Whether it's a Mother's Day brunch, a graduation dinner, or a long weekend treat, 43% of consumers celebrate at restaurants, 34% plan to dine out, and another 12% opt for takeout. That's a massive opportunity, but only if you plan for it.
Seasonal promotions and campaigns may fall flat without a solid restaurant marketing calendar. A strategic calendar helps you stay organized, ensure consistency, and maximize resource management. It also helps you plan campaigns that drive results, boost sales, and retain customers.
This blog post will provide a step-by-step guide to preparing a restaurant marketing calendar and a peek at how online ordering tools can help you plan and drive real results.
Sample 2025 Restaurant Marketing Calendar
Here’s a sample restaurant marketing calendar for May for a mid-level restaurant.
You can also offer complimentary dessert or free appetizers on customers' birthdays, like P.F. Chang's. It not only makes customers feel special but also increases customer loyalty. Happy customers are more likely to stick to a restaurant that cares about their special days!
As for social media, you can refer to examples on Pinterest as well. Here’s a sample for an Italian Restaurant.
Bonus Weekly Ideas
Note: Add relevant hashtags to reach maximum customers on all your socials and use insights from analyzing customer preferences to create personalized loyalty programs for customers.
Let’s now look at what a restaurant marketing calendar entails.
Key Components of An Effective Marketing Calendar
Creating an effective restaurant marketing calendar starts with knowing the special dates/occasions to serve your customers better.
1. Identify Relevant Dates and Events
Your campaigns or promotions should make customers feel like they're conversing with you. Building a personalized online ordering experience or promotions starts with understanding your customers, which may take time. Hence, federal and local holidays are a great foundation for timely promotions even before you dive deep into customer data.
For example, some major holidays in 2025 as observed across the U.S.
The trick is to identify which of these dates matter to your audience and region.
If you already have a sales analytics feature in your existing system, like RestoLabs, you can go even deeper. You can track customer behavior to offer targeted deals, like birthday or anniversary specials, or promotions based on their go-to menu items. Plus, it helps you spot trends, like which holidays bring in the most traffic and which ones are slower but offer a prime opportunity to boost sales with the right campaign.
offers for birthdays, anniversaries, or their most-ordered items to make your campaigns feel like a conversation.
Note: For more inspiration and to find local events or festivals in your area, check out Calendar365.
2. Set Clear Marketing Goals
Before you dive into crafting catchy posts or printing flyers, ask yourself what you want from your campaign. After all, a strategy built to grow your Instagram following can't solve your weekday foot traffic slump.
So, what are you trying to achieve?
- Do you want to increase foot traffic during slower hours?
- Are you launching a new menu item you want to highlight?
- Hoping to build loyalty and boost repeat visits?
- Or are you looking to enhance in-store engagement?
Clear goals will help you build campaigns with intention, making tracking results easier, learning what worked, and improving over time.
Bonus: Track your sales during promo periods, see which customers returned, and adjust your campaigns accordingly.
3. Budget Allocation
If you're scaling quickly, invest up to 30% of your revenue in aggressive marketing campaigns, while new restaurants should aim for 10-20% of revenue to build brand awareness.
The restaurant marketing budget varies depending on the restaurant type:
- Quick-Service Restaurants (QSRs)
- Fast-Casual Restaurants
- Coffee Shops & Bakeries
- Fine Dining Establishments
- New Restaurants
- Pizzerias, neighborhood spots
Let's break down the budget with an example of a single-location burger joint doing $20,000/month in revenue.
Marketing budget: Around 5% of revenue -> $1000 / month
Most digital loyalty platforms cost over $99/month, on top of your existing tech stack. With RestoLabs, loyalty features are already built into your monthly subscription, so you can skip the extra tools and fees while still giving customers more reasons to return!
You can use past data to predict ROI. Say if last year’s marketing campaigns brought in $2,000 in extra sales with an $1005 budget, you can decide whether to increase, maintain, or optimize spending (more on this below!).
If the ROI is good, it's easy to overspend on campaigns, but here's how to avoid it:
- Prioritize high-ROI channels: Invest more in ads and email marketing than temporary decor.
- Cap your spending: Set a percentage of monthly revenue for marketing (e.g., 5-10%)
- Track performance: Use tools like Google Analytics to let customers find you and RestoLabs sales analytics to know the top-selling items, gross sales over a period of time, revenue report, least-selling items, and more insights to measure what works. With an online ordering system, you get to dig into what they order, how often, and how much they spend!
- Leverage free/low-cost tactics: Engage on social media, use customer referrals, and offer in-store promotions
Now that you know what restaurant marketing calendar entails, the best practices to optimize costs, and how to map out your business goals, let’s get to creating a calendar for your restaurant.
Step-by-Step Guide to Create Your 2025 Restaurant Marketing Calendar
Here are the steps to create a restaurant marketing calendar.
1. Analyze Past Marketing Efforts
Before building a new calendar, take a step back and look at what's actually worked for your restaurant in the past.
Did that Instagram post about your weekend brunch menu blow up, or did that email campaign launching a new menu item lead to a spike?
