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Your 5-step head start to a smoother Christmas season
Our hospitality specialists have decades of experience managing kitchens over the Christmas period, so let us share their top tips.
1. Plan your festive menu and stock early
Before guests dive into their 'New Year, new me' resolutions, they’ll be looking to indulge - and nothing draws them in like a well-crafted festive menu. Whether you put tradition or innovation first, what matters most is how good your Christmas menu plans are.
Start brainstorming your menu by March–April, aiming to draft and cost recipes by May–June. This is also the ideal time to begin discussions with suppliers. Use July–August to refine dishes, gather allergen and nutritional information, and brief your team. By September, your menu should be finalised, costed and orders locked in, ready for bookings.
Securing your supplies early is the surest way to guarantee everything arrives on time and to spec:
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Confirm delivery schedules and stock availability well in advance
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Identify at-risk ingredients and prep alternatives
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Consider smaller, more agile menus to adapt to availability
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Lock in backup suppliers where needed.
Hospitality purchase-to-pay software like Procure Wizard Evo means you can manage ordering and track recipe costs in one place, ensuring you get full margin visibility across all your F&B areas. This means you’re kept in the loop on stock levels and schedules when demand peaks.
2. Build your Christmas rotas around your busiest days
Only 53% of hospitality workers say they have a good work-life balance, according to the Hospitality People Survey 2026, and this number is down from 59% in 2024. When rotas go out late, staff can't plan childcare, book appointments or make commitments outside work. December is exactly the wrong time to find out your team can't commit to their shifts.
Getting your rotas right starts well before December. Map out your busiest periods based on last year's trading data; Christmas Eve, Boxing Day and the days between Christmas and New Year are typically the pressure points, then work out whether your current headcount can cover them. If there are gaps, that's your hiring brief.
Once you know who you have and when you need them, schedule as far in advance as you can. The earlier your team knows their shifts, the easier it is for them to plan around work, and the less likely you are to lose people to last-minute conflicts or a competitor who gave them more certainty.
Rotaready Evo takes the complexity out of festive scheduling, forecasting staffing needs based on historical data, avoiding costly over- or under-staffing, and keeping your team informed with automated shift communications.
3. Train your team and get compliance in order
Staff training is another area worth tackling now rather than in December. Are hygiene and compliance checks up to date for all team members? Under Natasha's Law, allergen information must be clearly labelled on all pre-packed food - is your team trained to handle customer questions accurately and confidently?
Your festive menu is also new territory for most of your team. Before service begins, make sure staff know the dishes, the ingredients and the upsell opportunities - a team that can describe the menu confidently sells more and handles allergen queries more safely.
Compliance doesn't stop at food safety. If you're planning extended trading hours, late-night events or higher-than-usual capacity over the festive period, now is the time to check your licensing position. Extended hours applications, fire safety assessments and event insurance all carry lead times and regulatory deadlines - leave them too late and you're stuck, regardless of how well everything else is planned.
Looking to make all this admin easier and faster? CPL Learning Evo for access to accredited hospitality training from allergen awareness to upselling techniques, Trail Evo - to assign and track compliance tasks, checklists and training sign-offs across your teams. Or if you’re running an event, help your teams stay on track with our event management software that connects with your wider operations, so nothing gets missed as your festive diary gets booked up.
4. Protect your revenue with deposits and clear T&Cs
A fully-booked December diary is only worth what it actually delivers. No-shows cost the average venue £3,813 a year, and that figure rises as the value of each cover increases over the festive period. Getting your financial protection in place now, before bookings fill up, is one of the highest-leverage things you can do.
The good news is that guests are broadly comfortable with it: 65% of diners say they're happy to pay a deposit when booking, and 71% are happy to provide card details. The barrier is usually on the operator side - not having the policy set, the system configured, or the terms clearly communicated.
Before your Christmas bookings open, lock in:
- Deposit requirements - set a clear threshold (party size, booking value) and apply it consistently
- Minimum spend terms - particularly for larger groups and set-menu bookings
- Cancellation and amendment windows - how much notice is required, and what happens if it isn't given
- No-show policy - make it explicit at the point of booking, not after the fact
Access Collins lets you set deposit rules, minimum spends and cancellation terms directly within your reservation system, so every booking is protected from the moment it's confirmed.
For hotels, you need to stretch this protection across the whole stay with room bookings, dinner reservations and event packages often sitting under one guest transaction. When there is a no-show on one of these areas, it can affect the others badly.
Guestline PMS connects all of that in one place, giving you a complete picture of each guest's spend and making it easier to apply consistent cancellation policies across your whole Christmas operation. It's also worth setting up hotel gift vouchers which is a popular Christmas revenue driver that brings guests back in the new year.
5. Fill your diary: bookings and marketing
With your menu planned, your team rostered and your financial protection in place, the final step is making sure your tables are full. The operators who fill their Christmas diary earliest are the ones who start marketing before demand peaks, not after.
- Use your CRM: Tap into your existing customer data to segment and target previous Christmas guests, corporate bookers and loyal regulars with tailored emails or SMS offers.
- Leverage Wi-Fi sign-ups: Capture guest contact details through your guest Wi-Fi login page and follow up with festive promos or booking links - a simple way to grow your mailing list before December.
- Reward loyalty: Offer exclusive early access to festive bookings or special perks for repeat guests and loyalty members - a reliable way to fill your diary before you open bookings to the wider public.
- Running ticketed events? If you're hosting special Christmas or New Year's Eve events, get your ticketing set up now - get your listings live early and promote them across email, social and your website to maximise reach.
The Hospitality Customer Engagement Suite brings your CRM, loyalty and marketing tools together in one place, so you can run all those activities without switching between systems.
When you’re running a hotel, we know that a guest who books a hotel stay may also want a dinner reservation, spa booking or a ticket to your New Year’s Eve event. The Access Hotel Property Management Suite connects your bookings, guest data and marketing in one place so you can identify who's most likely to return and reach them with the right offer at the right moment to maximise the value of every festive stay without adding to your team's workload.
Your Christmas restaurant preparation starts here
The venues and hotels that come out ahead in December are the ones that make decisions in August. Whether you need to tighten up procurement, get rotas under control, protect your bookings revenue, or fill your diary before the competition does, we can help you find the right tools for the job.
Get in touch with our team to talk through your Christmas planning needs.
And for the latest consumer trends, marketing strategies and expert insights, visit our Christmas hub with everything you need to make 2026 your best festive season yet.
* DesignMyNight internal data
