How to Slay Valentine's Day at Your Video Slot Location

Since the average customer that celebrates Valentine’s Day will spend roughly $116.21 for the holiday of love, it's the perfect time to create an event or promotion to entice couples to visit your bar or restaurant (if an anti-Valentine's Day is more your style, visit our Single's Awareness Day Blog).

When you decide to host an event, think about what kind of event your customers would attend.  You can even ask them for ideas! Here are a few of our suggestions for a successful Valentine’s Day event:

Food/drink discounts

• Valentine’s Day evening itself can usually draw in a crowd, so you might not want to offer any discounts on V-Day itself. Do an early Valentine’s Day special for those that want to avoid crowds. We recommend the weekend before or even February 11-13.
• Some ideas to draw in the crowd around this romantic holiday include 2-for-1 glasses of wine or chocolate covered strawberries with any purchase.

Special menu

• An option to create a special menu could be offering a 3-course prixe fixe for Valentine’s Day. A prixe fixe is a set menu at a specific price. By offering 1-2 options for each course, you could help your kitchen staff out a lot.
• You could also create special dishes for Valentine’s Day—new menu items that have never been offered or a twist on an old favorite. If you offer pizza, how about offering it in the shape of a heart?

Make the ambiance romantic

• Depending on how your bar or restaurant is set up, creating a romantic setting might include dimming the lights, adding candles to the table, using white tablecloths and decorating with rose petals or hearts.

Think outside of the box

• Some restaurants give out free chocolates or roses to patrons. Try coming up with something unique to showcase your location.
• You might want to set up a special backdrop and find a photographer to take some snaps of the happy couples.

Set your TouchTunes to play love songs all night long

• “I’ll Always Love You,” “Dreamlover”, and “I Want To Know What Love Is” are all songs to really help set the mood.

How to get the word out about Valentine's Day or any other event:

Take advantage of social media

Facebook has the option to create an event. Once an event is created on the platform, you should share it to your location’s Facebook page to get the word out. Once a customer clicks “I’m In” or “Interested,” his/her friends will see the event in their newsfeed. Another great feature is that Facebook will send a reminder notification to anyone that has RSVP’d for your event.

Use Facebook Advertising. (Don’t worry, even a small budget can help spread the word!) The easiest way to do this is by creating a post on your business’s Facebook page about the event, then “boosting” it. Facebook’s Help Center is a good resource on how to use this type of advertising: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/boost-a-post.

Contact local media outlets

If you live in a town with a local TV, radio station or community newspaper, look into getting on their event calendar or create an advertisement.

Hang up posters or a banner outside

Planning events for fun, non-traditional holidays is a great way for new customers to find your location, as well as give your current customers a reason to stop in.

We want to hear from you! Do you have any Valentine's Day traditions at your video slot business?