Restaurant Marketing Calendar: How to Successfully Prepare for 2025

One of the pillars of success in the food industry is effective planning. For example, an accurate inventory will ensure you have enough ingredients to provide an excellent meal for all customers, without much food waste.

Marketing is an essential part of your business because it helps increase the visibility of your restaurant and attract more customers. If you want to enjoy the benefits of marketing without all the last-minute stress, you must create a restaurant marketing calendar for the year ahead.

In this article, you will find not only a restaurant marketing calendar but also top ideas for promotions you can include to achieve your advertisement goals.

Why you should create a calendar in advance

Creating a restaurant marketing calendar can take a bit of time (but way less if you use our template), yet the effort is well worth it when you get to enjoy these benefits:

• Avoid overspending with an accurate marketing budget: when you don’t have a clear plan on what you will be spending money on, it is easy to overspend. By creating clear timelines with promotion ideas and the budget for each, you can make an estimate and stick to it to ensure you get to enjoy a big profit;
• Remain organized and eliminate unnecessary stress: a restaurant marketing calendar makes work easier for each member involved with the business promotion. They know what they have to do, when to do it, and how. This way, employees can concentrate on setting up efficient promotional campaigns;
• Attract more customers by taking advantage of each holiday: imagine this situation: it is a random day for you, but your competition is celebrating Hot Chocolate Day and bringing in a lot of money. By using a calendar, you are aware of all possible holidays you can use to attract more people to your restaurant.
• Meet deadlines easily: with ad-hoc events or promotions, it can be easy to make mistakes and even miss the deadline for a holiday offer. When you know what promotion you will use for each date, you can easily set a deadline and meet it.

Restaurant marketing calendar template

There are a variety of holidays and special events that are worthy of a promotion. To make it easier for you, we have created a free, downloadable Food Holiday Calendar full of promotion ideas to inspire you.

Here is a timeline of some out-of-the-box holidays you can incorporate into your marketing calendar in 2025:

January

• 19^th: International Popcorn Day. A great opportunity to provide a free entrée of popcorn that costs almost nothing to produce;
• 20^th: Cheese Lover’s Day. Add an exclusive section in your menu showcasing cheese-based dishes with a small discount;
• 29^th: Chinese New Year. Allow your chef to experiment with new dishes and create a special menu that is only available on the day;

February

• 5^th: World Nutella Day. A cookie with Nutella will sweeten your customer’s day and motivate them to become loyal clients.
• 13^th: National Tortellini Day in the US. Give a 10% for each tortellini dish ordered that day;

March

• 25^th: International Waffle Day. Create a short brunch menu and open your restaurant earlier to increase sales with the morning crowd;
• 27^th: International Whiskey Day. Organize an event for whisky tasting to give customers a new experience they will recommend to friends and family;

April

• 4^th: International Carrot Day. Offer a free portion of carrot cake for anyone who spends more than $50 at your restaurant;
• 7^th: World Health Day. Add nutritional and allergen information to your menu and let people know about this new feature on social media.

June

• 1^st: World Milk Day. Organize an event where all drinks are based on milk, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic;
• 3^rd: World Cider Day. Invite local cider producers to showcase their products at your restaurant to establish better community links;

July

• 7^th: World Chocolate Day. Implement a 2+1 free type of deal for all desserts that contain chocolate;
• 12^th: National Pecan Pie Day in the US. Organize a cooking class where you teach interested participants how to prepare the perfect pecan pie;

August

• 22^nd: World Plant Milk Day. Create a reel on Instagram where you present your plant-based dishes and what makes them special;
• 30^th: International Bacon Day. Add three new dishes to your menu that put the spotlight on bacon and make them available only for online ordering. For example, bacon maple muffin.

September

• 1-5^th: Zero Waste Week. Create a social media campaign with images, videos, and stories where you showcase your efforts to be a more sustainable restaurant;
• 26^th: World Dumpling Day. Organize a contest in the days before the celebratory day where you have people tell you what their favorite type of dumpling is. The winner will get a delivery of a menu including their favorite dumpling;

October

• 1^st: International Coffee Day. Offer 10% on all coffee beverages for in-location purchases or other coffee marketing ideas;
• 20^th: International Chefs Day. Dedicate a post to your chef where you highlight their accomplishments.

