Make hay while the sun shines!

How to apply this well worn adage to Christmas with Cookaborough 

Making the most of moments when people are in the frame of mind to buy is a simple concept. For a food business of any type, Christmas presents a massive opportunity to grow your business and to connect with your customers as long as you are organised. 

The gift of Christmas

For many food businesses using Cookaborough, their Christmas menu is the most successful one of the year. Last year, they collectively generated over $500k of sales. Importantly, they also told us that using Cookaborough ensured it was their smoothest one yet.

If you have always wanted to add Christmas to your meals offering but never knew how, Cookaborough makes it ultra easy. It's similar to publishing your weekly menu, just with a different offering and additional pickup and delivery options. So if you're planning to offer a Christmas menu, now (yes, now) is the time to plan one! People are starting to plan earlier and earlier and many food businesses already have Christmas menus up and running 10 weeks before Christmas.

If you still need some convincing to run a Christmas Menu and experience the gift that keeps on giving, read on to see how Cookaborough can help to make it a great stress-free success!

Bastila image courtesy of Savoy Truffle Co

Using Cookaborough means Sales without Stress

While fulfilling Christmas menus might not be 'easy-peasy' – it's hard work cooking up a storm after all! – a few features of the platform really help offset a lot of the stress for both you and make it easy for your customers to tick Christmas off their to-do list.

Features that make Christmas Menu management easy

• • • they help to drive higher amounts per order due to additional useful items pre-populating as part of a more complete order

    • they are very easy to create as part of a Menu

• • • they also make it very easy for customers to make decisions on what might pair well together

2. Customer messages: Scheduling Christmas-specific communications to your customers via the click of a button when the Menu opens as well as to manage last minute orders. Using social media adding your Menu link, plus scheduling automated emails to your customer database with reminders to place orders, while showcasing what’s on the menu

3. Fulfilment windows: Creating custom delivery or pickup zones just for Christmas, offering multiple pick-up & delivery days and time slots to avoid the ‘all at once' rush

4. Order deadlines: Setting order deadlines for each pick-up/delivery day, allowing ample time for production

5. Stock Limits: Setting stock limits by item to avoid over-selling

6. Order Summaries: Automated order summaries by total and by day, making kitchen management easier, and making the customer's order clear for them

7. Automated pickup slips: automatically generated pickup slips for each pickup window

8. Marketing tools and resources:

• • • Access our free design resources for marketing collateral adding your Menu link or QR Code to help your customers know how to get to the menu and place their orders, as well as attracting customers that may not know about you who are willing to give you a try who may become regulars for your weekly meals

    • Joining pre-filtered Christmas Menus on Find A Cook

    • Using all the Branding tools in Settings to make your Menu shine

TIP: COLLABORATE WITH SPECIALIST PRODUCERS
collaborations with other artisans making christmas-worthy produce is a nice idea – a butcher, baker or candlestick maker! other ideas are wineries, pudding makers or  chocolatiers.

Image from Michel's Catering and Events Christmas 2024 near Townsville, QLD

Insights

We have had a few years now of food businesses running Christmas menus. Here are some insights from them and the data we have analysed. 

1. The Menu

If you haven't done a Christmas Menu before, it's sometimes hard to predict what you might be able to manage on a menu, but with the ability to capture pre-orders and enough lead time, the world is your oyster!

With features such as multiple images on items on your menu, as well as the ability to craft a look and feel for specific Menus, you can really make your Christmas Menu look mouth-wateringly beautiful.

TIP: add silly season EXTRAS to your weekly menu!
add celebration packs to your weekly menu or create a silly season catering menu to really make the most of people socialising.

A few Menu insights from previous years:

1. Allow enough choices of main meats and vegetarian or vegan options. Salads are always a hit, as are cured fish and meats.

