Baseball's opening day is quickly approaching. This years opening day is March 28th, which is the earliest date ever recorded. For local restaurants, especially those near baseball stadiums, this means an opportunity to increase profits on game days. Some things that can help you prepare your business for opening day would be promotional offers, giveaways, sponsor tie-ins, and making sure you have your staff ready and plenty of inventory.
Promotional Offers
Some promotional offers that your business could do would be things such as bringing your ticket from the game and receive a free drink or appetizer from a select list. You could also have a happy hour kind of promotion going on during the game for people who do not attend to come and enjoy two for one drinks or half off appetizers with an entree purchase. All little promotions like this that get advertised will help bring in more business.
Giveaways
As customary with sporting events there will be people tailgating in the stadium parking lots before the game begins. You can have some employees in uniform walk through the parking lot handing out coupons for a free entree or a percentage off of a meal by coming to your restaurant. Make sure that your employees inform the future customers of current promotions also going on.
Sponsor Tie-Ins
Your business can see about becoming a sponsor at the local stadium. With having a sponsorship, you are able to get your name out there as well as be able to be in the stadium handing out coupons during games. Some stadiums even have giveaways during the games and will pick winners by their specific seat location. This is an easy way to bring in a few more customers.
Staff and Restaurant Preparedness
You want to ensure that you have enough staff to cover the busiest times during opening day. Having a few extra people there will help out. It is better to have and not need, then need and not have. You also want to make sure that you have enough food to get you through so that you do not have to tell people that you are out of things. The best way to prepare for this is to check the sales around the week of opening day for the last few years and plan to have that much business this year.
