Category: Hospitality

One of this week’s openings has already won a national award without serving a single customer. A Bermondsey pizzeria opens on Wednesday as the UK’s Pizza of the Year. Then next week gets busy: a British restaurant named after a grandmother on the old Club Gascon site, a Soho focacceria from the Fatto a Mano team, and Imad Alarnab coming back to the part of London where he started.

Five Feet, Bermondsey

4 Tanner Street, SE1 3LD. Opens Wednesday 11 November.

Jay Patel of Legare and Luna, Roland Horne, who founded WatchHouse, and Jack Ellingham, a baker out of Dusty Knuckle and Spring. Three people who know Bermondsey well, opening a 55-seat pizzeria on the old Dobson’s Bakery site just off Bermondsey Street. The pizzas are pan pies, a centimetre of light, airy dough baked in black iron pans for a crisp edge, with the flour milled on site on a stone mill shipped over from Montpellier. Last Tuesday, with the doors still shut, Ellingham took National Pizza of the Year at the National Pizza Awards with a Sicilian-style sausage and vodka sauce pie, and Pizza Chef of the Year with it. Evenings, Tuesday to Saturday. Instagram: @fivefeet.london.

B. Penhale, Smithfield

57 West Smithfield, EC1A 9DS. Opens Monday 16 November.

Elliot Hashtroudi opened Camille in Borough Market just over two years ago. This is the sister restaurant, on the old Club Gascon site, and it is named after his grandmother, Betty Penhale. The cooking is regional British and Irish: Victorian recipes, forgotten traditions, ingredients sourced from across the Isles, nose to tail and low waste. The team is clear it is not Camille 2.0, and the French goes out of the window. Bookings are already open. b-penhale.co.uk, Instagram @b.penhale.

“Winning this before opening hopefully drives some people through the doors to experience the space.” Jack Ellingham, Five Feet

Fulvio’s, Soho

3 Great Chapel Street, W1F 8FL. Opens Monday 16 November.

The Fatto a Mano team, the Brighton pizzeria that now has a run of sites, opening a focacceria named after Fulvio, the member of the team whose recipe the whole menu sits on. Two-stage biga dough proved for at least 24 hours, eight to ten fillings made to order from 11am, pastries and coffee from London roaster Kofee first thing, tiramisu to finish. The house rule, printed on the cups, is no cappuccino after midday, and there is a Bell of Shame for anyone who orders one. Launch day is 100 free sandwiches from 11am, then half price on everything until close. Open 8am weekdays, 9am weekends, shut at 5pm. Instagram: @fulviosfocacceria.

Imad’s Syrian Kitchen, Shoreditch

Blossom Street, Norton Folgate, E1 6PL. Opens Wednesday 18 November.

Imad Alarnab ran restaurants, juice bars and coffee shops in Damascus before the war, left Syria in 2015, and in March 2017 did his first London pop-up on Columbia Road. Kingly Court followed, with a Bib Gourmand, then Aram at Somerset House. Site three brings him back to east London: 71 covers on Blossom Street, a room built to feel like the old houses and souks of Damascus, with lanterns, lampshades and paintings by Syrian artists brought over from Syria. There will be dishes you can only get here, still under wraps, alongside jawaneh and shish tawook. In his words, there is a real sense of coming full circle. imadssyriankitchen.co.uk, Instagram @imadssyriankitchen.

Delivery is now a fifth of restaurant trade, and the big groups are piling onto the same apps you are. Here’s what the latest numbers say, and what to fix on your listing before December.

NIQ’s latest Hospitality at Home Tracker came out on 4 November. Delivery, takeaway and click-and-collect made up 20.9% of all spending with restaurants in September. Deliveries took nearly three quarters of that.

That isn’t a side line any more. For a lot of independents it’s a second dining room, and it’s the one that gets the least attention.

