Pub offers & promotions that really work

Frankie Neale • 4 November 2019

Are you looking to drive more traffic to your pub? While every pub has its loyal regulars, you may need to go further to get more customers in the door and keep them there, especially on quiet nights or during slow seasons.

Special offers and promotions to attract new customers and encourage more sales can definitely work for your pub, but you need to make sure you're choosing effective offers that convey value (but not cheapness) to your customers. You want to offer something special that really increases your trade and your customer loyalty. Here are a few of our favourite offers and promotions for pubs:

Happy Hours

This is obviously a classic and popular pub promotion. And with good reason - happy hours can draw customers into your pub at earlier times, and they might stay for more drinks after the happy hour period is over. If your happy hour includes cocktails, customers might continue drinking those higher-end options throughout the evening.

VIP Offers

It's basic psychology: people like to feel special. With the right tools, you can offer exclusive promotions only to customers that meet certain requirements - customers who sign up for your loyalty program, who have reached a target number of visits, or who hit a specific spending amount at your pub. These kinds of VIP offers can turn first-time customers into repeat visitors once they realise that they might earn a reward. And customers are becoming more used to the idea of "checking in" to businesses via social media, so they may be more receptive to signing up for a loyalty program than you'd expect.

Birthday Offer

Offering a simple birthday promotion, like a free pint with no strings attached, can draw in not only the birthday customer themselves, but any friends who are celebrating with them. You can ask customers to show their ID on their birthday to claim the offer, but if you already have birthdays on file through a loyalty scheme you can reach out to them as their birthday approaches. It might just make them choose to celebrate at your pub for the whole evening, bringing a large group with them.

Creative Discounts

While offering discounts can seem like a good promotional strategy, discounts can actually cheapen your brand and might not work as well as you hope. Instead, try offering something for free. For example, offering a free pint after buying two essentially results in three discounted pints. But the customer perceives that they're getting a special bonus pint instead of buying three discounted ones. It comes across as added value, and might encourage customer loyalty.

Discounts can sometimes be effective if you are debuting a new product and want to build excitement around it, but you need to be careful not to train customers to expect constant discounts at your pub.

Food and Drink Combinations

Offering a free drink when customers purchase a meal can be a great promotion, especially at lunchtime or slow weekday evenings. Customers will be more likely to buy food from you rather than leaving after one drink to head to the nearest chip shop. And they may also stay after their meal for at least one more drink.

Whether you stick with these promotion ideas or come up with creative options of your own, you'll need a bar EPOS system that can handle them smoothly at the till. With Tabology's Pub & Bar EPOS you can set up all of the above promotions and the relevant discounts are applied automatically at the till.

If you'd like to discuss switching to our Pub EPOS just drop us a message or give us a call.

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a bartender makes a cocktail while two other barstaff and two guests watch

How to make sure your venue is ready for Christmas

by Matt Hall • 10 September 2025

There’s no such thing as ‘too early to think about Christmas’ when you work in hospitality. And after a bruising year that’s brought major challenges for the industry, December is more important than ever for many businesses. When it comes to crafting the perfect festive atmosphere, you’re the experts there – we’re simply here to show you how getting things like your tech systems, menus, staffing, and gift cards sorted now, means you’ll make the most of Christmas and manage your venue more effectively. Optimise your offerings and boost profit margins No doubt you’ll want to capture the spirit of the season with a festive menu. Roast meats and Christmas puddings are a must, but don’t forget a vegan option too. Whatever you choose, make sure your dishes balance popularity and profitability. Recipe management tools let you input ingredient costs and amounts, so you get precise costs for every item on your menu. It then automatically calculates GP so you can easily set the right prices both for individual items and festive set menus. This works really well for food, but also for cocktails, and festive drinks you might make on-site, such as mulled wine or cider. Using technology to manage bookings When it comes to Christmas bookings, balance is key. You want more bums on seats, but you don’t want to overwhelm your kitchen and Front-of-House staff – especially when bookings around Christmas tend to be larger. A flexible booking system helps you maintain control. Those office Christmas lunches often have ten or twenty guests, so it helps to keep them separate from your usual bookings. Asking for pre-orders and prepayments makes it much easier to manage those big complicated bookings. Email links go out to organisers so everything can be booked and paid for in advance. This guarantees your cash flow ahead of time and means your kitchen can prepare and ensure the right amount of stock. You can also create custom drink packages to upsell during the booking process.