Start Planning Christmas Now: 19 Festive Ideas to Secure December Bookings Early

Christmas makes or breaks the year for many pubs. The winners start planning early, lock in corporate bookings, and create a clear festive offer that is easy to say yes to.

The losers are not usually worse operators. They are just later. By the time an underprepared pub launches its menu in early November, the office parties that were going to spend £40 a head have already booked somewhere that asked them in August.

I run The Anchor in Stanwell Moor as a Greene King tenant, and I start on December while the beer garden is still busy. Everything below is what I would do in that order.

For a month-by-month view of how Christmas fits into the bigger picture, see our seasonal pub events calendar. This guide trims the noise and focuses on the ideas that actually drive bookings.

The three things that matter most

1. Packages that sell: clear pricing, limited options, easy upsells.
2. Advance bookings: deposits and early bird incentives.
3. A visible calendar: guests want to see what is happening before they commit.

Everything else is decoration. If those three are right, a plain pub with a good roast beats a beautifully dressed one that nobody can book.

Package ideas that actually book out

• Fixed menu plus welcome drink. Two choices per course, no more. Long menus slow decisions and wreck your kitchen on a 60 cover night.
• Sharing boards plus party playlists for groups of six to twelve, priced per board so parties trade upwards.
• Lunchtime corporate packages with a hard finish time. Two courses, in at twelve, out by two. Offices book these because they can get people back to work.
• A festive buffet package for standing parties in a function room, priced per head with a minimum number.
• A "just the pudding" add-on for groups who only want drinks and something sweet.

How to price a Christmas package

Price from your plate cost upwards, never from what the pub down the road charges.

Say your three course set menu costs you £8.10 in food and the welcome drink costs 90p, so £9.00 in total. Sell the package at £34.95 and you take £29.13 excluding VAT, giving £20.13 of gross profit, about 69%. That sits inside the 65% to 70% band most pubs target on food, with the welcome drink carrying the rest.

Now check it against the corporate ceiling. HMRC's annual functions exemption lets an employer spend up to £150 per attending head, including VAT, across all annual events in a tax year, and it is a cliff edge: a penny over and the entire cost becomes a taxable benefit for the employee. A £34.95 package leaves plenty of headroom for drinks and taxis inside that £150, and saying so in your corporate email is worth more than any discount.

These are worked examples. Cost yours off your own invoices, and re-cost in October when your suppliers confirm December pricing rather than assuming August prices hold.

Once the festive season is over, keep the momentum going with summer pub event ideas that fill the warmer months too.

Event ideas that create buzz

Choose two or three and build them into the calendar. A crowded calendar of half-promoted nights performs worse than three that everyone knows about.

• Christmas quiz with a booking cap, so the room feels full rather than frantic.
• Local choir or school performance night. Every child on stage brings four adults who buy drinks.
• "Thank you" night for local businesses, invitation only, held in the last week of November. It is a party and a sales pitch at the same time.
• Wreath making or gin tasting workshops, ticketed in advance, which pulls cash in during the quiet fortnight before December kicks off.
• Christmas jumper night with a charity collection, which is free to run and gets shared online for you.
• Boxing Day and 27th December openings, promoted in November. Families are bored, cooked out and looking for somewhere to go.

Daytime wins (often overlooked)

• Festive lunch for retirees and local groups, midweek, two courses, mid-morning to mid-afternoon.
• Afternoon kids crafts tied to a roast booking.
• Coffee and mince pie morning for remote workers, which costs you almost nothing to open a room you are already heating.
• A shoppers' lunch aimed at people out doing the December run, with a hard 45 minute promise on food.

Daytime events fill gaps and add incremental revenue. They also use your existing team on shifts you are already paying for, which is why the margin on them is so good.

Promotions that protect margin

• Upgrade bundles, such as a starter or dessert add-on at a fixed price, offered at the point of booking rather than at the table.
• Premium drinks packages, for example a bottle of prosecco per four guests pre-ordered.
• An early booking bonus rather than a discount. A free round of festive shots on arrival costs you a fraction of what 10% off the food bill does.
• Deposit redemption, not deposit forfeiture, as the headline. People book more readily when the money comes off the bill.

The maths matters here. Knocking 10% off a £34.95 package hands back £3.50 a head, which is £2.91 of net profit once the VAT comes out of it. Giving a welcome drink that costs you 90p feels more generous and costs you less than a third as much.

Deposits, terms and final numbers

This is the least glamorous section and the one that protects your December.

Take a deposit on every party booking. Ten pounds a head is the usual benchmark, redeemed against the final bill. Eight tables of twenty at £10 a head is £1,600 in the bank in November, which is exactly when the stock order lands.

Write three things into your terms and put them on the booking confirmation, not just the website:

• Final numbers and pre-orders due 7 days before. After that, the booked number is the charged number.
• What happens to the deposit if the party cancels or shrinks. Be fair and be clear.
• Allergen and dietary requirements collected with the pre-order, so your kitchen is not solving it on the night.

One tax point worth knowing: since March 2019 HMRC treats retained payments from customers who never show as still within the scope of VAT, so a forfeited deposit is not free money. Budget for that.

Deposits work. At The Anchor we cut booking no-shows by 89%, and a no-show table on a Saturday in December is the single most expensive empty chair in your year.

If you want the operational detail on filling every December session, our guide to filling December with Christmas bookings goes deeper on the diary.

A simple planning timeline

July to August: draft packages and pricing, cost the menu, book entertainment before the good acts go. Take your first enquiries even if the menu is not printed.

September: launch bookings and deposits. Get the festive page live on your website with a booking link, and put the dates on your Google Business Profile.

October: push corporate bookings hard. Walk your local business parks with a one page package sheet, email every company that booked last year, and chase the ones that did not.

November: final push on the remaining midweek dates, confirm every booking by phone, collect pre-orders, brief the team, and prep the January follow-up so December's crowd comes back.

December: execute, capture reviews while people are still happy, and take next year's provisional bookings from your best parties before they leave.

If you want professional support getting your Christmas marketing right, take a look at our pub marketing. We can help with everything from social media to event promotion.

Common mistakes

• Launching too late. August enquiries are real. Answer them.
• Overcomplicated menus. Every extra choice slows the kitchen when it can least afford it.
• Taking large bookings without deposits. A twenty cover no-show on 14 December is not recoverable.
• Discounting to win parties. It attracts the bookings least likely to spend behind the bar.
• No plan for the quiet fortnight. The first two weeks of December are softer than the last two. Ticketed workshops and daytime lunches are what fill them.
• Forgetting the follow-up. Capture details in December and you start January with a list rather than a hangover.

Quick checklist

• Two core packages priced from plate cost and checked against the £150 per head corporate ceiling.
• Booking cap set for each event.
• Deposit policy live, with terms on every confirmation.
• Final numbers and allergen deadline written into the booking.
• Calendar published online, on Google and in the pub.
• January follow-up planned before December starts.

Mini FAQ

Should I discount to win parties? No. Use added value instead of price cuts. Our guide on how to run successful pub events covers pricing models that protect your margins.

What do I do with the dates that have not sold by late November? Release them to smaller groups and walk-ins with a lighter, cheaper offer. An empty function room earns nothing, and a two course option at a lower price still beats a locked door.