Restaurant Tips for Summer Time Sales

Summer is right around the corner! To perk up meal traffic and generate excitement during those sunny days, try coming up with some fun-filled, cheery summer promotions. Here are a few ideas based on national monthly promotions that are sure to light a fire under your foodservice sales.

Say It With Cheese: National Dairy Month in June is the perfect time to highlight cheese. Versatile and well-accepted by customers, cheese is easy to incorporate into any menu. How about focusing on summer cheese desserts such as cream cheese and pecan-coated grapes as a garnish for fruit platters, poached peaches filled with whipped mascarpone and crumbled gingersnap cookies and of course, everyone's favorite cheesecake, (make a light and fruity version for summer).

Try offering a fruit and cheese platter as a main dish once or twice a week, promoting it as a "summer special" and be sure to include one or two unusual cheeses on it. The American Dairy Association has plenty of promotional material as well as recipes for the taking. If you are interested visit their website http://www.ilovecheese.com.

Here's to Dad: Father's Day- what better way to celebrate than with a full-course dinner for dad. This Father's Day serve up dad's favorite: meat and potatoes. Put together a steak and potato special with the option of a lighter pasta dish for the Dads who are watching their weight. Have Dads bring in a picture of themselves with their children and put it up on a poster board. Everyone who brings in a picture gets a discount off the special or a free dessert or drink.

Big Bowl Salads: During the summer, salads are always popular. Highlight a main dish salad entre every week or every day. Grill chicken, beef or fish (shrimp is particularly popular) and use different kinds of greens. Experiment with new salad dressings and toppings and you can even offer a salad dessert - fruit salad works well for this but you can come up with your own dessert "salad" too. For a twist, delve into some ethnic salads such as an Oriental Chicken salad, Mexican salad, Greek salad or Italian antipasto salad (with provolone and Italian ham or salami). Pair with other movers such as a soup and salad, sandwich and salad or bread and salad entre. You can offer these salads plated or as a bar, guests can assemble themselves.

From our friends at SEFA

Published by:
Ramona Weisent

REWrite Blog