Chinese New Year Restaurant Promotion Ideas for 2025

The Chinese New Year holiday is one of the best times to drive traffic and generate revenue.

To keep customers coming, you must streamline operations, leverage an online menu ordering system for efficient service, and implement potent Chinese New Year restaurant promotion ideas.

Ready to take the leap but don’t know where to start?

Here are some fun and worthwhile marketing ideas and menu inclusions for this grand celebration.

The CNY Preparation: How to gear up for the holiday

There are several factors to consider when making effective and appealing restaurant promotions for the Chinese New Year.

First, understand your target audience's demographics, behavior, preferences, and needs. This step is crucial because it will help you create restaurant menu and promotions tailored to their interests, making them more personalized and advantageous for them. 

For example, are your customers mostly young or old? What are their habits? Are they students or working professionals? What drives them to dine out? What is their lifestyle?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you better understand your target market.

Second, decide on the type of promotion that appeals to your target audience and aligns with your promotional goals; it could be a discount, a free item, a loyalty program, or a special food item like the Chinese New Year menu.

Third, choose the best way to advertise your offer. Ensure the promotion channel you are eyeing will reach your target audience and potential customers.

Some promotion options include social media, email, in-restaurant signage, online listings, and influencer marketing—whatever will catch your audience's interest. 

Lastly, measure the success of your promotion to ensure that your Chinese New Year restaurant deals go smoothly. Set clear goals, analyze the results, and make necessary adjustments. Doing so will help you curate effective promotions and achieve positive results.

7 Chinese New Year restaurant promotion ideas

Initiate a social media contest

People love free stuff. Who doesn’t? This is the time to take advantage of that by offering them something they can't resist. 

Ask your social media followers to post their favorite Chinese food at your restaurant, write an engaging caption, and tag three friends. The winner will get a free meal voucher valid before the Chinese New Year celebration ends. 

Social media contests are a great strategy to build awareness about an item or a product. Take advantage of this promotional strategy. It will surely work since many use them daily.

Promote through influencers

Collaborate with an influencer on a promotion or campaign highlighting your restaurants and special offers. They will promote your restaurant to their followers and subscribers, telling people why they should dine there.

Look for influencers with a solid niche and a huge following to guarantee that more people will engage with your promotion. It’s also great if your influencer suits your target audience so they can easily relate to the content.

If you’re targeting young audiences, collaborate with youthful and quirky influencers. Meanwhile, an influencer with a professional and formal vibe will work for more mature demographics.

Hashtags works 

Using hashtags in your posts is a great way to get more followers. 

Post mouthwatering images of special items you are offering at a discounted price. Then, write a compelling caption and conclude it with hashtags. 

You can use community hashtags like #chineserestaurant, #chinesefood, and #chinesecuisine to maximize your post’s engagement.

Since you add up to 30 hashtags to a post, you can also combine other relevant and popular hashtags that your competitors use. 

Hashtags on your promotional posts will make it easier for users to engage with your content and increase brand awareness and reach. 

Cross-sell and upsell

If you’ve been using an online menu ordering system, you know that it comes with sales and customer behavior analytics, which helps you quickly identify the least popular items. 

Take advantage of the software's insights to set up promotions, like cross-selling less profitable dishes to more popular ones at a discounted price. 

Or to leverage high-profit menu items and promote specialty or premium drinks and dishes to your customers.

The key here is to train your staff to sell menu items strategically without trying too hard. You don’t want to be pushy. All you have to do is suggest items they may like.

Offer a takeout menu

Whether homecooked meals or restaurant takeouts, people come home to eat with their families during the Chinese New Year.

You can cater to the demand by creating a special takeout menu for the occasion.

Offer family-sized portions of your well-loved Chinese cuisines in functional and branded to-go containers.

Happy hour

Your customers are most probably at home spending time with their families. You can still generate profit through takeout orders, but expect downtime in your restaurant.

If this happens, it’s best to have a happy hour deal ready.

You can offer complimentary appetizers with the purchase of a drink or offer a buy one get one deal. 

Implementing this marketing tactic correctly can encourage customers to try new items on your food and drink menu, thus driving traffic and increasing sales.

