Survive the Off-Season: Packages That Keep Revenue Coming

The off-season rarely creeps up on you politely. One week you are turning tables, the next you are looking at eleven covers, a full rota and a heating bill that has not read the memo.

Waiting for trade to return is the expensive option. The pubs that get through a flat January are the ones that sold something in October. Packages are how you do that, because a package is a decision someone can make in a single phone call, and it is a decision you can actively go out and ask for.

We grew private hire bookings by 567% at The Anchor, and almost none of that came from people ringing us out of the blue. It came from deciding what we sold, putting a price on it, and asking. Here is the structure, and it works whether trade has slowed across the whole week or you are simply staring down a seasonal dip.

Step 1: Pick three core segments

Three. Not eight. You cannot serve eight audiences well with the staff you have on a wet Tuesday.

Open a map and draw a ten minute drive time around your pub. Then list what is actually inside it. Business parks and industrial estates. Employers with twenty to a hundred staff. GP surgeries, dental practices, care homes, schools. Sports clubs, the WI, Rotary, U3A, running clubs, the parish council. Funeral directors, because wakes are one of the most reliable off-season earners a pub has and nobody markets for them.

Pick the three you can genuinely deliver for. For most pubs that is local businesses, community groups, and families or clubs. A village pub with no business park nearby should not be chasing corporate away days. A pub on an estate road with three hundred desks within walking distance absolutely should.

Do this week: build a list of twenty named organisations inside your drive time, with a contact name where you can find one. Google Maps, the parish council website and your local Facebook groups will get you most of the way there.

Step 2: Build plug-and-play packages

A package is not a menu. It is a fixed answer to a question someone is nervous about asking.

Each one needs a price per head, a minimum number, a start and finish time, and no more than three choices per course. Two or three packages is plenty.

• Team lunch. Twelve to thirty people, 11:30 to 14:30, two courses plus tea and coffee, room and screen included.
• Community night. Twenty to sixty people, buffet plus a quiz or a speaker, cash bar, room from 7pm.
• Family Sunday. Roast plus a kids' activity table, booked in two sittings so you control the kitchen.
• Funeral tea. Fixed price per head, sandwiches and hot bites, tea and coffee, a private space and a named host. No minimum spend, no upselling, ever.

Build them the same way you would build a repeatable profit night: same kit, same prep, same staffing pattern, so the tenth one is easier than the first.

The mistake to avoid: replying "we can do anything you like" to an enquiry. It sounds generous and it kills bookings, because now the customer has to do the work. Give them something to say yes to.

Step 3: Price for margin, not for a full room

A full room at the wrong price is just a busy way to lose money. Work it properly.

Say you sell a team lunch at £24 a head and twenty people come. That is £480 of food revenue. Food cost at 30% is £144. Two staff for four hours at a true £15 an hour, including employer's National Insurance and holiday pay, is £120. Add £100 room hire to cover heating, set-up and clear-down, and you have £580 in and £264 of direct cost, leaving £316 of contribution before your fixed overheads. On a Tuesday lunchtime when that room does nothing, that is the whole argument.

Now watch what a discount does. Drop £24 to £20 to "get it over the line" and you have taken £80 off the top. That £80 comes entirely out of the £316, so a 17% price cut has removed a quarter of your contribution. If you must move on price, move on inclusions instead: take the tea and coffee out, or narrow the choice.

Two things people forget. First, the trade you displace: if the room would have taken £150 in walk-ins, that is a real cost of the booking. Second, VAT. Room hire on its own is normally exempt unless you have opted to tax, but hire supplied for the purposes of catering is standard rated, and bundling the two on one invoice gets fiddly quickly. Get your accountant to confirm how you should invoice before you print a price list. Quote businesses plus VAT, since they reclaim it, and quote consumers a single inclusive figure.

Step 4: Create simple sales collateral

One page. That is the whole brief.

It needs: what you get, the price per head, minimum numbers, the times, how you handle dietary requirements and allergens, deposit and cancellation terms, and how to book. Put a photo of the room actually set up for the thing you are selling, not an empty room at 9am. Put a real name and a mobile number on it.

The most common failure here is a beautiful PDF with no price on it. If the price is missing, the reader assumes they cannot afford it and files the email.

