Black Friday for Restaurants: 7 Simple Promotions That Work (and the EU Rules to Know)

It is Friday 27 November, early afternoon. Your café sits on a busy shopping street. People walk past with bags from the shoe shop and the electronics store. Every window around you says “−50%”. You start to wonder if you should put “−50% on everything” on your own door.

Please don’t. Big retail-style discounts rarely suit restaurants. A shop can discount old stock. You pay for fresh food, staff and energy on every plate you serve.

This article gives you seven simple Black Friday promotions that fit a restaurant, café or bar. It shows you how to check the maths before you discount. It ends with the EU rules on price claims that you should know.

7 Black Friday restaurant ideas that work

The best Black Friday restaurant promotions are small and focused. They target one dish, one time slot or one future visit. Here are seven ideas you can set up in a week. We’d pick two or three of them, not all seven.

Check the maths before you discount

A discount is not free marketing. It comes out of your margin. To see how much, you need one term. Contribution margin is simply the euros a bill leaves you after food cost. Rent and salaries are paid from this money.

Illustrative example: A guest’s bill is €50. Your food cost is 30%, so €15. That leaves a contribution of €35. Now you give 20% off. The bill drops to €40, but the food still costs €15. Your contribution falls to €25. Divide €35 by €25 and you get 1.4. You need 40% more guests to earn the same money. If you usually serve 100 guests, you now need 140.

That’s a lot of extra plates.

Research on restaurant deals points the same way, although it comes from the US. A 2010 study by Utpal Dholakia at Rice University looked at Groupon promotions. In that study, 42% of the restaurants (20 of 48) said their promotion was unprofitable. A 2011 Cornell survey of 931 consumers by Kimes and Dholakia found another problem. About 44% of social-coupon users were already frequent customers. In other words, many deals sold cheaper meals to people who would have come anyway.

There is some good news too. A 2012 Cornell survey of 273 restaurant operators by Wu, Kimes and Dholakia looked at deal results. Operators said about 40% of deal buyers were new customers. About 35% of first-time deal customers came back without another offer.

So deals can bring new guests. They just cost more than most owners expect. In our view, the safest choice is to discount one dish or one slow hour, not the whole menu.

Change your prices in a few clicks

With a paper menu, a weekend promotion means printing, then printing again on Monday. A digital menu removes that step. With a digital QR menu such as Platoo, you can set a Black Friday price on individual dishes. Guests then see the reduced price next to the dish.

To see what guests get on their phone after the scan, open an example menu — no sign-up needed.

You can change prices in a few clicks and put the normal prices back on Monday. Nothing needs to be reprinted. You can also add a separate Black Friday menu for your set menu or your quiet-hour offer. After the weekend, you simply hide it.

If you get tourists, this matters even more. Platoo translates the menu automatically into the languages you enable. Your new prices show in every language version, so a visitor from Spain or Japan sees the same deal as a local guest.

EU rules for Black Friday discounts

Prices are only one part of a promotion. The way you announce them matters as well. Here is what EU law says, in plain words.

The 30-day rule. Article 6a of the Price Indication Directive 98/6/EC was added by Directive (EU) 2019/2161. It applies from 28 May 2022. When a trader announces a price reduction, it must show the prior price. That prior price is the lowest price the trader applied in at least the 30 days before the reduction. In September 2024, the EU Court of Justice ruled on this in case C-330/23 (Aldi Süd). A percentage discount must be calculated from that lowest 30-day price. In the Aldi case, the shop showed a crossed-out price of €1.69. Its lowest price in the previous 30 days was €1.29.

Does it apply to restaurants? The rule is written for goods. Restaurant meals served at the table are usually treated as services. So Article 6a may not apply to them directly. However, this is not certain everywhere. National law can extend the rules, so check with your local consumer authority.

Rules that cover everyone. The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive 2005/29/EC covers goods and services. It treats false information about a price or a price advantage as misleading, for example a fake “was” price. Its Annex I always bans false claims that an offer is available only for a very limited time. A “today only” deal must really end today.

Vouchers. There seems to be no single EU-wide rule on voucher expiry. Terms and validity periods differ by country.

Authorities do check Black Friday offers.

Those checks were of online shops, not restaurants. Still, the same honesty rules apply to your menu and your posters. We’d start with this short checklist:

• Keep your normal price on the menu for several weeks before the offer.
• State the end date of the offer and stick to it.
• Never show an inflated “was” price.
• Write voucher terms clearly, including the expiry date.

This is general information, not legal advice. For your own case, ask a lawyer or your national consumer authority.

FAQ