Spooky season is upon us! It’s that time of year again in the hospitality sector when it’s time to get pumpkins carved, scary decorations up and party banners ready!

Here’s how to celebrate Halloween in the hospitality industry:

Come up with new drinks

Whether you own a hotel, restaurant or bar you can change up some of the items in your menu or add new drinks designed for the Halloween month.

For example, bar owners can add three or four new cocktails with spooky names, or even change up an old beverage with a new name and add a Halloween decoration for effect. Anything orange can be labelled ‘pumpkin juice’, and any cocktail that glitters could be called ‘unicorn tears’. Also, Bloody Mary and Zombie can stay how they are and should be high up on the list!

Think of new food

For October, you could come up with some ghoulish food items to be added to your menu or just rename your old dishes with inventive names. For example, for starters your tomato soup could be adjusted to ‘vampire blood’ and any dish with spaghetti in can be labelled ‘snakes’. Think of the colour and shape of the items and see how you can twist them into something wicked.

Serve with spook

You could think about changing up your plates, cups and cutlery for the Halloween season. Napkins could be orange; tablecloths could be a ghoulish red and plates could be black. Cocktails can be served in decorative glasses like skull cups or goblets.

Decorate

Use Halloween as a time to get creative and decorate your bar, restaurant or hotel as ghastly as possible. Get your staff to carve up pumpkins (and carry out some team building exercises), put up cobwebs and bat banners, and try to invest in a terrifying centrepiece…maybe one that moves every time a guest walks past it. Think about dimming the lights, even if it’s only for the 31st, and putting candles around the place to create an eerie atmosphere too.

If you’ve got a garden or terrace, make sure you take advantage of that too. You could create a whole horror scene outside – one your guests have to investigate!

Dress Up

It’s not only the venue that should be decorated for Halloween, but your staff should be dressed up too! You could give them a simple theme like zombie diners, or just let their imagination run wild. You should definitely have some rules and regulations on what you can’t dress up as though and prohibit anything that could affect health and safety.

Hold a Party

If you’ve got the space, you should throw a party and invite customers new and old to join you on the day. You could celebrate Halloween at your bar, hotel or restaurant with spooky tunes, fancy dress competitions and a themed three-course meal. You can tailor the event to your venue’s needs and what your guests want. It doesn’t even have to be held on Halloween, just make sure you promote and share the event on social media well in advance to give people time to plan.