What the numbers actually say

Like-for-like sales were up 2.3% on last September. That’s the best month since June, after a summer when everyone was outside. It’s also below the 3.5% inflation rate, so in real terms the average restaurant’s delivery trade is still going backwards.

On a total basis, sales were up 11.8%. The gap is new sites, and restaurants switching delivery on for the first time. Look at who’s in the tracker: Nando’s, Dishoom, Wagamama, Pizza Pilgrims, Honest Burgers. A lot of that growth is the groups arriving on the apps. It’s the same screen your listing sits on.

People want it brought to them, and most of that growth is coming through the third-party platforms. NIQ’s Karl Chessell expects competition to be intense in the run-in to Christmas, with rising costs making every order hard-earned.

“There’s all to play for in restaurant deliveries.” Karl Chessell, NIQ

Don’t count on December to do it for you, either. Last December the tracker’s like-for-like at-home sales were up just 0.3%. The season doesn’t lift everyone. It rewards the listings people pick.

How people actually choose

Nobody reads a delivery app. They scroll it. A photo, a name, a rating, a delivery time and a price, and they’ve decided in a couple of seconds. Before anyone tastes your food, you’re competing on a thumbnail.

That’s why most of the fixes below are boring. Boring is good. Boring is cheap, and you can do most of it this week.

Seven things to fix before December

• Real photos of your top five. Shot in daylight, in the box they actually arrive in. If the app has filled the gap for you, check what it’s showing people.
• Cut the menu down. A delivery menu doesn’t need everything you serve in the room. Fewer dishes, the ones that travel well, bestsellers at the top.
• Build one December bundle. A sharing box for the office, the flat or the family. One price, more on every order, easy to say yes to.
• Check your hours and prep times every week. Christmas trading hours change. If the app says you’re closed or 70 minutes away, that order goes to the next listing.
• Mark dishes sold out instead of cancelling. Cancelled orders annoy customers and do you no favours with the platform.
• Answer every review within a day. Especially the bad ones. The next customer reads your reply more carefully than the complaint.
• Put something in the bag. A card with a reason to order direct or book a table. Every app order comes with commission, and the bag is the one bit of marketing you know they’ll open.

Want us to look at your listing? Send us the link to your Just Eat, Deliveroo or Uber Eats page and we’ll come back with the three things we’d fix before December. Write to hello@good-folks.co.uk.

GoodFolks is a marketing agency for independent restaurants, pubs and cafés. Listings, photos and Christmas trade are a big part of what we do for hospitality. If December tables are the bigger worry, start with our four-week winter plan.

Your customers feel a rate rise before you do. Here is a four-week plan to keep the room full this winter. Print it, stick it by the pass, tick it off.

The Bank of England put rates up to 4% on 5 November, and said another rise may follow. A week earlier the Budget confirmed a £13.21 National Living Wage from April 2027. Our Budget piece covers the cost side: saving hours on the rota before the wage rise bites. This is the other half. Keeping the bookings coming while your locals tighten their belts.

What just changed for your customers

Here is the bit that matters. Barclays found hospitality spend holding up while the number of visits fell. People go out less often, but they still spend when they do. And demand has not disappeared: managed restaurant, pub and bar groups had their best month of the year in September, up 2.7%, though London was a little softer than the rest of the country.

So the job is not slashing prices. It is making sure you are the place they pick for the fewer nights out they have left, and that the booking is in the diary before the bank statement lands.

The four-week plan

One week at a time, roughly an hour a week. Tick them off as you go. Your ticks stay saved on this device, and the print button gives you a clean copy for the office wall.

What not to do

• Do not cut prices across the board. It teaches people to wait for the deal, and your margins are already taking April’s wage rise.
• Do not go quiet. Venues that stop posting in a squeeze get forgotten. Staying visible is the cheapest thing on this list.
• Do not pay for followers or reach. Pay for bookings, and measure covers, not likes.

Copy you can use this week

Hello [first name]!

Our Christmas menu is out. Three courses for £[price] a head, and we will look after the rest.