Write a matching three-line message you can paste into email, WhatsApp or LinkedIn, and put the same content on a page of your own website. People do search for function room hire near them, and a proper page means those searches land somewhere that sells rather than in your inbox as "do you do parties?".

Step 5: Prospect proactively

This is the step everyone skips and it is the one that works.

Take your list of twenty and get it to forty. The people you want are office managers, executive assistants, HR coordinators, practice managers, club secretaries and PTA chairs. LinkedIn lets you filter by location and job title. An industrial estate lets you walk in with printed one-pagers. Ring between 10am and 11:30am, never at four in the afternoon.

Keep the call to thirty seconds. "I run The Anchor in Stanwell Moor. We do a team lunch at £24 a head, we can seat thirty in a private room, and you'll be back at your desks by two. Shall I email you the one-pager?" That is it. You are asking for permission to send something, not for a booking.

Follow up three times, roughly a week apart, and write the dates in the diary when you make the first call. One call is not a campaign, and the follow-up is the only part of this you fully control. The community groups already on your doorstep are the warmest calls on the list, so start there to build momentum.

Start eight weeks before the quiet period, minimum. If January is your dead month, you are selling it in early November while people still have budget and diary space.

Step 6: Lock the booking down

An enquiry is not revenue. A confirmed booking with money attached is.

Take a deposit on anything with a set menu or a minimum spend: £10 a head or 25% of the estimated value, held once you are inside 14 days of the date. Send a written confirmation the same day that restates the date, arrival time, numbers, menu choices, the final numbers deadline (seven days before is standard) and the fact that you will charge on the confirmed figure.

One caveat licensees rarely hear. Where the customer is a consumer rather than a business, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires your terms to be fair, and a deposit or cancellation charge that goes well beyond what the booking actually costs you can be challenged and may not be enforceable. Work out what you genuinely lose when a forty cover booking drops to twenty (the food ordered, the staff rostered, the session you turned away) and set the terms against that. Fair, written and explained at the time is both more defensible and easier to enforce than a big round number nobody read. This is the same discipline that stops walk-in tables evaporating when people stop turning up for bookings.

Then diarise a call two days before the final numbers deadline. That single call is where most upsells happen.

Step 7: Overdeliver, then ask for the next one

The extras that matter cost very little: a named host who introduces themselves, table signage with the company or family name, a coffee station ready on arrival, printed menus. People remember being expected.

Upsells to have ready: an extra hour on the room, a drinks package priced per head, a dessert course, a bacon roll round at eleven. Offer them at confirmation, not on the day.

Ask for the rebook while they are still in the building, diary open. "Same time next quarter?" converts far better than an email the following week. Send the thank you within 48 hours with a rebook offer and a link to leave a review, and add them to your list so the next off-season starts warm rather than cold.

Bring cash forward into the quiet months

Gift vouchers sold in December and redeemed in February move money into the month you need it. So do prepaid January supper clubs and paid-in-advance club dinners.

One thing to get right: a voucher that can be spent on anything in the pub is usually a multi-purpose voucher, which means the VAT normally falls when it is redeemed rather than when it is sold. Track the outstanding balance as a liability so a busy February does not surprise you, and check the treatment with your accountant. Sell them hard alongside your December bookings push, because that is when people are actually buying.

Common mistakes

• Overcomplicating packages. Every extra choice is another reason to delay a decision.
• Pricing too low. Discounts come straight off contribution, and a cheap package attracts groups who spend nothing at the bar.
• Waiting for enquiries. The pubs with full function diaries are the ones making calls in October.
• No deposit and no terms. A verbal booking for forty people is an expensive rumour.
• Selling the room instead of the outcome. Nobody wants a room. They want a team that feels looked after, or a funeral that goes smoothly.

Quick checklist

• Three segments chosen and written down.
• Two or three packages built, costed and priced for margin.
• One-page collateral ready, with a price and a phone number on it.
• Forty-name outreach list built, calls started eight weeks out.
• Deposit and final numbers terms in your confirmation email.
• Rebook asked for in the building, thank you sent within 48 hours.

Mini FAQ

Should I discount to win corporate bookings? Not usually. Businesses buy convenience and certainty, not the lowest price. Change what is included before you change the number.

What if my function room is just a corner of the pub? Sell it as a reserved area with a fixed layout and a host. Be honest about noise and access, price it lower than a private room, and it will still book.