17.5m
people in the UK planned a month off alcohol in January 2026
Alcohol Change UK
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.
Worked example
What a December list can be worth
These numbers are made up to show the maths. Yours will be different, but the shape usually holds.
Say you run a 50-cover neighbourhood restaurant and serve around 1,800 covers across December, plenty of them in groups. With consent on the booking form and a simple card on each table, you collect 500 email addresses you didn’t have before.
In January you send those people three emails, each with a real reason to come back: the new menu, a winter supper club, the no and low list. If 8% of them book a table for two across the month, that’s 40 bookings and 80 covers. At £35 a head, it’s around £2,800 of January trade, from people who were already in your room and already like you.
Your January customers are sitting in your December bookings.
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.
The short version
Expect January to be quiet, because it will be. Use December to collect the people you’ll need, decide your January reason before Christmas, and sell some of January while people are still spending.
If you’d like help getting that set up before the rush, that’s what we do.
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.