Decorate your restaurant

Opening your restaurant to the public with a CNY-themed interior invites them more than you know it. It’s festive, inclusive, and tells them you are geared up for the occasion.

Hang some lanterns, turn on ambient lights, play the appropriate music, and even hire dragon dancers. 

Also, remember that the animal of the year is the Snake. So, you might want to look for decorations with snake prints in them.

Chinese New Year menu ideas (and what they symbolize)

Did you know that each dish served on Chinese New Year has a symbolic meaning? Here are some popular Chinese food and their symbols, and you may include them in your special Chinese New Year menu:

Fish

‘Fish,' which translates to ‘yu’ in Chinese, sounds like ‘shengyu’ or ‘surplus,’ which implies abundance, unity, and prosperity.

According to Feng Shui, eating fish during Chinese New Year will bring good luck and abundance in the coming year. 

Dumplings 

Dumplings are a traditional Chinese dish considered lucky food for the Chinese New Year because they symbolize wealth and prosperity.

These resemble the boat-shaped Chinese gold and silver ingots used as a currency in ancient China. There is a belief that the more dumplings you consume during Chinese New Year, the more money you will earn throughout the year.

Noodles 

Noodles aren't only a staple in Chinese cuisine; they are also considered lucky foods to serve during the Chinese New Year and other special occasions. 

Because noodles are long, they symbolize longevity in Chinese culture. Eating them is believed to bring good luck and long life. But remember not to cut the noodles as you prepare; it can give you bad omen. 

Whole chicken 

According to Chinese culture, a whole chicken symbolizes completeness and unity. The Chinese believe eating it will bring good luck and fortune for the upcoming year. 

Lion's head meatballs

This dish isn't actually made from a lion's head. It's mainly made of pork seasoned with soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and a touch of sesame oil, then simmered in a chicken broth-soy sauce.

This delicacy got its name from the meatball's shape, which resembles the head of a Chinese guardian lion. 

It is an essential dish for every special occasion because, in Chinese culture, the lion symbolizes power, while large meatballs symbolize family unity.

Sweet rice balls 

Sweet rice balls, or ‘tangyuan' in Chinese, are considered lucky because their round shape symbolizes unity and togetherness. 

Also, the Chinese believe that the sweet glutinous rice used to make ‘tangyuan' will bring prosperity in the coming year. 

Shrimp

Shrimp is ‘xia’ in Chinese and ‘ha’ in Cantonese; both words mean laughter.

For this reason, the Chinese believe that serving shrimp on the Chinese New Year will bring them happiness throughout the year.

Steamed pork belly with taro 

Pork represents a prosperous life, strength, and abundant blessings. Meanwhile, the taro symbolizes wealth, good luck, and prosperity. 

This is why this dish is typically shared with friends and family, adding to its association with togetherness. 

Ways to promote your restaurant specials on the QR code menu 

Label new and bestseller items 

Labeling new and bestseller items is one way to direct customers' attention to such things. 

This strategy can influence customers' purchasing decisions so that they will think labeled items are worth trying. 

The good thing about having a digital menu QR code is that you can edit it anytime, which is efficient, especially when making urgent menu updates.

After saving the changes, edits will automatically reflect in real-time on the menu. 

Highlight special dishes

When you feature a dish on your QR code menu, it is easier for the customers to notice it once they access the online menu. 

You can add images to each food item to catch their attention, likely encouraging them to purchase such items. 

Run a promotion on the built-in website of the QR code menu

Running a scheduled promotion on the interactive restaurant digital menu will save you time and effort. How is that so?

This QR code based restaurant menu software has different promotions; you only need to choose one from those choices to start preparing.

You can set the time and date to start and display the promotion. And to make it more appealing, add an image of your special deal. 

Have a prosperous Chinese New Year celebration with the help of a digital menu

Creating and implementing a Chinese New Year restaurant promotion is challenging, as it requires time, effort, and energy.

But with MENU TIGER, you can still operate smoothly on this busy holiday. This software can help you streamline operations, create engaging promotions, and provide quality customer service.

Go to the interactive QR code menu software and start your 14-day free trial today.