Halloween ideas for restaurants

Halloween ushers in the appearance of spooky pumpkins in windows and colourful candy in shops — and a huge opportunity to make lasting connections with diners.

Celebrated on October 31st, Halloween 2024 falls on a Thursday. As kids and adults gear up to celebrate one of the year’s most fun seasonal celebrations, how will your restaurant get into the Halloween spirit this year?

Depending on your restaurant’s style and cuisine, you might be conjuring up an all-out eerie Halloween vibe with family-friendly fun, or you may opt for a more understated autumnal feast. No matter what type of restaurant you run, take a look at our tips to transform your establishment into a Halloween haven your customers won’t forget!

Organise a family-friendly Halloween lunch or dinner

Want to lure customers with kids into your restaurant? Organise a family-friendly Halloween lunch or dinner. For many parents, the last couple of weeks of October fly by in a whirlwind of costume planning, pumpkin carving, and decorating — it’s fun, but it takes up a lot of energy. Why not give customers the chance to relax in your restaurant and enjoy Halloween with their little ones without having to worry about the cooking?

Advertise a Halloween-themed early dinner or late lunch on the 31st to give excited trick-or-treaters plenty of time to prepare for the big night. As well as making Halloween an even more special occasion for the whole family, parents will be relieved to know their kids are having some hearty, nutritious food before they start munching on large quantities of sweets.

Create a fixed-price kids’ Halloween menu featuring cute, spooky, or ‘disgusting’ Halloween food such as pastry ‘witch’ fingers, tomato ‘blood’ soup with mozzarella ball ‘eyes’, ghostly meringues and jack-o-lantern cookies, to name a few. If in doubt, opt for dishes and drinks in red, green, orange, and black to add some extra thrills to your menu. While adults may also get a kick out of these ghoulish menu items, you might want to offer an alternative option of traditional autumnal dishes to whet their appetite.

You can even hold a Halloween costume contest for kids, with the winner getting a free child’s meal or dessert. Turn up the fun by another notch and provide Halloween activities such as colouring sheets and easy crafts — don’t forget to ask your staff to dress up for the occasion too!

Launch a bewitching Halloween drinks menu

In the week leading up to October 31st, get people in the mood to celebrate Halloween with an assortment of themed drinks that are either warm and cosy or cold and eerie.

Think classic pumpkin spiced lattes, hot apple cider with cinnamon, mulled wine, red fruit smoothies, pumpkin and ginger mocktails, blood red cosmopolitans, or classic martinis with olive ‘eyeballs’ — Halloween is the perfect opportunity to let your bartenders get creative.

Treat your customers with irresistible Halloween desserts

While adults don’t usually join their kids in indulging in their trick-or-treating stash, who can say no to a Halloween treat? Satisfy their craving for something sweet with Halloween and fall-inspired desserts such as pumpkin or sweet potato pie, pumpkin cheesecake, caramel apples, ‘gory’ black velvet cake with raspberry coulis, cinnamon apple crumble, or ‘death by chocolate’ cake.

Put up Halloween decorations in your restaurant

If you are hosting a family-friendly Halloween event at your restaurant, decorate your space to look spooky, but not too scary for the younger ones. Go for a creepy but friendly Halloween vibe with carved pumpkins illuminated by LED lights, ghost napkins, cut-out wall decorations in the shape of bats, black cats, pumpkins, or witches hats, and go for orange-themed table linens and dishware to tie it all together.

Throwing an adults-only Halloween dinner and costume party? Transform your restaurant into a haunted house with gothic candle holders, white and black candles, mirrors, black tablecloths, glass skull mugs or goblets, black or deep purple roses, and other ghoulish touches. Let your employees have fun dressing up in scary or kitsch costumes and don’t forget to create a spooky Halloween playlist packed with all the classics.

If you want to host a more understated Halloween dinner or lunch, try our subtle autumnal decorating ideas, keeping the Halloween-specific decorations to a few tastefully arranged pumpkins and orange-themed table dressings.

However you choose to celebrate the event in your restaurant, share the Halloween fun across all your social media channels to create a sense of FOMO for diners who didn’t attend, and cement it as a new annual tradition for diners who did join the party.

For more unmissable tips and ideas to create one-of-a-kind moments for your diners, check out TheFork Manager blog.

ld and new!