Fridays are going fast. Mondays to Wednesdays still have room for bigger groups, and the whole room is yours if there are enough of you.

Book your table: [link]

Not sure what to get someone? Our gift vouchers are valid from January.

The short version

• Week 1: Christmas page live, deposits on, last year’s groups chased.
• Week 2: one email a week to the people who already love you.
• Week 3: set prices and an early slot, not discounts.
• Week 4: sell January in December with vouchers and a pre-booked offer.

Want us to run it for you? For a few independents this winter we are doing the first month free: Christmas page built, email list set up and sent, Google profile sorted. Then you decide whether to keep us on. See what we do for hospitality or write to hello@good-folks.co.uk.

Interest rates and hospitality: questions answered

What did the Bank of England do on 5 November 2026?

It raised Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points to 4%, on an 8 to 1 vote, to stop higher energy costs feeding into other prices. It was the first rise in more than three years.

How does a rate rise affect restaurants and cafés?

Mostly through customers. People on trackers and variable mortgages pay more each month straight away, and confidence was already falling. Expect fewer visits rather than smaller bills, so lock in bookings early and give people a clear reason to pick you.

Should I discount to keep customers coming in?

Not across the board. Set-price menus, an early-evening slot and a midweek event give people certainty on the bill without training them to wait for a deal.

What did the Autumn Budget 2026 change for hospitality?

Small business rates relief now covers venues up to £18,000 rateable value, the National Living Wage rises to £13.21 from April 2027, alcohol duty rises with inflation from February, and there was no change to VAT or employer National Insurance. Our Budget piece has the detail.

GoodFolks is a marketing agency for independent restaurants, pubs, cafés and bakeries. For the cost side, read what the Autumn Budget means for your venue. If midweek is your weak spot, start with how to fill a quiet Tuesday.

Four independents this week, and three of them are firsts. A head chef leaving a famous kitchen to open under her own name, a deli owner doubling up in Hampstead, a Portuguese founder coming back to the street he started on, and a crumpet brand finally getting a shop. The big group openings are covered everywhere else, so we have left them out.

PAM, Farringdon

61 Charterhouse Street, EC1M 6HA. Open now after a soft launch, with the full opening on Tuesday 3 November.

Karla Knowles spent almost eight years as head chef at Kiln, and PAM is the first place with her name over the door. It is a 45-seat live-fire room on the old Cubana site by Smithfield, backed by Edouard and Romain Bourrillon of Cocotte and Casa Felicia. The food is northern Thai pushed about with British produce and European technique: miang kham leaf wraps, a khao soi noi rice-flour pancake, roast duck in red curry with chips. Quarterly art shows and guest chefs are planned, and a second, calmer restaurant called Aree follows in Notting Hill in the spring. Knowles calls PAM the naughty sibling. Instagram: @pam.restaurant.

Oren Delicatessen, Hampstead

12 Heath Street, NW3 6TE. Open now (opened Sunday 1 November).

Oded Oren runs Oren on Shacklewell Lane, a Bib Gourmand neighbourhood restaurant, and a deli on Broadway Market. This is deli number two. The model is a New York deli with North African and Mediterranean flavours: babka, challah buns with New York-style fillings, hummus, borekitas, latkes, pickles and a counter of pantry staples, with every loaf and bake made by the Broadway Market team and brought up each morning. At weekends there is a sharing menu they call The Slow Range, with beef short rib and Persian lime among it. It doubles as a bottle shop for low-intervention wine, with seating in the courtyard it looks onto. Hampstead has waited a long time for something like this. orendeli.com.

