How to Fill a Slow Night at Your Bar
Every bar has a night that barely covers its wages. Here is how to pick the right night to fix, choose an event that suits your room, and tell whether it worked.
Every bar has one: the night when the staff outnumber the guests until nine. Restaurants have them too, and often a slow lunch service as well. The rent, the lights and the wages cost the same as on Saturday, and the till does not come close.
Most attempts to fix it fail for one of two reasons. The bar picks the wrong night, or it tries something once and gives up. Both are avoidable.
Pick the night with numbers
"Tuesdays are dead" is a feeling. Before you spend money on a promotion, check it.
Look at four weeks of sales by day, and by hour within each day. You are looking for two things:
- Which night is weakest, measured in sales and not in how the room felt.
- When that night falls off. A night that is fine until eight and then empties needs a different fix from one that never gets going.
In Toadee, the sales reports cover any date range and break traffic down by hour, and the Daily Close records each day's peak hour. If you also use scheduling, labor as a percentage of sales shows which nights cost more in wages than they should.
Often the answer is not the night you expected. Fix the one the numbers point to.
Choose something that fits your room
An event works when it gives a specific group of people a reason to choose your bar on that night. It does not need to be big. It needs to suit the place.
| Idea | Works well for | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Trivia or bingo | Neighbourhood bars, groups of friends | A host and some prizes |
| Live acoustic music | Rooms where people can still talk | The performer's fee |
| Industry night | Bars near other bars and restaurants | A discount for service workers |
| A food special | Bars with a kitchen | Margin on one dish |
| League night (darts, pool, cornhole) | Bars with the space | Almost nothing after setup |
| A themed drink menu | Cocktail bars | Time to plan it |
| A fixed-price menu night | Restaurants | Margin, offset by a simpler night for the kitchen |
| Kids eat free, or a family night | Family restaurants | The cost of the kids' meals |
| A weekday lunch special | Restaurants near offices | Margin on one dish |
The same steps work for a slow lunch or a slow dinner service. Two rules apply to all of them. Pick something your existing regulars would enjoy, because they are the ones who will bring friends. And avoid anything that only works by cutting prices across the board. A night full of guests who came only for cheap drinks does not help you much the following week.
Make it weekly
One trivia night proves nothing. People need to hear about it, mean to go, forget, and hear about it again. A slow night is fixed by habit: "Tuesday is trivia at that place."
Commit to at least six to eight weeks, on the same night, at the same time. Then judge it.
In Toadee you create an event once with a title, description, type, and start and end times, and set it to recur. You do not have to re-enter it each week.
Tell people where they are already looking
An event nobody hears about is a normal slow night with a higher bill. Use every channel you already have:
- Inside the bar. Your busiest nights are your best advertising. A sign on the table, a line on the menu, and staff who mention it.
- Your regulars. Tell them in person. A personal invitation works better than any post.
- Where people look for somewhere to go. Your active events show to people browsing in the Toadee app, both in the Events view, where they can filter to today and by distance, and on your venue page. Guests can RSVP and comment on an event.
- Your photos. A gallery that shows the room full on a good night does more than a description. Toadee lets you upload venue photos and feature your best ones, and guests who are checked in can add their own to your party wall.
Keep your hours current as well. A guest who sees "Open now" beside your name at 9 PM on a Tuesday is one step closer to walking in.
Bring back the guests you already have
The cheapest guests to fill a slow night with are the ones who already like your bar and have not been in lately.
A comp, which is a credit for a free item, with a note about the new night is a direct invitation: "We've started trivia on Tuesdays, first one's on us." Set it to expire in a few weeks so it points at the nights you are trying to build. See how to find and keep your best customers for how to choose who gets one.
Staff it to match
A new event is a guess, so staff it like one. Start with your normal slow-night crew plus one person who can be sent home if it is quiet. If the night grows, add to it. An overstaffed empty room loses more than the event could have made.
Running short is the opposite risk. If the event works and guests wait twenty minutes for a drink, they will not be back next week. Phone ordering helps here, because a small crew can serve a fuller room when nobody is taking orders by hand.
Decide whether it worked
After six to eight weeks, compare the night with the same weeks before you started:
- Sales for the night. The obvious one.
- Number of tabs. More guests, or the same guests spending more?
- Average ticket. A full room of small tabs can be worse than it looks.
- What it cost. The host, the prizes, the discount and the extra wages.
- New faces. Did guests come who had never opened a tab with you before? Did any come back on another night?
That last one is the real prize. A slow-night event that pays for itself and also introduces forty new people to your bar has done two jobs.
If the numbers are flat after two months, change the event, not the night. You picked the night for a reason.
Events, specials, venue photos and sales reports are on Toadee's Basic plan and up. Comps and your listing in the app are included on every plan. The pricing page has the full comparison, and why faster service means more revenue covers what to do once the room fills up.
More from the blog
- Bar Staff Scheduling: How to Build a Weekly Schedule That Holds A schedule falls apart when it is rebuilt from memory every week. Here is a repeatable way to schedule bar staff, from standard shifts to checking what really happened.
- Why Faster Bar Service Means More Revenue On a busy night your sales are limited by how fast staff can serve, not by how many guests want a drink. Here is where the time goes, and how to get it back for staff and managers.
- How to Ban a Problem Customer From Your Bar, and Make It Stick One guest who harasses staff or starts fights costs more than their tab is worth. Here is when to ban someone, how to do it fairly, and how to make sure every shift knows.