Updated September 2022
This list has been gathered from our customers and collected from the internet. It is in no particular order and designed to let you quickly scan through and connect different ideas.
Understanding what you can do is half the battle.
You can also view: 70 Event Ideas for Cafe and Bar Managers
Karaoke Nights
A standard night and similar to an open mic night. It takes some time to market correctly. Karaoke Nights can be suitable for mainstream bars when combined with an themed night eg. 80's/90's Night
Photo by https://www.pexels.com/
Sports Fans
Aim to cater for niche sports when your licence permits. Remember to use posters or window displays to let potential cusotmers know that you cater for sports and are happy to put their favourite team on the TV.
Sports cafe photo created by master1305 - www.freepik.com
Karaoke Nights
A standard night and similar to an open mic night. It takes some time to market correctly. Karaoke Nights can be suitable for mainstream bars when combined with an themed night eg. 80's/90's Night
Photo by https://www.pexels.com/
(Customer) Wall of Fame
a customer wall of frame for winning or recognition. This could be based on “completing” the beer menu, related to your monthly dart tournament, local “Guinness Records” or Sport Winners, and interesting local achievement. Wall of Fames are great to build local credibility that your location is part of the local history. You can start it by simply showcasing local people and slowly transition it to local patriots.
Wikipedia Commons
Marathon Celebrations
Catering for long-distance runners and enthusiastic. Anyone involved in long distance running or shorter road races (or simply running for weight loss) knows that diet is important. Lond distance runners have a double problem of socializing and maintaining their diet plans while being out in bars and pubs. Understanding more and marketing drinks and food (high-carb, gluten free, low-GI, low FODMAP)
Photo by RUN 4 FFWPU from Pexels
Open Mic for musicians
A common night for small out of the way bars to help them attract tourists. If your cafe is in a competitive part of town you can consider an open-mic night. Typically on a Tuesday or Wednesday as a way to drive awareness for your cafe with musicians and their friends and family.
Photo by Aleksandr Neplokhov from Pexels
Wine Tasting
Wine tasting can be a big ordeal or a small menu item. The choice will be up to you. I would recommend experimenting with menu options before deciding on having a Wine Tasting event or some such.
Photo by Helena Lopes
Beer Tasting
You can turn a simple beer flight into an event by setting a time during the week and welcoming those interested.
Photo by ELEVATE
Pop-up Catering / Remote Food Collection
Local markets and fairs have the opportunity to have a stall to showcase your cafe food. Be careful of licence requirements and if your own business licence will allow for food vender in alternative locations. However, as an alternative, agreements with local business offices that don't have local catering facilities. Sometimes you will be able to work around location restrictions via bulk food orders and your 'pop-up location' is really a collection point. This can work best when you already cater for pick-up collections and provide a high demand product; think: specialty sandwiches.
Photo by Kasumi Loffler from Pexels
Friday-Long-Lunch
A purpose made 3 course meal for businesses in the local area to enjoy a more social long lunch. This competes with the concept of social team building activities and other more expensive options. The Long-Lunch, allows for businesses to regularly have a social aspect built into the week for their employees.
Photo by Helena Lopes from Pexels
Wall of Fame “Walk”
if your cafe is situated near a walking trail you can have a wall of fame for the time it takes to walk (made easier with GPS tracking but ideally set to the cafe managers stop-watch timer). see Killarney Gap of Dunloe as an example.
Photo by Samson Katt from Pexels
Friday-Late-Lunch
slightly similar to a long lunch. The late-lunch is designed for after the Friday lunchtime rush and includes a beer or two to connect the time between Friday lunch and Friday after-work drinks and keep patrons sitting
Photo by ELEVATE Pexels
"X" Groups
connecting professionals that work in different departments together. This can be combined with a ‘Friday-Late-Lunch’ or Happy-Hours concept to have a once-a-month “X” Group catering for a specific group. In effect, you will be facilitating Meetups. A challenge will be to enable your customers to easily register. But Gohono can help with this.
Photo by ThisIsEngineering from Pexels
designers X developers drinks
graphic designers and software engineers...this is a large subgenre with many other specific subgroups. eg. “Frontend and Backend Developers”
Pixabay
X-Drinks
X-Drinks is more of a promotion than a group or event. It encourages intermixing between different groups, you can offer a free drinks vouchers (or 2-for-1) that can only be redeemed by the “other” X group. It’s optional if you ‘police’ this or not.
Photo by ELEVATE from Pexels
painters X writers
painting in cafes and bars are increasing thanks to the likes of Yaymaker (see below) and private hosts organizing painting classes. This X group is simply to combine the two. It can be helpful for focused writers to be around other focused people. Part of the benefit for writers is to help go beyond words with a subjective idea that this could help writers block.
Photo by William Fortunato from Pexels
Table Games
Pool tables, air hockey, snooker et. al. All traditional cafe activities and games. If you have the space a pool table is always useful. To gain the most of it, a pool tournament or a regular pool night is a good way to bring people in during the off-peak days of the week. You will be advised to create a "pool game etiquette" playbetterbilliards.com/learn/pool-etiquette/
Photo by Pavel Danilyuk
DAGZ
If you are interested in trying something new. DAGZ, has a unique table top game. "DAGZ is an entertaining and competitive recreational dice game that emulates the premise of larger indoor and outdoor games like bags/corn hole, horseshoes and washers...minus the limitations of size and weather. The DAGZ game board offers the challenging elements of navigating barriers with dice through a ricochet or by bouncing off the surface or wall to reach the scoring area." https://www.playdagz.com/
Photo from www.playdagz.com
Paint Night (yaymaker)
If you are so inclined, you can consider a "Paint Night" - this is potentially more suitable to cafes, but any cafe with space or outdoor area could facilitiate the group. Yaymaker is an event provider and organzies Paint Events. It is worth checking out. "We started with one Paint Nite in the basement of a Boston cafe in 2012 and it all took off from there. Paint Nite flourished across local communities and soon expanded to include many more creative experiences." https://www.yaymaker.com/
Photo by yaymaker
Shove Ha’Penny (Master of Games)
Shove a Penny is a game you probably played in school. Master of Games brings it to bars in a table top form. "A nicely made Shove Ha'penny board constructed from wood and made by a traditional craftshop in Britain. Includes five real old half pennies, scoring chalk and instructions. In this very old traditional pub game, players attempt to push old English ha'pennies up a board so that they fall between the horizontal lines. You need to get 3 strikes in each bed to win the game. But beware - if you've completed a bed any further coins will score for your opponent." "The objective of Masters Traditional Games is to make available the old games - and modern classics - that people have played for centuries and will continue to play as long as they are able to buy them." www.mastersofgames.com
Photo from www.mastersofgames.com
