For customers, happy hour provides the perfect opportunity to unwind with friends and co-workers over discount pints and half-priced nachos. For restaurateurs, happy hour helps to get more customers in the door, get more orders in the bar POS, and gives the bottom line a nice little boost – it’s win-win.
But just like mixing the perfect cocktail, you need the right ingredients to make your happy hour a success. Any restaurant can offer drink specials, but you have to deliver a great experience if you want customers to drop in during this time (and stick around for dinner).
To help you plan and pull off the perfect happy hour, we’ll break down our recipe for success.
7 Ways to Plan and Execute a Successful Happy Hour
It’s clear that this promotion is a lucrative opportunity for your restaurant. But actually pulling off the perfect happy hour is a little more complicated than it might seem.
Though discount drinks are a consistent crowd-pleaser, a few bucks off a cocktail isn’t always enough to draw in a crowd. As the National Restaurant Association found, customers see happy hour as much more than an opportunity to grab half-priced margaritas.
In fact, a whopping 43% see it as a great time to relax, while 23% use it as a way to connect with colleagues outside of the workplace. As Sociologist Ray Oldenburg explained in his 1989 book The Great Good Place, people have a need for a “third place” to relax outside of the pressures of home and work.
To make sure your restaurant becomes that third place, we’ve rounded up our top tips for success.
4 Reasons Why Happy Hour Is Good for Your Restaurant
Sure, it sounds like a great deal for customers – who doesn’t like discount sliders and half-price well drinks?
But what’s in it for you as a restaurateur?
While it might seem counterintuitive to offer discounts as a way to boost sales, happy hour can be the key to bigger checks during slow times of the day. Below, we dive into some of the major benefits of hosting this type of promotion at your restaurant.
What does happy hour mean?
FAQ
What does happy hour usually mean?
How does happy hours work?
What is the meaning of happy hour moment?
Why do people go to happy hour?
What does happy hour mean?
Subscribe to America’s largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! The meaning of HAPPY HOUR is a period of time during which the price of drinks (as at a bar) is reduced or hors d’oeuvres are served free. How to use happy hour in a sentence.
What is happy hour & how does it work?
Happy hour is a marketing term for a time when a venue such as a restaurant or bar offers reduced prices on alcoholic drinks. Discounted menu items like appetizers are often served during happy hour. This is a way for bars and restaurants to draw in more business before or after peak business hours.
What time does a happy hour start?
They generally play a happy hour of lounge music starting at 5:00 pm and then an hour of independent rock on various weekdays. One recurring theme of this was free beer for people from these countries in some pubs at happy hour. These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web.
What is happy-hour noun?
a time, usually in the early evening, when a pub or a bar sells alcoholic drinks at lower prices than usual The Oxford Learner’s Thesaurus explains the difference between groups of similar words. Try it for free as part of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary app Definition of happy-hour noun in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary.