10 Entertainment Ideas for Restaurants to Delight Customers

The must-haves for a good restaurant are delicious food and brilliant service. But when there is so much competition in the food industry, just being a good restaurant doesn’t cut it.

Did you know that 72% of diners expressed a desire for more experiential dining options? Nowadays customers don’t just want to eat good, but they also want to take part in an activity they can post on their socials about.

Therefore, if you want to stand out from your competitors, try out these entertainment ideas for restaurants:

Your target audience is always on the lookout for fun things to do in a restaurant, so give them what they want! Here are a few creative entertainment ideas for restaurants that are sure to fill your seats and increase your sales:

Gallery shows tend to be exclusive events that your customers aren’t usually able to participate in. Not to mention the art pieces usually come with a big price tag which makes them quite intimidating.

Provide customers with the unique experience of a pop-up gallery. Get in touch with local artists and offer your space up for them to display and sell their art pieces.

This will help you get closer to your local community while also adding an extra experience for clients who choose to dine at your restaurant.

The best entertainment ideas for restaurants create a fun experience for your clients while also promoting your business. Adding a photo studio to your restaurant is a perfect example.

The best part is that you can customize it to your budget and space. If you want to invest more, you can rent a photo booth that produces printed photographs that customers can take home. If you don’t have a big budget, choose a corner to decorate in an Instagramable way.

Ensure your restaurant’s name is visible in all pictures, so when clients post them on social media, they also promote your business. This way, you get a lot of user-generated content that you can share on your platforms to show potential customers how fun your place is.

If you are looking for restaurant activities for students, this is a great option! Playing board games is an activity young people seek and it is a sure-fire way to attract larger groups.

As board games usually take quite a while to play, only organize these types of events on your slow days. Take a look at your restaurant’s analytics and identify the days and hours when you don’t usually get many orders.

If you use the POS and online ordering system from GloriaFood, you can find this valuable data in just a few clicks.

There are many people who would like to dine out, but they are limited in their choices because they have a pet. It is also understandable that many restaurants refuse access to pets as they can get in the way and will deter people who have allergies.

But if you want to try out entertainment ideas for restaurants that attract a new audience, organize Bring-a-pet events. For a full day, welcome people to visit your place with their pets. You can even cook them some treats as a reward.

If you’re looking for fun things to do in a restaurant, how about inviting a caricature artist? You can create an event that clients must book, and the caricature must be included in the price.

While the clients enjoy their delicious meal, the caricature artist gets to work so the piece is finished when they are ready to go. If you want to go a step further, you can also include some restaurant merchandise such as a t-shirt or a mug in a goodie bag for them to take home.

This is one of the restaurant activities a lot of fast-food restaurants opt for to build some excitement around their business. You can organize it as a monthly contest where only the most daring customers participate to test their stomach’s capacity.

Choose one of your best-selling dishes to be speed eaten and offer a prize such as free dinners for a week or a free dessert for the next 10 orders.

Do you want to make your restaurant seem more exclusive? Adding a mystery menu is one of the best entertainment ideas for restaurants if you want to get more people to book a table.

Allow your chef to experiment with flavors and textures to create a short secret menu that only customers who ask for it can order. To make it available for online orders, you need to use a menu editor that you can update as many times as you want, for free, like the one from GloriaFood:

What is better entertainment in restaurants than a couple of really good deals? Restaurant promotions should already be part of your marketing plan as they are a great way to attract new clients, get more loyal clients, and increase the average order value.

You can set up a variety of tried and tested restaurant offers in a couple of minutes with the Promotions module from GloriaFood. They will appear at the beginning of your online restaurant menu where they can’t be missed:

If you want to go a step further and provide clients with a great activity, how about an all-day promotions marathon? You can change the promotion every hour, such as free delivery, 1+1 free, or free dessert for orders over $60.

Setting up such an event is easy with our online ordering system because you can set up the availability window for each promotion, making it visible only during a specific period.

Are you looking for restaurant entertainment ideas that will help you attract a different audience? Partner up with your suppliers for unique events! Here are a couple of ideas:

• Wine-tasting night with local wineries;
• Craft beer night with local breweries;
• Patisserie tastings with new offerings from the bakery you usually buy from;
• Fresh produce tastings with local farmers.

Grow the community around your restaurant by allowing your customers to showcase their artistic talents. Upcoming singers? Talented rappers? Poetry writers? Every talent is welcome at open mic night.

Clients can enjoy great local entertainment while local artists can gain new fans. Who knows what new star has their first show at your establishment?

Delight your customers with more than just delicious food. Try out these entertainment ideas for restaurants and you will notice an increase in the number of new clients and customer satisfaction.