great way for local restaurant owners to engage their communities this November with festive promotions. Restaurants can add some limited-time menu items and even put their own twist on easy-to-make items, such as tostadas, margaritas, and quesadillas, to commemorate this widely-celebrated holiday.

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Restaurants not utilizing gift card programs are missing out on additional revenue. Gift cards have the ability to generate hundreds if not thousands of dollars of additional sales each year that acts as another revenue stream that helps restaurants sustain the business during slower periods.

Masa+ is a full-featured online ordering and digital payments platform that includes:

• Multi-Store QR Code-Based eGift Cards
• Text-Based eGift Card Sharing
• QR Code-Based Digital Menus
• Secure Personal Digital Wallets
• Loyalty, Rewards, and Coupon Programs
• And more

Here are the top 5 benefits of the Masa+ eGift Card Program:

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The month of October is famous for Fall Harvest Festivals, pumpkin patch trips, the Major League Baseball Post-Season Playoffs, and Halloween. Each one of these October activities provides restaurant owners an opportunity to encourage new and existing customers to visit their restaurant by incentivizing menu purchases via gift card, loyalty, and rewards-based promotions.

Here are a few ways restaurants can engage their customers this October:

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​Largely ignored in the US for years, QR codes are proving daily how much of a productive and trusted asset they are to business owners in today’s unpredictable market climate. As restaurant owners continually adjust to the contactless and digital market, utilizing QR code-based access to native and third-party online ordering and digital payment integrations help staff and customers increase operational efficiency, reduce order errors, and improve overall customer service levels and satisfaction.
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With eight out of ten people carrying a smartphone camera in their pockets, unique QR codes enable restaurants to put ordering and payment capabilities into the hands of their customers, including:

• Paperless menus
• Place online orders
• Scan-and-pay at the POS
• Web-based digital payments
• Leave cashless tips
• Receive paperless receipts
• Gain loyalty points
• Trigger curbside pick-up
• Digital restaurant storefronts
• And more!

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The school year is back in swing, which means restaurants are engaging schools, students, and school groups in their local communities. For many customers, their daily schedules are prioritized around their childrens’ school, extracurricular activities, and their local social network. By supporting students’ success while encouraging new and existing customers to return the favor through support of their business, restaurants successfully increase customer traffic this fall and throughout the school year with back-to-school themed campaigns.

Here are three ways to engage your local customer base with back-to-school themed campaigns and events:

Homecoming Catering and Promotions

Homecoming is an exciting time of year for students, families, and their communities. With homecoming float-building, dances, and football games occurring throughout the fall season, restaurants have a unique opportunity to support local schools with homecoming-themed catering and promotions. Examples include:

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Because coffee is the most popular drink in America, nearly every restaurant offers hot or cold coffee beverages on their menu. This September 29th, on National Coffee Day, restaurant owners across the country are taking advantage of the opportunity to promote their restaurant’s digital menus with coffee-themed loyalty campaigns. By incentivizing digital online ordering purchases with coffee-based giveaways and discounts, businesses see increased purchases of food and drinks placed both in-store on QR code-based digital menus, and online.

For new and existing restaurant owners, offering a full-featured digital menu means enabling customers to customize their own coffee-based drinks using simple, complex, and priced menu item modifiers. Using a single cloud-based login, owners/operators monitor and manage digital menus and menu item modifiers anytime, anywhere through the Aldelo Express POS cloud back-office. When used alongside self-service Kiosks and QR code-based signage placed throughout the indoor and outdoor restaurant environment, restaurants utilizing Aldelo Express and Masa+ eliminate long lines and reduce wait times through on-demand customer-facing digital ordering and secure payment services.

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One of the best strategies a restaurant can make at the end of a busy summer season is leveraging customer contact information gathered over the previous several months and establishing new loyalty campaigns. Promoting reward incentives that cater to busy schedules keep customers engaged despite a transition into school-year routines. When successful, these restaurants not only retain summer customers, but can present their restaurant as a “grab and go” option or as an ideal “hotspot” for parent meetings, local fundraisers, or a fun time out.

​Here are 3 creative ways to target customers this September with themed campaigns:

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For millions of Americans, September marks the end of summer. By the end of August, summer tourists, campers, and out-of-towners are going back to their school year routines, making September a challenging period for many restaurant owners who are at risk of losing new summer customers. As a result, one of the best things a restaurant can do is target their customers with integrated loyalty and rewards incentives so they will be reminded of their favorite “summer stop” throughout the school year. When successful, these restaurants not only maintain a growing customer base, but present their restaurant as an ideal vendor for fundraisers, sports team gatherings, homecoming catering, and more.

One of the best ways restaurants can strategically compete in the growing loyalty market is to reward customer purchases and influence return visits with unique customer promotions. These help restaurants increase customer traffic and earn additional revenue that is often essential for sustaining the business during slower periods.

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Red wine is one of the most popular alcoholic beverages among U.S. consumers. This means that National Red Wine Day (August 28) offers restaurants and bars a unique opportunity to promote new and existing partnerships with local wineries, tasting rooms, and restaurants through cross-pollination advertising and collaborative campaigns.
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For example, a restaurant and tasting room partnership can use National Red Wine Day to encourage customers to purchase their favorite food and drinks in a tasting room environment, or purchase locally-made wines with their meal on a restaurant’s premises. Partners can offer their menu items in promotional bundles or through limited-time discounts. In both scenarios, business owners and operators make customers aware of existing collaborations, influence guests to place orders for additional items, and can generate future visits with limited-time gift card, loyalty, and rewards offers.