Bar Douro, Soho

10 Greek Street, W1D 4DH. Opens Wednesday 4 November.

Max Graham ran a Churchill’s Port House pop-up on Greek Street before opening the first Bar Douro under the arches at London Bridge in 2016. Ten years on he is back on the same Soho street with site three. Counter seats round an open kitchen, an azulejo-tiled dining room with tiles hand-painted by a family atelier outside Lisbon, and a cellar room for tastings and producer dinners. The headline is Maronesa vaca velha, beef from mature cows of a mountain breed in Trás-os-Montes, and Bar Douro is the first restaurant in the UK to import it. Around it, croquetes de alheira, bacalhau à brás, piri-piri chicken from executive chef Neuza Leal’s family recipe, and a list of Portuguese wines and ports from small producers. bardouro.co.uk.

“Soho is where the dream started.” Max Graham, Bar Douro

Jones’ Crumpet Café, Notting Hill

44 Golborne Road, W10 5PR. Opens mid-November.

Ian Endfield started Jones’ Crumpets in 2017 with a supper club in his flat where every course had a crumpet in it. Since then the crumpets have gone into Rovi, La Fromagerie, Fortnum’s tea salon and a mail-order box, without a shop of their own. Golborne Road fixes that. A short sit-down menu of a breakfast, two savoury plates and a sweet one, each built on one of four crumpets: classic, double cheese, cheese and chive, or dark chocolate with a molten 71 per cent centre. A grab-and-go counter with toppings made on site, and Allpress coffee. Quarry tiles, birch joinery and a stainless-steel counter you can watch the crumpets cook behind. Instagram: @jonescrumpets.

Smaller sites get a break on rates. Every site gets a bigger wage bill. Here is what to do about it before April.

The Autumn Budget 2026 landed on 28 October. For hospitality, that means a business rates break for smaller venues and a National Living Wage of £13.21 from April 2027. Your accountant will cover the tax. This piece covers the other half: the practical changes that save hours on the rota before the new wage rates bite.

What the Autumn Budget 2026 changes for hospitality

Worth checking with your accountant or council whether you now fall under the new relief threshold. Plenty of venues miss reliefs they are owed because nobody puts the claim in.

What the National Living Wage rise costs you

Move the sliders to your own numbers.

How restaurants can save labour hours

How cafés and bakeries can save hours

Labour savings for every venue

Fill it or shut it

Every quiet session is a choice between closing it and filling it. The tweaks above handle the first half. The second half is marketing: locals’ nights, a proper email list, a reason to come in on a Tuesday.

Autumn Budget 2026: hospitality questions answered

GoodFolks is a marketing agency for independent restaurants, pubs, cafés and bakeries. If midweek is your weak spot, start with how to fill a quiet Tuesday. Planning the year ahead? Read January starts in October.

Late October is when the autumn openings land properly. This week brings one of our own clients to Drury Lane, a cult pizza residency going permanent in Covent Garden, a 15-seat ube bar in White City, and two chefs leaving big hotel kitchens to open their own places in Belgravia. Here is what is opening, who is behind it, and why we think it is worth a visit.

Nonna Bakery, Covent Garden

161 Drury Lane, WC2B 5PN. Open now.

We will declare an interest: Nonna is a GoodFolks client, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Sicilian lawyer Matteo Cicero started Nonna in Shanghai because he could not find the bread he grew up with, and the first London bakery opened in Holborn earlier this year. Drury Lane is the second: a corner site with big windows, outdoor seats and a shelf of Italian things to take home. Go for the cornetti with pistachio cream, the ricotta cannoli and the focaccia, and look for the two bakes only this branch does, an Eton Mess maritozzo and the pane cunzatu, a Sicilian sandwich from the Aeolian Islands. Find them at nonnabakery.co.uk and @nonnabakeryuk.

Lenny’s, Covent Garden

24 Henrietta Street, WC2E 8ND. Opens Tuesday 27 October.

Max Lewis spent time in Connecticut learning New Haven-style pizza, then spent two years proving London wanted it from a residency at the Bedford Tavern in Finsbury Park. The queues answered that question. Now Lenny’s goes permanent in partnership with MJMK, the group behind Kol and Casa do Frango. The signature is the tomato pie: a longer bake, a charred and chewy crust, and tomato doing the work rather than cheese. The Lenny splits one pie between tomato, garlic and pecorino on one side and classic mozzarella on the other. Bookings are open at lennysapizza.com.

