How do restaurants get more customers during football season?

Football gives people a fixed time to get together and a reason to eat. Games run from late summer into February. Fans plan their weekends around them. Many would rather watch with a crowd, or order for friends at home, than cook.

The audience is large. The NFL averaged 18.7 million viewers per game last regular season, according to the league and Nielsen. That was a 10% increase on the season before. Part of the rise came from a change in how Nielsen counts viewers, including people watching away from home. So read it as a big audience, not a sudden boom.

Those numbers come from a single Sunday on a single point-of-sale system. Read them as a hint about game-day habits, not a promise for your room. The pattern is easy to see. Fans want food to share and eat by hand. They pick lighter drinks, and they start earlier than on a normal Sunday.

Toast’s numbers point to a short list. Wings lead by a distance. Lighter drinks rose too. Hard seltzer sales were up 14% and cider sales 4%. Beer moved only 2%, and tequila fell 8%.

Build the game-day menu from that. Offer wings in several sauces and a few plates a table can share by hand. Add a short list of lighter drinks next to the beer.

Sell in set sizes, so a host can order for a room without guessing. SpotOn’s football guide suggests naming the quantity, such as a party pack for six. Guests then order with confidence instead of ordering too little to be safe. Keep the list tight, too. Fewer modifiers mean fewer wrong orders when the kitchen is slammed.

Slow sellers can leave the game-day menu without leaving the main menu. Toast found seafood sales fell 16% that Sunday. Save the fish special for a quieter night.

Not every game day is equal. The weekends that fill a room are the ones your town cares about. Think of the local college’s rivalry game, your NFL team’s games against its rivals, the holiday games and every playoff weekend. Put them all on one calendar now. SpotOn advises promoting team watch parties at least a week or two out.

The postseason is the easiest part to plan, because its dates are set months ahead. The playoff bracket is revealed on December 6. Add your NFL team’s playoff weekends in January as its path becomes clear. Then add the dates only your town knows, such as homecoming and the big rivalry. For a neighborhood restaurant, those can beat a national final. The whole town is watching the same game.

A creator video does its work in the days after it goes up, while people are still choosing where to watch. A video posted on game morning leaves them little time to change plans. Aim for videos to go up about two weeks before the weekend you care about. Then repeat the reminder on your own accounts in the final week.

Point creators at the game-day dishes, not the everyday menu. Ask each video to tell viewers how to book a table or order a tray. A hosted meal has to be mentioned in the post itself, and the disclosure guide shows plain wording. Book the visit for a quiet weeknight. The kitchen has time, the room is calm, and the food looks the way it will on the day. For the invitation itself, see inviting food influencers.

A watch party turns a game into a booking. You sell a seat, a table or a section for a named game. You know before the day how many people to staff and prep for. Pick the formats that suit your room and your crowd.

• Reserved tables. Book tables for the game with a set menu or a minimum spend. Keep a few seats for walk-ins.
• A home for one team’s fans. Become the place where fans of one team gather every week. Fans of an out-of-town team often have nowhere else to go.
• Local groups. Offer a standing deal to an alumni chapter or a youth league. They bring a built-in crowd.
• Away games. When the local team plays on the road, fans still need somewhere to watch.
• Jersey day. Pick one date and one rule, such as a free appetizer for the first ten tables in team gear.

Take a deposit on group bookings and reserved sections. SpotOn’s guide makes the case plainly. A deposit protects you if a group cancels at the last minute. You are not left holding the cost of extra prep and stock. Take it off the bill on the day, so it reads as a booking, not a fee.

Many fans watch at home, and they still want your food. SpotOn describes a wave of orders in the 30 minutes before kickoff, then another at halftime. If every order lands in those two windows, the kitchen falls behind. The food goes out late and cold.

Take pre-orders for trays from early in the week, and close them the night before. If your online ordering lets guests pick a time, SpotOn suggests spacing pickup slots in 15-minute increments around kickoff. Keep a shelf by the door for paid pickups. Those guests should never queue behind diners paying their bill.

Delivery apps will bring game-day orders too. Put a card or QR code in each bag that points to your own ordering page. Next time, that guest can order from you directly. You save the app’s commission and keep their details.

Fans often look for a place to watch on their phones, on the day itself. Your Google Business Profile is one of the first things they find. Keep it current all season. Posting to it costs nothing.

• Post each watch party as an event. Google’s help pages say to give an event post a title and its start and end dates and times. You can schedule posts to publish later, so a month of games takes one sitting.
• Post once for every location. Google lets you share one post across several Business Profiles at the same time.
• Set special hours. Open early for noon games or late for night games without changing your regular hours. For a group, Google’s bulk upload spreadsheet has a Special hours column.
• Leave the drinks out. Google’s posting rules list alcohol as a regulated product and ask you not to post content about it. Promote the game, the food and the booking instead.

Then repeat the message where your regulars already are. Use a card at the host stand, a line on the receipt and a note to your email or text list. In the final week, repost the creator videos on your own accounts.

If you pay to promote anything, promote one named game and its booking link. Aim it at people who live near the restaurant. A general ad for “football season” gives no one a reason to book.

Your town’s details will differ, but the order holds. Videos come first, then bookings, then prep. All of it is set before the week of the game. Nothing here needs a bigger kitchen, only an earlier start.

If you run more than one location, use the same plan at each. Set the dates by each town’s own teams, not one national weekend. A restaurant near a campus and one across the state may have their biggest Saturdays a month apart.

Franchisees should check with the brand first. Your franchisor may already run a game-day offer and supply the artwork. Ask what you may add locally, such as your own watch parties, trays and creator visits. Our guide on finding food influencers covers the creator side if you do it yourself.

Inviting creators for one restaurant takes a few messages. For a group, it becomes a job. CreatoRain, which publishes this guide, does that job for restaurant chains and franchises. You send your locations, and you don’t send a single email. Our in-house team finds and invites the creators, pays them and follows up until each video is posted. It costs $300 a video, the creator’s pay included, and you choose how many locations to cover.

Most game-day business is lost to timing, not to the food. The same few slips come up again and again.

Fix the timing and the rest of the season gets easier. The same calendar, menu and booking setup work for every big weekend. That runs from the first kickoff to the Super Bowl.