Have Your Patrons Choose Their Own Pricing During Your Happy Hour Promotion

Reduced prices are the norm during a bar or restaurant's daily happy hour. Patron love happy hour at restaurants like Vito's in the Valley. You can take this promotion a step further by offering your patrons the opportunity to choose their own pricing. You can structure this idea in a number of ways, and this approach to a happy hour promotion should create a significant amount of buzz in your area. Hopefully, this will mean that your seats are full each day when happy hour begins. Here are some different topics to think about when you're planning a happy hour that allows your patrons to choose their own pricing.

Select The Price Ranges

Obviously, there need to be some parameters on a promotion that allows customers to choose their own pricing. Otherwise, everyone would ask if their drinks and appetizers could be $1 or less. Think of each of the drink and food specials that will be part of your happy hour menu, and then select price ranges for them. For example, if a pitcher of beer is commonly $10 at your establishment, the price range for the pitcher during happy hour could be between $4 and $7.

Decide On A Fun Choosing Method

Instead of giving your patrons the ability to verbally choose their own pricing — which would have limited appeal, given that everyone would just select the lowest available price — come up with a method that will be fun and that will catch the eyes of your other patrons. One idea is to have a price wheel set up somewhere in your bar or restaurant, similar to what contestants spin on game shows. You can set the prices on the wheel according to the prices in the range — $4 to $7 in the above example — and then have the patron spin the wheel. Wherever the wheel lands represents the price that the patron will pay for the food or drink in question.

Be Ready For The Challenges

A happy hour promotion of this nature can present a few challenges, so you'll want to be ready for them. If you have different food and drink specials with different price ranges, you'll need different prize wheels. For example, one wheel for menu items priced between $4 and $7, another for menu items priced between $6 and $10, and so on. You'll also want to set up the prize wheels in a suitable location. They should be visible to those entering your establishment, as this will generate interest, but not in the way to the point that they impede the flow of patrons.


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