Toasteé, White City

Unit 1018B, Westfield London, Ariel Way, W12 7JQ. Opens Tuesday 27 October.

Florence Mae Maglanoc already runs Panadera, the Filipino bakery with sites in Kentish Town and Marylebone, and Donia in Kingly Court. Toasteé is her fourth, and the most focused: a 15-seat bar built around French toast and ube. Three signature toasts to start (ube jam, matcha ganache, Milo cookies and cream), a classic butter and maple version, and a drinks list that runs from ube milk to ube horchata. Chef Adrian Kyle Felipe is in the kitchen. It is a small room doing one thing well, which is usually how the good ones start. Find it on Instagram at @toasteelondon.

A small room doing one thing well is usually how the good ones start.

Ralphie’s, Belgravia

87 Pimlico Road, SW1W 8PH. Opens late November.

Tom Booton put his name above the door at The Grill at The Dorchester. Ralphie’s is his first restaurant that is actually his, named after his dog and pitched squarely as a neighbourhood place rather than a destination. The menu is modern takes on British classics: battered cod cheek scampi, a pork and mushroom pie with charcuterie sauce, a Sunday roast with a shepherd’s pie Yorkshire. Pritesh Mody, the Sunday Brunch cocktail regular, has written the drinks list. There is a 14-seat private room with Tom’s own record collection, and yes, a dog menu. The site at ralphies.co.uk has a mailing list for the opening date.

Han & Han, Belgravia

16 St Barnabas Street, SW1W 8PE. Opens November.

Jeff Tan ran the kitchen at Hakkasan Mayfair. Han & Han is his first solo restaurant, and the name is personal: his mother’s surname alongside his own middle name. The cooking is modern Chinese built on classical technique. The headline dish is a 36-hour dry-aged Peking duck with house-made black truffle pancakes, alongside Teochew-style wild sea bream and a braised pumpkin with dried shrimp roe. Belgravia has plenty of expensive restaurants and not many with this much intent behind them. Follow the opening at @hannhanrestaurant_london.

If you don’t show customers your food, someone else will. Lately, that someone is a robot.

Just Eat has been filling the gaps on takeaway menus with AI generated photos. If a restaurant hadn’t uploaded its own image, the platform made one for it. Each one carries a small “AI generated” label. Most hungry people scrolling at 10pm won’t read it.

Some of the results are fine. Plenty aren’t. On 19 October Just Eat apologised, said it’s removing the inaccurate images and has paused the rollout while it works on the tool. Soda bread breakfasts came out as bacon and eggs floating in pints of fizzy drink. Salt and pepper chips came out as plain seasoned potatoes.

Paused isn’t gone. And the lesson stands whether they switch it back on or not.

What we found in one evening of scrolling

We had a look through a handful of local menus. A few highlights:

• “Hash Brown 5pcs”, shown as one single rösti.
• “Tub of Sauce”, shown as one pot with three sauces swirled together.
• “With cheese”, a £1.50 kebab add-on, shown as a plate of nothing but melted cheese.
• “Chicken and Mushroom”, a £5.01 pie, shown as a bowl of dark, oily curry with two mushrooms balanced on top.

Then there’s the “Americano” from £8, in sizes from 7 to 14 inches, topped with pepperoni, ham and mushroom. Pictured: a cup of black coffee.

That one isn’t even the AI’s fault. It’s a pizza set up under the wrong name, then illustrated literally. Which tells you everything. The machine only knows what your menu tells it.

For a lot of customers, the photo is the only bit of your marketing they ever see.

Two ways this costs you orders

1. The photo makes a promise your kitchen never agreed to. Someone orders five hash browns expecting a golden rösti. Five triangles turn up. The food’s fine, but they feel short changed. That’s the one star review, the refund request, the customer who doesn’t come back. You’re being judged against a picture nobody in your kitchen has ever seen.

