Bars are heavily packed during weekends. Weeknights often have no crowd at all. These are slow and boring days for those who work at a bar or lounge.
Many bar operators believe that it is in their fate to earn no money on weeknights. Some don’t even make an effort to attract guests at their bar on weeknights. But, it is not at all impossible. Neither is it difficult.
In fact, it is easier than you think!
You can keep your bar staff and mixologists busy even on weeknights by throwing some engaging, crowd-pleasing events.
Crowd-Pleasing Events for Bar and Lounge
Well-planned bar events can full your tables and empty your bottles quickly even on weeknights, when, as per a popular belief, most of your regular customers are busy with their work. Though, it will require careful event planning and implementation.
Organizing bar events will also give you an edge over the competition. Plus, it widens and strengths your recognition in the market.
In addition, you add countless new customers to your bar because of your unique bar events.
To get started with bar events, all you have to do is extensive planning. Typically, it begins with creating an event calendar that mentions all the events, you think would work for your bar or lounge. Take your time out and note down the list of events with details on a paper or on your CRM dashboard.
You have to start making arrangements for every event two weeks in advance, so there is no scope for blunders and delays.
Early events in your calendar need not be large-scale ones. They could be like “Thrilling Thursdays” or the “Thursday of the Month” or any other weekday when you can choose your “Fan of the Week” or “Fan of the Month”.
This will require you to streamline your sales process because you are going to have to scan through your sales records to find the customer who spent most in your bar in the week or month.
And don’t just label them the fan of your bar. Offer them some freebies too, for example – a wine bottle from your bar. For personalization, you can have a label on wine bottle with the fan’s name or your thank you message.
Crowd-Pleasing Event Ideas for Bar
Paint Night
Paint night is an event that involves guests at your bar and a stage with canvas, stand colors, and paintbrush. Encourage and invite all your guests on the stage to paint something they would like to. There is no reward for the guest. They just run the brush on the canvas and take a selfie with you, your bar staff, and the painting and your bar in the background.
You can use the best painting for the decoration of your bar.
In the beginning, this could be a customer engagement activity. But as it goes on and turns into a happening event, you can have Paint Nights with renowned artists in your city, and earn from selling tickets too.
Indoor Games
You can include several indoor games in your bar, and promote the same through local newspapers, radio, and local social network groups.
Some of the indoor gaming events that go well with bar are – Game of Darts, Basketball, Billiard, and Indoor Golf. You could also set up digital gaming consoles in your bar. It itself will become a top attraction of your bar.
Later on, you can organize gaming events in your bar, and reward the winner of each game with complimentary drinks. This will drag a huge amount of traffic to your bar on the gaming night.
Celebrate Your Achievements and Milestones
Did you just sell your 10,000th drink? Celebrate it. Also, include the customer who bought this drink. Tell him/her that he/she is a special customer for you. Don’t hesitate to offer a complimentary drink, plus a personalized gift such as smoking pipes or something memorable.
It is your anniversary or a team member’s birthday or work anniversary? Why not celebrate it with loud music and some complimentary drinks in your bar? Do plan these events on weeknights, because your weekends are already crowded and it will difficult to manage the crowd and such events together.
Big Eater
This is going to be a personal favorite event for many. Pick the heaviest food from your kitchen. Prepare it in a massive portion and offer a challenge to your guests to finish it in one go.
The one who does should be rewarded with an attractive and memorable gift. And do not ask the winner to pay for the food, after all, he/she is your Big Eater.
Fool’s Day Prank
This will be a great fun activity at your bar. You can prank your guests with magic tricks and by serving them with the wrong drink or non-alcoholic drink. Videotape all the pranks you play and give them space on your social networks.
Offer complimentary drinks to those who you played the prank with.
Open Mic
Open mic competitions can be a very engaging bar event. You can dedicate different nights for different mic challenges – for example, Mondays for Mimicry, Tuesdays for Rap or Classic, Wednesday for Movie Dialogues, and so on a so forth.
It is definitely not rocket science to plan and organize bar events. All it takes is motivation and willingness to offer a few complimentary drinks and spend a few bucks on unique gifts.