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Bars, pubs, and clubs were one of the most severely hit markets during the coronavirus pandemic. But there are silver linings emerging from an industry that had to reinvent itself during difficult times. Business owners are maintaining off-premises alcoholic services through curbside pickup, takeout, delivery, and do-it-yourself cocktail kits while expanding and promoting their menus with new drinks, appetizers, desserts, and other food items. This is welcome news as customers return to their pre-pandemic purchases and restaurants, bars, pubs, and clubs are working hard to make up for their recent losses.

When used with Aldelo Express POS, Masa+ digital solutions enable any-sized business owners to promote new and existing menu items via loyalty-based campaigns. Masa+ offers highly customizable online ordering and digital payment solutions, including physical, digital, and hybrid loyalty, rewards, and gift card programs that operators use to incentivize purchases and encourage future visits for guests to collect and redeem new rewards.

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Ice cream is one of the most popular desserts in the United States, especially during the notoriously hot month of July. For small business owners using Aldelo Express and Masa+, promoting loyalty programs with ice cream and ice cream-based frozen desserts helps draw customers into their store during the hot summer season. With Aldelo Express and Masa+, owners of single and multi-store restaurants launch campaigns that influence customers’ dining choices, generate repeat visits, and motivate guests to purchase additional items.

Aldelo Express and Masa+ users customize their restaurant’s unique loyalty program using digital and physical loyalty credits, or a combination of each. Customers can earn loyalty credits by purchasing specific menu items, ordering food and drinks using specific delivery methods (such as dine in, takeout, curbside pickup, and off-premises delivery), or by placing orders within specified time frames. Each one of these loyalty program strategies helps restaurant owners leverage sales of particular menu items to avoid wasted inventory, increase business during slower periods, promote new products and services, or increase overall business revenue.

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July is just around the corner, which means patriotic Fourth of July stars, stripes, and celebration suppliers are in full swing… including local restaurants! In addition to providing food and drinks for Fourth of July barbeques, picnics, parades, and festivals, restaurants are engaging customers with other exciting celebratory days.

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Gift cards are an invaluable restaurant solution. When customers purchase a gift card for family, friends, or coworkers, the restaurant immediately benefits from the purchase through increased revenue and assurance of future visits, especially because customers usually spend more when paying with a restaurant gift card. But as more customers begin to prefer paying for purchases using contactless digital solutions, digital e-gift cards offer a convenient method to pay for in-store and remote purchases.

Masa+ is a digital menu, ordering, and payments solution that is natively available to all Aldelo Express restaurant owners of all types and sizes, and includes solutions for legacy and e-gift card programs. Here are 3 additional ways Masa+ e-gift cards can directly benefit restaurant owners.

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In the United States, the month of July is known for Independence Day pool parties, block parties, parades, and barbecues with friends and family. Traditional “Americana” food include hamburgers and hot dogs alongside a variety of sides such as watermelon and potato salad. But July is also National Hot Dog Month! Hot dogs provide a great lunch, dinner, or summer snacktime solution, especially because they are easily stored and very portable.

Restaurants can make the most of National Hot Dog Month by promoting native loyalty and rewards programs with a rotating hot dog menu.

​Using Masa+ digital loyalty and rewards solutions, restaurants gain a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining customer loyalty in their local market. Users create single or multiple custom loyalty and rewards campaigns that cater to both existing and new customers, and launch campaigns that specifically target a day of the week or meal period that are traditionally slow to increase traffic and sales.

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Online ordering is becoming more and more critical to the livelihood of a restaurant. With successful online ordering services, customers have a direct link to the restaurant even when they are not physically in the store. With the Aldelo Express native Masa+ online storefront, restaurants create a unique first impression of their restaurant brand using vibrant images to showcase digital menus, daily specials, and allow customers to preview their store environment. Together, Aldelo Express Cloud POS and Masa+ offer seamless digital ordering and payment experiences, such as paying for orders through QR codes printed on customer receipts or via single-use QR codes scanned from customer smartphones.

​On average, restaurant owners increase sales by an average of 8.3% when they use Aldelo Express Cloud-Based POS with Masa+ Online Ordering​.

Here are some ways Aldelo Express and Masa+ online storefronts can benefit your business.

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The summer season often brings groups of young customers to diners, smoothie shops, and other local restaurants. These types of customers are looking to get out of their house and go to a fun environment where they can eat and spend time with their friends – and get away from the summer heat. Restaurants are making the most of the summer season by incorporating loyalty promotions and creative events that attract hungry customers with great deals, great food, and family-friendly fun.

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Unlike brick-and-mortar stores that are limited to a certain vicinity and customer market, food trucks have the freedom to roam local communities and garner a loyal customer following. While some food trucks may focus solely on one or a few communities, other businesses meet customers at events and gatherings miles away, and others do a bit of both to solidify their brand’s success and establish relationships with seasonal customers.

But a food truck’s mobility also brings great operational and technological challenges, especially when business owners want to provide customer-facing ordering, payment, gift card, or loyalty program solutions to grow their business and reward customers for their loyalty.

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​This year, Father’s Day is on June 19th. Each year, businesses compete to be the go-to restaurant for a Father’s Day meal or dessert. For new or independent businesses, this often makes it difficult for their promotions to stand out from the crowd. But with extended or week-long Father’s Day campaigns, local restaurants improve customer traffic and earn additional revenue while increasing brand exposure to the community.

By promoting Father’s Day reservations, buffets, and specials one to two weeks in advance, restaurants provide a convenient way for customers to plan ahead or find them for last-minute gift decisions.