November

• 6^th: National Nachos Day in the US. Offer a free side of nachos for every two beverages purchased;
• 14^th: National Pickle Day in the US. Invite customers to a pickle tasting and pairing. The pickles could be made in-house or purchased from local producers;

December

• 7^th: Beer Day. Create combo meals that include beer at a discounted price;
• 21^st: National Hamburger Day in the US. Create a combo meal with hamburgers for large groups at an attractive price.

On top of the universally available holidays, there are also some special occasions you can take advantage of that are only available in your country, region, and even personal accomplishments:

• Your restaurant’s anniversary
• Your country’s National Day
• Your regional celebrations such as Autumn Harvest or different fairs
• The launch of a new service, such as online deliveries
• New menu item launches

Promotion ideas to include in your restaurant marketing calendar

After you select the dates you want to include in your calendar, it is time to establish your restaurant marketing goals. You must be specific so you can choose the best type of promotion. Here are a few examples of marketing goals:

• Increase traffic to the website
• Grow the number of online orders
• Get more table reservations
• Increase the number of loyal customers
• Get more positive restaurant reviews

Offers, discounts, and promotions

By incorporating promotions in your restaurant marketing calendar, you can attract more new and returning customers, and increase the average order value. You can also tempt people to order online from your place and even persuade them to use a specific payment method.

Here are a couple of promotion ideas you can try:

• 10% off the whole cart to celebrate your restaurant’s anniversary. Pair the offer with a minimum amount order, such as $70 to get people to add more items to their cart;

• Free dessert for Mother’s Day: prepare a high-profit margin dessert and send out small portions with every order. With very little investment, you give people a reason to visit or order from you again;

• Buy one, get one free for International Cookie Day: you can also limit the hours when the promotion is available to make it more exclusive. You can choose the hours when you get the least traffic to encourage more orders.

If you want to set up Promotions easily and in just a few seconds, you can use the Promotions module from GloriaFood. You get access to a variety of tried and tested promotions templates that you can customize to your liking.

Read more: How to Use Restaurant Promotion Templates Effectively to Boost Sales

Social media campaigns

A social media campaign is comprised of a series of posts that all have the same goal. They should all have a cohesive message, impactful imagery (be it image or video), and persuasive captions.

Check out these social media campaign ideas:

• Encourage positive feedback: a video of a customer unboxing an online order, testimonials from previous customers, small promotions for proof of positive reviews, and posts that highlight how a good review can help your business;
• Get more traffic for your website: add a link to your website in the bio, create posts with promotions, and encourage people to visit the website to take advantage of it;
• Increase the number of online orders: add testimonials from happy online ordering clients, showcase the online ordering process in a video, and show behind-the-scenes images of staff preparing and packaging an online order.

Read more: 9 Tips on How to Create the Best Restaurant Social Media Campaigns

Events

Organizing events is a great way to make your restaurant known to people who may not have heard of it before. If you offer a great experience, you may even gain some loyal customers. Here are some great event ideas to add to your restaurant marketing calendar:

• Holiday parties such as New Year’s Eve or Christmas Day;
• Cooking classes with the chef;
• New menu items tastings.

Read more: 15 Restaurant Event Ideas to Get Customers Through the Door

Seasonal menus

While your food is great and you have loyal customers, they may get bored of eating the same food and they will look for new places to try. If you want to keep them engaged, surprise them with seasonal menus only available for a certain amount of time.

This not only allows your chef to show their talent, but it can also increase your profit because ingredients that are in season are cheaper.

Read more: The Benefits of a Seasonal Restaurant Menu & How to Implement One

Contests

If you want to reach a bigger audience fast, contests are the way to go. Competitions are a great way to increase engagement on your social media profile, bring traffic to your website, and make your restaurant more visible overall.

You can also make the contest as simple or as complicated as you can handle, such as:

• Like and share this post in your story to win a meal for two;
• Take a picture of your online order and post it in your story to win an invite to our exclusive new menu tasting;
• Comment what your favorite dish from our menu is to win a meal for two.

Read more: 20 Restaurant Contest Ideas That Will Delight Your Customers

Influencer collaborations

Working with influencers can take up a big part of your marketing budget, so you have to carefully choose your occasion. If you have a restaurant marketing calendar, it will be easier to get organized and invite influencers to a partnership that will be beneficial for your business.

Read more: Restaurant Influencer Marketing Guide: Tips for a Successful Collaboration

Final words

Creating a restaurant marketing calendar is a must if you want to be efficient in promoting your food business. You will not only be able to make a correct budget estimation, but you will also make your work easier for the whole next year.