10 Tips to Offer Successful Private Dining and Events in Your UK Venue
To remain relevant and top of mind for event planners and bookers, your UK venue must stand out as THE place for private dining and events. The UK food scene is hotter than ever; from the ever-increasing veganism movement through to venues offering entertainment, the evolution continues.
To stay competitive, you need to innovate and adapt your offerings. One way to do this is to add events and private dining to your venue. Whether it’s for family gatherings, corporate events, or team-building sessions providing a memorable experience will set your venue apart.
Here are ten tips to ensure your UK venue is successful and generates additional revenue with private events.
1. Optimise Your Venue’s Space and Layout
To get started, have a look at what space your venue has without compromising the overall dining experience. What areas could be sectioned off? Do you have an upstairs or downstairs space that could work, or could you look at renting out the entire venue?
2. Entice with Menu Options
It’s really key to ensure that you have an enticing food and drinks menu that can be tailored to occasions your guests may be looking for. Ensure that you identify who you’re targeting and create day and night time options to suit these. If you’re a city-based venue, think of corporate bookers and what they may be looking for – canapés for a meeting, through to set menu for dinners. Don’t forget inclusivity, offer exciting vegetarian and vegan options, and consider them as credible options and not afterthoughts. Also, think about the drinks menu too – create signature drinks, including non-alcoholic options too.
3. Promote Your Venue’s Space
Ensuring you have great photos or videos of your space is absolutely key. Invest in professional photos and ensure they’re on your website and your social media. Ensure your prospective guests can see the entire space, with nothing obstructed.
4. Do a Venue and Taste Tester Experience
Invite local businesses to see your space, know which businesses are close to you, and invite them. Sample a selection of your food and drink options and ensure you have physical leaflets with packages available for them to take away. Why not offer a discount, or incentive on a booking if they attend.
5. Invest In Training for the Team
The requirements for a private event may differ from that of a regular guest experience. The needs and requirements may mean that the team, from the front of the house through to the kitchen requires additional training. Ensure that the team is aware of what options are available, that they have physical leaflets in hand, and that they can advocate for them when asked.
6. Manage the Experience with Pre-orders
Take the stress out of the process and ensure a smooth guest experience whilst minimising food waste with pre-orders. Allow your guests to follow focus on their event, whether that be socialising or leaning into work activities by allowing them to order food and drink ahead of time. This will ensure that the entire team involved in the event knows how many food and drink orders there are and can focus on enhancing the experience for the guests. With pre-orders, you can upsell packages and options before the guest has even arrived!
7. Diversify Your Offering
Why not see what space you have to offer an interactive and fun experience? Sure, not every venue can accommodate a bowling alley, but how about arcade games, an F1-like simulation, or even crazy golf? Lean into “eatertainment” and provide both a fun and delicious hospitality experience. Private dining and events in your UK venue can be more than your food and bev.
8. Streamline the Process with Technology
Implement a cloud-based sales and event booking and management system like Tripleseat in your venue. Use technology like Tripleseat to track reservations, create function sheets, communicate with guests, and manage event details. Ensure that your entire team knows what’s happening with the booking in real-time.
9. Collect Feedback for Continuous Improvement
Knowing how you and the team did is key to ensuring you’re continuously optimising the experience for future guests. Collect surveys with questionnaires that ask questions about how your venue did versus your guest’s expectations. Ensure this is reviewed and discussed with the team to ensure you always stay ahead of the game.
10. Build Ongoing Relationships
You want your guests to become advocates for your venue and come back repeatedly. With an event management platform like Tripleseat, you can see who’s booking and when, even across multiple venues. Tap into this and ensure you’re communicating with your guests and staying ahead of their event needs in the future.
Stay Ahead of the Game with Tripleseat – The Ultimate Event Management Software
Join over 15,000 venues using Tripleseat streamlining the event management process while increasing revenue. Join leading UK venues like Corrigan Collection, who have been using Tripleseat since 2019 to make their event business easy across their five locations in London and Dublin. Hosting an average of 50 events across these locations weekly, they rely on Tripleseat to streamline the event management process and nurture relationships with their corporate clients. Kathyrn Williams, Head of Sales, said “Tripleseat is by far one of the best systems I’ve used in my career…the easiest system you can use.” Book a demo to learn more about how Tripleseat will streamline your events to bring in more business.