2. The photo is so wrong nobody orders at all. This is the worse one, because you never find out. A plate of cheese for £1.50. A pie that’s somehow turned into a curry. A soup that looks like dishwater. Customers scroll straight past and order from the place down the road with real photos. No bad review, no complaint. Just fewer orders and no idea why.

Why this matters more now

Delivery apps are where a lot of people decide what to eat. You’re being compared with ten other places in the same scroll, on a phone, in a few seconds. For a lot of customers the photo is the only bit of your marketing they ever see.

If you don’t fill that space, someone else will. This time it was Just Eat’s AI. Next time it’s a stock image, a scraped photo, or a competitor whose listing simply looks better than yours.

The platforms aren’t going to look after your brand. That’s your job. Or ours.

What to do this week

1. Check every listing. Just Eat, Deliveroo, Uber Eats, your Google profile. Look at each dish the way a customer would. Anything labelled AI generated, replace it.
2. Photograph your bestsellers. Your top ten dishes probably make up most of your orders. Shoot those first, as you actually serve them. A decent phone and a window will get you further than you’d think.
3. Fix your menu text. Clear names, honest descriptions, the right categories. If the AI comes back, it’ll be working from whatever you wrote.
4. Use the photos everywhere. The same shots work on your website, Google profile and Instagram. One afternoon, months of use.

Want a second pair of eyes on your listings? Send us the link to your Just Eat, Deliveroo or Uber Eats page and we’ll come back with the three things we’d fix first. Write to hello@good-folks.co.uk.

GoodFolks is a marketing agency for independent restaurants, pubs and cafés. Photos, listings and quiet nights are a big part of what we do for hospitality. If delivery is a big part of your trade, read how to get more delivery orders before Christmas. If midweek is the bigger problem, start with how to fill a quiet Tuesday.

January turns up on time every year. It still catches a lot of good venues out.

The first weeks of the year are quiet for reasons nobody can fix. People are skint after Christmas, the weather keeps them at home and millions of them aren’t drinking. What you can fix is how ready you are when it arrives. And the work that makes January bearable mostly happens in October, November and December.

How quiet is quiet?

Across Britain’s big managed pub, bar and restaurant groups, like-for-like sales dipped 0.1% in January 2026, straight after a December that was up 2.9%. London did slightly worse than the rest of the country, and bars were down almost 5% on the year before. Those are groups with marketing teams and big budgets. For an independent, the drop from a full December to a flat January usually feels a lot steeper.

Then there’s the drinking. Alcohol Change UK found 17.5 million people planned a month off in January 2026, after around eight million had a proper go at it the year before, with millions more cutting down. If your margin lives behind the bar, that matters.

January isn’t a surprise. It’s the most predictable month you’ve got.

Why October, not January

Christmas brings more new faces through your door than any other time of year. Party bookings, families, office groups, people trying you because a friend booked. January is when you need those people back. If nothing is in place to bring them back, they leave before Christmas and that’s the last you hear of them.

By the first week of January it’s too late to start. The people who might have come back are gone, your inbox is empty and the only lever left is a discount. Planning now means you go into December with a way to keep hold of everyone who walks in.

What to put in place before Christmas

• Capture every Christmas guest. Make sure your booking form asks for marketing consent, and give party organisers a reason to share their guests’ details. A table of twelve is eleven people who’ve never booked with you.
• Decide your January reason now. Not a discount. A reason. A no and low drinks list that’s actually worth ordering, a set lunch, a supper club, a new menu, a regulars’ night. Our quiet Tuesday guide covers how to pick one.
• Sell January in December. Gift vouchers redeemable in January and February, a January event on sale before Christmas, a line on the bill or in the thank-you email inviting people back. People are in a spending mood in December. Use it.
• Pitch the press in November. January is a slow news month and food writers still need something to write about. Dry January drinks lists, new menus and anything genuinely new get picked up. Their deadlines are weeks ahead, so the pitch goes out before Christmas.
• Plan rotas and spend for the month you’ll actually get. Being realistic about January is what frees up money for the nights you can win.