2. Include bundle options which may be more affordable, make it easier for customers to plan and tend to increase order values (via the Meal Packs function)

2. Offer budget options that are still festive but don't break the bank.

3. Aligning your Weekly Menu with the festive season by offering Race Day Picnic Packs, pre-Christmas get-together packs and Office Party options to your weekly menu.

4. Add a Catering Menu to capture requests for larger gatherings. If you haven't done one of these before have a look at this video to show you how. 

A great example of a Christmas menu is this one from meal delivery and caterer Dinner is Served in Ballina, NSW and another from Fair Feed in Melbourne.

Specialty chef Angie from The Valley Table in Kangaroo Valley, NSW offered a festive vegan option as well as traditional meats.

TIP: theme your christmas MENUS IDEAS INCLUDE:

- MAKING CHRISTMAS EASY WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK

- NO WASTE CHRISTMAS: PRE-ORDERED FOOD IS BY NATURE LOW FOOD WASTE

- ETHICAL PROTEIN CHRISTMAS (SUCH AS OFFERING CERTIFIED FREE RANGE OR ORGANIC MEATS AND FISH FROM SUSTAINABLE FISHERIES).

2. Timing

When it comes to making the most of Christmas, planning and timing is key. If you go too early or leave it too late, you’ll miss the moment! Think about when people start to plan how they’re going to celebrate a particular moment and time your launch accordingly.

We've found that at least SIX – TEN WEEKS out from Christmas seems to be about right.

Letting your customers know that you’ll be launching a Christmas menu in advance is a good idea even if it's not quite ready yet. It’s a good prompt to get them thinking about their plans for the moment and puts you top-of-mind in their planning.

Christmas planning is key so... get in touch if you need any advice!

TIP: add silly season EXTRAS to your weekly menu!
add celebration packs to your weekly menu or create a silly season catering menu to really make the most of people socialising.

3. Promoting your Menu

Once you have your Menu live, make sure you are ready to shout about it! Places to promote your Menus include:

• Adding a Shop link direct to your Christmas Menu into your Linktree / Link in Bio on Instagram as well as your Facebook About section

• Creating a special social media post (using this link to access Canva templates)

• Printing on-site posters including QR codes (using the Canva link above to design them)

• Customising your customer communications through the platform by creating a special message in Customers > Messages > Create message

• Including a specific banner on your Website linking to your special Menu

Are you a Baker doing Christmas?

Some of the essential items for Christmas are baked goods. Most people who are hosting Christmas absolutely cannot do these for themselves, so it is on someone's list of things to pick up. Customers love to know that they are not going to miss out on croissants for Christmas brekkies, baguettes for lunch, or mince pies for afternoon tea.

Using Cookaborough for Pre-Orders takes the guess work out of how to handle this lucrative time of year.

TIPS FOR BAKERS

1. Be open on Christmas morning! It's the busiest day for bakers' Christmas menus.

2. Open your menu late November early December but rather than be tempted to offer pickups throughout the month of December, focus on ONLY offering pickups for the few days surrounding Christmas.

3. Dessert offerings are popular. For desserts that are best assembled just prior to eating, consider a "build-your-own" option such as a Pavlova Pack, with all that's required to assemble the Perfect Pav.

Browse Bakers' Christmas Menus below:

TIP: Moments Multiply!
In all special moments like christmas, the number of orders that you receive will increase significantly as more people choose to outsource the occasion than spend time preparing it themselves.  This is great for business but what makes it even better is the size of each order will also increase significantly, so it's a double bonus. THINK ABOUT OTHER MOMENTS YOU CAN OPTIMISE WITH A SPECIAL MENU.

Maximise other moments with Cookaborough

Managing and making the most of moments is easy with Cookaborough. Our platform has been designed and built specifically for food businesses, with features and functions that provide the perfect solution for making hay while the sun shines! Please see our other blogs on all Moments like these.

If you need more information please get in touch via enquiries@cookaborough.com

So are you ready to get started? We have developed a FREE downloadable guide and planning template for other moments to make sure your food business is ready to turn the next moment into sales. Download the free guide below.