I am considering staying open all night on New Years Eve.
It would be a lark in this winter resort town where my regular hours are 11 AM to 7PM.
Maybe get a band, BYOB OK here in AZ, so I can advertise it, get hungry people coming from the 4 bars here in town when they close, and perhaps have a good time ourselves.
Has anyone done anything like this before ?
Would like to know how to adverise and promote it.
What are the downsides and upsides ?
maybe do some promotions to get new people trying our pizza.
This is another big decision for me as well.I started closing Mondays in Sept. now realize Christmas Eve and NYE are on a Monday night!!!I think I almost have to open, but how do I tell everyone that I am open now???Will I even be busy as everyone knows I’m closed?
Derek
We’ve been open two years and open every day apart from Christmas day. On Christmas Eve and new years eve we close at early.
In my experience these days have been hard to predict for sales as 1) we’ve not much history and b) people weren’t use to us being open on these days. The 2nd year we sent a lot of box toppers out with our holiday hours and we put them on our menu for the last quarter - last year was better than the year before and I hope will be better this year!
Otis - I think its a good idea if you have the community element - which I guess you have. Just be prepared for a either a hard slog and plenty of overly merry people! I guess your stock management will be a major issue and if people do come and you’ve run out of dough/food they might be very disappointedly! Maybe worht advertising on a ‘we open till the food runs out’ basis?
Misteroman - I’d probably say no - I’ve argued this board with a few people about closing one day a week - and this is a clear illustration of why its not a great idea (although I understand that for some people its the only way they get a day off). I had to work hard for people to know I was open - your going to have to work even harder - and maybe it will end up costing more in marketing/extra labour etc than you will take. My only advice is if you are going to do it start letting people know NOW and it might sink in by the time you get to December.
This December will be our 9th in business here. For all of those years, X-mas eve is about 50-60% what we do on any other day that week. We stay open for it, but it is not a big deal.
New year’s eve, on the other hand, is one of the 4-5 biggest days of the year for us. In a few years N.Y.E. has been the second best day of the year. It has never been the best day.
I think that customers are used to and expect to see differing schedules over the holidays. If they want pizza and they like yours, they will try calling. In fact, I can see them being annoyed if you do not open for New year’s eve. Not so for X-mas eve.
In your shoes, I would consider staying closed for X-mas eve since that is your normal day to be closed and not a big pizza day in any case but I would certainly open for New Years Eve.
At our delivery location, New Year’s Eve business is dinner business. We close at 10PM when people are through with dinner and heading off to whatever event they are planning for the night.
Prep is tough because New Year’s Day is every bit as big and runs all day for the football games.
Otis,
We stayed open until 2am last year. I had a 1/2 page ad in the paper and advertised being open late, we had a deal on larges and a drawing for an iPod. Sales were great until about 9pm. It was dreadfully slow after 10pm. We should have closed at 10pm. From 10-2 the staff and I played Pictionary. We had fun though.
I am a driver and have worked the last 3 New Years Eve’s. We close at 1 AM on Fri & Sat and 11 PM on Sunday. Much to my dismay, we kept this schedule last year even though NYE was a Sunday.
Generally we are busy, but also overstaffed, especially early in the evening. The first year I made more money in 2 hours from 11 PM - 1 AM than I made in 6 hours from 5 PM - 11 PM.
We do get a 6-8 PM rush as families are feeding the kids / babysitters before they go out, and then definitely another little post-midnight burst.