The January mistakes we see every year

• Going quiet. Posting less and emailing nobody because it’s quiet anyway. Quiet months are exactly when people need reminding you exist.
• Panic discounting. A two for one in January teaches people to wait for the next one. It’s very hard to undo by March.
• Only talking to followers. Your Instagram followers already know you. January needs the locals who don’t, which means local press, local groups and the people who live within a ten-minute walk.
• Starting on the 2nd. Everything above takes weeks to set up. On 2 January you’re already behind.

GoodFolks is a marketing agency for independent pubs, bars and restaurants, and the quiet season is where a lot of our hospitality work starts. The other side of the same coin: Christmas bookings are won before Bonfire Night.

Every year the same thing happens. December arrives, the phone rings, and the question is whether you’ve got room for twelve on the 12th. By then most of the decisions that shape your December have already been made. Just not by you.

The good news is there’s still time. Here’s what the numbers say and what to do about it.

When the money actually lands

Christmas trading is squeezed into a very small window. Across UK venues using Dojo Bookings last year, the week commencing 8 December took 34% of all festive party bookings on its own. One week. A third of the season.

The groups are bigger than most people plan for too. Access Hospitality’s booking data puts the average Christmas group at 15.5 covers. That’s not a table. That’s half your room, on one booking, with one person making the call.

That person is the one you’re really marketing to. The office organiser who’s been handed a budget and a deadline, and who wants the whole thing sorted in one sitting.

Late bookers are real, but they still shortlist early

You’ll hear that people are booking later every year, and it’s true. Dojo’s own read on last season was that a lot of guests had left it late, and that the venues who did well were the ones ready to catch that demand quickly.

Here’s the bit people miss. Booking late isn’t the same as deciding late. The organiser has usually been glancing at options for weeks. When they finally book, they book whoever made it easy. If your Christmas offer only appears in mid-November, you weren’t on the list.

What the organiser needs to find in thirty seconds

Put yourself in their shoes. They’re comparing four places on their phone between meetings. Whoever answers these questions fastest wins.

• Is there a Christmas menu, and what does it cost per head? Put the price on it. “From £X” is fine. “Enquire for pricing” loses the booking.
• How many can you fit? Give real numbers for the room, the section or the full buyout.
• Which dates are left? Even a rough “Fridays going fast” helps.
• What’s the deposit and when is it due? Clear terms read as organised, not pushy.
• How do I book? One link or one email address. Not a form with eleven fields.

This all belongs on one Christmas page on your website. Link to it from your Instagram bio and your Google Business Profile. If you only do one thing this week, do this.

Get Google and Instagram doing the work

Your Google Business Profile is where a lot of “Christmas party near me” searches end up. Add a post about your Christmas menu with a photo and the booking link. Set your festive opening hours now, not on 23 December.

Instagram matters more than it used to, and not just for looking nice. Searches for “Instagrammable Christmas restaurant” rose 900% year on year in some cities. People are choosing venues by how they look in photos. Show the room dressed, the food plated and a full table having a good time. That beats a graphic with a snowflake on it every time.

Use your email list, and time it

If you’ve been collecting emails, this is the moment they pay for themselves. Start with last year’s organisers. Email them personally before the menu goes public, and offer them first pick of dates. Then send the Christmas menu to your full list in October, and again in November with a date that’s filling up.

Timing helps too. In Access Hospitality’s data, Monday 1 December was last year’s busiest single day for guests making bookings, and Thursdays were the strongest day of the week across December. The first working day of December and any Thursday are good days to land in inboxes.

