These events are great ways to fill slow nights and to introduce the restaurant to customers that might not have visited before.
Sometimes keeping things horizontal works as well.
Searching for ways to boost revenue and reputation, restaurants at all price levels from casual to elegant are promoting theme dining.
It's a strategy designed to capitalize on the public's seemingly insatiable appetite for exotic foods and food-related experiences, an interest that seems to be have been little diminished by the recent recession.
White-tablecloth establishments and casual bistros alike are putting on wine tastings, beer dinners, and unusual holiday celebrations like never before.
Organized around various ethnic cuisines, high-profile vineyards and breweries, or unusual edibles, these events are great ways to fill slow nights and to introduce the restaurant to customers that might not have visited before.
Such special dinners can also motivate kitchen staffs, giving chefs and line cooks the chance to work with ingredients and create dishes they otherwise don't often get to prepare.
Social media like Facebook and Twitter offer restaurants that want to promote special events new ways to effectively get the word out. An eatery (or chef) that has assiduously cultivated an on-line following has a built-in audience for any special menus or occasions that establishment chooses to organize.
Here in Western New England several venues – the Delaney House in Holyoke, the Farm Table in Bernardston, and the various Max Restaurants in Massachusetts and Connecticut – have been aggressively filling seats with special events, a business-building practice others might do well to emulate.