Take a little tequila, mix it up in your own version of a new margarita, throw out a t-shirt, a few food specials and you have a Cinco de Mayo celebration.

It’s interesting for the restaurant brokers to think back only ten or fifteen years ago.  April was a pretty tough month for restaurant owners.  March madness was over.  Weather may (or may not) allow for the patio to open.  There was no real “driver” for bringing big crowds in the door if you owned a bar.  Traditional restaurants also had a few soft weeks as owners waited on Graduation or Mother’s Day to see significant traffic.  All in all, it was a pretty slow 6-week period.

Enter some brilliant marketer who decided to capitalize on the Mexican holiday and create a phenomenon we now know as “Cinco de Mayo” to build some traffic. The restaurant brokers can’t think of a better co-op of another culture’s celebration.  Look at the cinco ways Cinco de Mayo pays off for the industry.

Uno (1)

The holiday atmosphere around Cinco de Mayo focuses on alcoholic beverages, high margin items with low costs to create.  Beer and Tequila are staples of this event.  It’s always a great thing for a restaurant broker to see a profit and loss statement that reflects earnings driven by alcohol contributions.  

Dos (2)

The food costs for the Mexican fare are among the lowest in the industry.  Small amounts of meat go a long way when creating specials ranging from fajitas to enchiladas.  Lots of filling rice and beans are great side dishes and also very inexpensive for an operator.

Tres (3)

The entire restaurant community gets into the game.  Whether you’re white tablecloth or full-on Mexican fare, the industry has adopted this event in a big way (though some more than others).  That means food suppliers and beverage companies offer support for marketing collateral, special pricing and assist in other ways to help owners build a crowd.

Cuatro (4)

Cinco de Mayo is celebrated on the 5^th so owners can get a huge Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday during a traditionally slow period.  Better yet, when it falls on a weekend, a restaurant operator is able to leverage a full weekend of traffic that would not exist otherwise in this early part of the month.

Cinco (5)

This is the most important reason.  Cinco de Mayo is an example of an event the restaurant industry should do more of.  Why not grab Bastille Day and create a full on press with a French wine party if you’re a French restaurant?  What’s wrong with grabbing Canada Day from the Canadians and serving poutine (gravy drenched French fries with cheese curds) no matter what concept you operate?  One of the restaurant brokers favorite marketing stories is a wing restaurant in Metro Atlanta.  This is a land-locked restaurant with no view of the water for miles.  Despite that, the owner decks out the patio, piles in the seafood and has a Crawfish Festival once a year that packs in 5,000 people in a weekend. 

The cinco (5^th) reason is the most important lesson learned from Cinco de Mayo.  Don’t wait on the industry to create an event.  There’s a reason to host a party or event at your restaurant any time you want.  It just takes a restaurant owner’s commitment and willingness to be creative.

So get out there and celebrate Cinco de Mayo with a little food and drink.  That’s what the restaurant brokers will be doing.  In the meantime, think of your own event that will take the Cinco reasons above and deliver a ton of new sales and profits for your restaurant.

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