Don’t switch off on the 25th

New Year’s Eve is a different game and it’s played late. 61% of NYE table bookings come in during the last four days of December. Keep your NYE offer live and visible through Boxing Day. The venues that go quiet after Christmas Day hand those bookings to whoever’s still posting.

From experience

We used to start planning Christmas in June

At a European bar group I worked at, Christmas planning started in June. Nothing builds a thicker skin than putting on a Christmas jumper in the middle of a heatwave for a photoshoot. Eating pigs in blankets under spotlights in the corner of a bar, while a room full of people watched the tennis, is a particular kind of magic. I’ve not been able to recreate it since. I’ve not tried very hard.

It was a military operation, and every team had to connect. The kitchen locked in the menu early so it could be costed and shot. Sales built Christmas showcases and invited local businesses in to try it. Marketing pulled together models, photographers, social, the website and PR. Operations had to make all of it happen on the night. That was a team of twenty, and it still took months.

As an independent, you might be every one of those teams at once, and you won’t have June. The lesson still holds. The only way through it is through it, so plan early and plan properly.

The other thing that stuck with me is that the same work parties came back year after year. Your best Christmas bookings are usually last year’s. Keeping in touch with those organisers through the year is worth far more than starting from scratch every autumn.

GoodFolks is a marketing agency for independent restaurants, pubs and cafés. Christmas pushes are a regular part of what we do for hospitality. Once December is handled, January starts in October.

A table that sits empty on a Tuesday is money you never get back. You can’t save the seat for Saturday.

Time and seats are the two things in a restaurant that genuinely go off, and an empty one on a quiet service is revenue lost for good. Most owners treat midweek as a problem to discount their way out of. It usually isn’t a pricing problem. It’s a reasons problem. Nobody’s giving people a reason to come out on a Tuesday.

First, find out which Tuesday you’ve got

The working week has changed, and your quiet nights might not be where you think. Some operators now find Tuesday lunch almost as busy as Saturday, because it’s the first day many people are back in the office after working from home on Monday. Friday lunch, once the busiest of the week, is now the quietest.

So before you change anything, look at your till by service, not by day. A quiet Tuesday dinner and a quiet Tuesday lunch are different problems with different fixes. The lunch is office workers. The dinner is locals.

Give people a reason, not a discount

The temptation is to knock 30% off and hope. Be careful. Almost half of consumers are actively hunting for deals, but heavy price cuts risk locking a venue into trading that doesn’t make money. Midweek set menus, bundles and loyalty rewards hold the margin while still giving deal-seekers a reason to book.

The best midweek offers aren’t really about price at all. Hawksmoor’s Mondays are unusually busy because of a £5 corkage charge on any bottle a guest brings in. It’s a reason to come on that night specifically, and it gets talked about.

A few that work for independents:

• A night with a name. Steak night, pasta night, a two-for-one on a dish you’re known for. Something people can put in the diary.
• Bring your own. Low corkage on a set night brings in wine people and fills the room.
• A monthly one-off. A supper club, a guest chef, a tasting menu. Small, ticketed and sold in advance.
• Locals first. A neighbourhood card or a Tuesday offer only for people on your email list. It rewards regulars instead of training everyone to wait for a deal.

Tell the people who can actually come

Midweek trade is local. Somebody in the next postcode isn’t coming out on a Tuesday. Somebody three streets away might.

So the marketing should be local too. Email your list the week before. Post on your Google Business Profile, which is where “restaurants near me” searches end up. Use Instagram stories on the day to show the room filling up. Talk to the businesses around you, because their staff eat out as well.

Give it eight weeks

A midweek night takes time to stick. People have to hear about it, try it, and then remember it’s a thing. Most venues give up after three weeks of middling covers, which is right before it starts to work.

Pick one idea, run it every week for two months, and judge it on covers, not likes.

GoodFolks is a marketing agency for independent restaurants, pubs and cafés, and midweek is our favourite problem. Here’s what we do for hospitality. While you’re at it: how to add more money to your menu.