Back to Basics: A spooktacular opportunity

Hallowe'en is a great opportunity to position your pub as the natural hub for everyone looking for a scarily good time.

This year it also falls rather conveniently on a Friday, with Bonfire/Guy Fawkes Night following hot on its heels the following Wednesday. This is a great opportunity to implement a week's worth of themed events and promotions to really get your tills ringing.

This could mean doing something as simple and low key as adding pumpkin pie and sticky treacle toffee pudding to your

specials board and putting a themed

seasonal cask ale on tap. Or, you could opt for something more adventurous with themed cocktails and mocktails (Vampire's Kiss, Witch's Brew and so on), staff in fancy dress, a 'trick or treat' pub quiz, cobweb decorated back-bar and carved pumpkin competition.

Is your pub haunted? Have a rummage through your archives and see if you can find any photographs or eyewitness accounts that add some depth to the story. Get anything interesting blown up and displayed around the pub - or could you lead a ghost hunt through your building?

Driving footfall

In terms of driving footfall, think laterally and drive a bargain - will the local fancy dress shop let you display a promotional poster for your event in return for you putting some of their leaflets on your bar? If you're lucky enough to still have a local greengrocer, can you promote their pumpkins in return for publicity?

To transform your Hallowe'en activity into something that will go with a bang for Guy Fawkes Night, start thinking now about whether organising a family-friendly fireworks display is right for your pub.

It's not about who has the biggest rocket - young families want a safe, well organised fireworks event on familiar territory and investing in a small scale, safety-first display brings the opportunity to sell easy-to-prepare, family-friendly hot food like baked potatoes and hot dogs as well as drinks on the night.

Alternatively, could you position your pub as a great post-display venue for couples and families who have gone to a large organised event?

Promote heavily

Whatever you decide to do, it's vital that you remember to heavily promote your Hallowe'en and/or Guy Fawkes events in the run-up to them. Utilise your chalkboards, menus, table-talkers, external signage and make sure your staff let all your regulars know what you have planned.

It might also be worth flyering local residents to bring out event-led customers who normally only cross your threshold a few times a year.

In these cost-conscious times it's also worth including on flyers details of any meal deals or drinks offers you'll be offering on all your promotional material.

Gemma Teed is a strategic planner at marketing communications agency Brahm​