Restaurant Holiday Marketing: Catering to Gift Cards

For most restaurants, the holidays bring three extra sources of revenue on top of normal covers: gift cards, catering and group bookings, and holiday menus for takeout and dine-in. Good restaurant holiday marketing plans each of those separately, because they have different buyers, different lead times and different places where people look for them.

This is a working plan for November and December: what to set up, what to say and when.

Map the season before you post anything

The National Retail Federation treats the winter holiday season as November 1 through December 31. For a restaurant, that window breaks into rough phases:

1. Early November: announce gift cards and open catering and party inquiries. Offices planning a year-end lunch need time to compare options.
2. Thanksgiving week: in 2026, Thanksgiving is November 26. Pies, sides and family trays, plus your hours for the day.
3. Late November to mid-December: peak for office parties, private dining and gift card buying.
4. The last week before Christmas: last-minute e-gift cards and pickup orders.
5. Late December into January: gift card redemption, and bringing new guests back.

Put every date that changes your operations on one calendar: holiday closures, early closes, catering cut-off days, the last day for physical gift card pickup. Every channel below pulls from that calendar.

Gift cards: sell them where people buy them

Restaurant gift cards are a large holiday habit. A National Restaurant Association survey of 1,000 adults, run November 22 to 24, 2024, found 59% planned to give restaurant gift cards that season. In the same survey, 81% said it was important that a card covers a full meal, 77% preferred a card from a favorite restaurant, and 76% valued cards that work for delivery or takeout. Asked where they buy, 55% said major retailers and supermarkets and 48% said directly from restaurants.

What that means in practice:

• Size denominations to a real meal for one or two people at your prices, so the card covers dinner without the recipient topping it up. As a made-up example, if dinner for two at your place comes to about $70 with tax and tip, preset amounts of $40, $75 and $150 map to one guest, a couple and a family, where $25 and $50 would leave every recipient paying the difference.
• Make cards work for online ordering and takeout, and say so on the card page.
• Sell e-gift cards on your own site, with the link in your Google profile, your Instagram bio and every holiday email.
• Put physical cards at the counter and on the check presenter, with a one-line prompt from staff.

If you run a bonus offer such as "buy $50, get a $10 bonus card," check the rules first. This is general information, so confirm the details with your accountant or attorney. Under the federal CARD Act rules in Regulation E, the funds on a store gift card generally cannot expire sooner than five years after it was issued or last loaded, and dormancy or inactivity fees are only allowed after a year of no activity, at most one per month, and must be disclosed. Promotional or bonus cards are treated differently, but must say they were issued for promotional purposes and show their expiration date. State law can add its own rules.

Catering and office parties: make inquiries easy

Office managers shopping for a holiday lunch want three things fast: what you offer, what it costs per head, and whether you can do their date. Give them a page that answers all three:

• Two or three packages with what is included and the serving size, instead of the full menu.
• Lead time and cut-off dates, stated plainly.
• A short inquiry form: date, headcount, pickup or delivery, budget, dietary needs, phone number.
• A named person who replies the same day. A slow reply is the easiest way to lose a catering lead.

Then look at last year's list. Every company that booked last December should hear from you in early November, before they start searching again.

Google Business Profile in December

Your profile is where many diners check hours and menus, so it needs holiday attention:

• Special hours. Google's help pages say special hours are for holidays and events when you adjust hours or close for six days in a row or fewer. Enter them for every holiday early.
• More hours. Google lets you list separate hours for specific services such as delivery and takeout, useful when pickup windows change.
• Offer posts. An Offer post needs a title, dates and times, and can carry a description, photo, coupon code, link and terms. Use one for your gift card push and one for catering.
• Event posts for a New Year's Eve menu or a holiday tasting night.
• Menu and photos. Add the holiday menu and fresh photos of the dishes you are promoting.

Our guide to local SEO for small business covers the rest of the profile.

A weekly restaurant holiday marketing calendar

Keep the message per week simple and consistent across email, text, social and the site banner:

• Week of November 2: gift cards are live; catering inquiries open.
• Week of November 9: catering packages, with a photo of the spread.
• Week of November 16: Thanksgiving pre-orders and hours.
• Week of November 23: gift cards for the shopping weekend.
• Weeks of November 30 and December 7: office parties and private dining, the last chance for preferred dates.
• Week of December 14: last-minute e-gift cards, pickup deadlines.
• Week of December 21: holiday hours, e-gift cards that arrive instantly.
• Week of December 28: New Year's menu, then a January "come back" message.

If you are starting after the first week of November, fold the first two weeks into one message and pick up the calendar from the current week. Do not skip the catering announcement, since it has the longest lead time.

Use the same photography everywhere so the season looks like one campaign. If your list is thin, our email marketing guide covers building it.

Measure what came from where

Track each line on its own: gift card sales by channel (site, counter, third party), catering inquiries and bookings, holiday menu orders and January redemptions. Ask catering clients how they found you. Those numbers tell you which phase to start earlier next year.

How we help restaurants

At Pinn.Media we handle the pieces a restaurant team rarely has time for in November: food photography and menu design, online ordering on your own site, and the profile, email and social calendar around them. If you want this season planned properly, book a discovery call at /contact#book.