- Online and social media: Check your social media platform insights with platform analytics to identify which posts got the most likes, shares, or comments.
- Identify patterns: Were they tied to a special holiday offer or a behind-the-scenes kitchen? Note these observations.
Here are the best social media platforms you should consider to boost sales.
- In-store promotions: Which in-store promotions brought in new faces? Ask your staff too, as they're often aware of what customers are buzzing about.
- Email campaigns: Check the open rates from past email campaigns and whether they brought in a noticeable uptick in orders.
If you're just starting, keep an eye on your competitors and the type of campaigns or posts they're running.
This type of data helps you stop guessing and start planning with intention.
2. Research and Choose Key Dates
While you don’t need a promotion around every quirky food holiday on the calendar, picking the right ones is marketing gold. To create campaigns around food and beverages, go through National Today and choose the right one.
Analyze your target audience and your restaurant:
- What does your audience enjoy or care about the most? (You’ll get this info from analyzing your past marketing campaigns, too)
- Who is your target audience?
If your main audience is families, plan around school holidays. Or, if you’re targeting young professionals, think about after-work happy hours. - What matches your menu and vibe?
If you serve signature tacos, go all out for Taco Tuesday every week, and boost it with National Taco Day (Oct 4).
Factor in the local angle, too. Your city or neighborhood might have community events, food festivals, or seasonal markets that your restaurant can tap into. Plug these into your calendar too to stay relevant and connected to your customers.
3. Create Promotion Ideas for Each Date
Whether customers choose to dine in or order online, offering themed promotions during special holidays enhances their experience and boosts engagement. Here’s how:
- Highlight limited-time offers: Use custom labels to showcase holiday-specific promotions or seasonal dishes, drawing attention to these items on your menu.
- Incorporate holiday colors: Adopt colors associated with specific holidays (e.g., red and green for Christmas, orange and black for Halloween) to enhance the holiday feel and make your menu visually appealing.
- Customize the checkout process: For example, offer a special "Valentine's Day Dinner for Two" package and include options for reservation slots or delivery times, depending on your restaurant’s service model. RestoLabs helps you tailor the checkout process based on offerings and even the restaurant’s geographical location.
Themed menus and discounts are just one way. Email marketing is still an effective marketing strategy, especially for customer retention, welcoming customers, launching seasonal menu items, etc., with a 40.03% average email open rate.
Consider these factors when choosing the marketing channel:
- Target audience: If your primary customers are young adults, go for social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
- Campaign goals: If the goal is to inform regular patrons about a new menu item, email marketing might be the most direct approach. While if you want to showcase behind-the-scenes, or keep it long-form story-like, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok (for shorter videos) is apt.
- Budget considerations: Allocate resources based on the cost-effectiveness of each channel. (Email campaigns often require less investment compared to extensive in-store promotions)
Bonus read: AI marketing tools for restaurant marketing
4. Assign Responsibilities and Deadlines
Creating a restaurant marketing calendar is a team project. Whether you’ve got a lean crew or a full-fledged marketing team, assigning clear roles is what keeps things running on schedule.
- Design lead: Creates graphics for social posts, emails, and in-store signage
- Marketing coordinator: Oversees the calendar, schedules posts, and updates menus
- Operations manager: Coordinates in-store execution, ensures staff are briefed
- Data/analytics point person: Monitors sales and customer behavior during and after campaigns
Set timelines for every stage—from brainstorming and content creation to launch and review. For example, if you're planning a Mother’s Day brunch menu, finalize your online menu and launch your email/social campaign at least two weeks in advance.
While you can invest in individual analytics tools that analyze customer preferences, email marketing tools, etc., it’s easier and more cost-effective to invest in a direct online ordering system that already has these features. Because the ordering platform is where your customers are already interacting with your brand, browsing the menu, making purchases, and leaving data behind with every order.
How RestoLabs Supports Your Restaurant in Creating a Winning Restaurant Marketing Calendar
Creating a restaurant marketing calendar is more than just posting occasional promos or running discounts during slow periods. The real impact comes from understanding your customers’ behavior and turning that data into thoughtful, well-timed campaigns that keep them coming back.
With RestoLabs, you can analyze sales trends and customer insights to build meaningful connections that drive repeat business. Here’s how we help:
- Built-in marketing tools: Leverage push notifications and promotional tools to offer timely discounts, rewards, and exclusive deals.
- Insightful analytics: Access detailed reports on customer behavior, product performance, and sales to make informed marketing decisions.
- Coupon builder: Easily create and share promotional coupons for new launches or special occasions.
- Points-based Loyalty Program: Let customers earn and redeem points to keep them engaged and coming back more often.
Third-party delivery platforms make it nearly impossible to run effective marketing campaigns because they own the customer relationship. Restaurants often don’t even have access to the customer data they need to engage diners beyond a single order.
RestoLabs changes that. You own your customer data. You can download segmented customer lists and use simple, familiar email tools to send out bulk promotions, offering discounts, rewards, and deals that bring customers back again and again.
Stop relying on guesswork. Use your data, build your marketing calendar, and watch your restaurant grow. Book a demo with RestoLabs today!
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