The Ultimate Guide to Preparing Your Restaurant for Easter and Passover
With Easter and Passover fast approaching, it’s wise to plan ahead and prepare your restaurant for the upcoming holidays. Many restaurants feature special menus and organize festive events to draw in customers for this occasion. Knowing that, your menu and décor need to be remarkable to stand out from the crowd.
Traditionally, both Easter and Passover are meant to be spent at home with family. If people choose to dine out (by themselves or with family or friends) and come to celebrate the holidays at your restaurant, it’s best to recreate a welcoming family-style environment through both food and décor.
Luckily, we have some useful tips for you. Keep on reading to find out what we recommend for your Easter / Passover restaurant prep.
Tips for Easter and Passover menu
1. Stock up on all necessary ingredients.
Prepping your restaurant for the holidays starts with gathering your supplies. For traditional Easter and Passover menus, the two key ingredients you need are fresh produce and meats. The timing of these holidays is great, because you can take advantage of a variety of fruits and vegetables that are in peak season now to create remarkable dishes.
Fortunately, Riviera Produce can help you with that. As a family-run restaurant food distributor with plenty of experience, we can provide just about anything your restaurant needs to get ready for the upcoming holidays.
Check out our wide selection of fresh produce and meats sourced from local farms in New York and New Jersey and stock up on Easter / Passover essentials today!
2. Combine Easter and Passover menu staples.
Although they overlap in time, Easter and Passover celebrate entirely different things. What’s more, Passover comes with some dietary restrictions, which you absolutely need to keep in mind as you’re designing the menu for this holiday. Food served during Passover should not include leavened grains such as rye, oats, wheat, barley or spelt.
To best way to capitalize on both these holidays is to create a hybrid themed menu that mixes Easter and Passover traditional dishes, so everyone feels included and has plenty of options to choose from. For meat-based dishes, you can offer both Beef Brisket, a traditional Passover dish and Rack of Lamb, a popular Easter food choice. For desserts, try including a Passover Popovers and Babka. Despite the heavy reliance of meat for these traditional dishes, don’t forget to include vegan options as well.
3. Make your menu kid-friendly.
Easter offers a lot of opportunities to get creative with the food in a way that is appealing to children. As this is a family holiday, most guests will likely bring their kids with them to your restaurant and expect to find some menu items designed for the youngsters.
That expectation does not end with portion sizes, although that is quite important as well. Easter bunny-shaped cookies or pancakes and colorful desserts will surely keep the kids happy and asking for more.
Tips for Easter and Passover restaurant décor
1. Set a refreshing spring mood.
If you’re hosting both Easter and Passover at your restaurant, you might find it challenging to decorate the place in a way that fits both holidays. In that case, it might help to look at the bigger picture. Both holidays are celebrated in the middle of spring, which gives you ample opportunity to create a refreshing ambiance for the season.
Depending on the style of your restaurant, you may opt for a discreet look or a more intense, colorful décor. Either way, pastel-colored table linens, floral patterns, and lots of greenery should do the trick.
2. Showcase Easter-specific decorations.
There are no traditional Passover decorations, so setting a lively, spring mood should suffice for this holiday. Easter, on the other hand, is ripe with décor ideas. You do need, however, to decide on a style and be consistent, so as not to overwhelm your customers.
To give you just a few starter ideas, you can include an Easter egg tree or egg baskets or fold your table napkins in the shapes of flowers or the Easter bunny. You can even invest in some festive food picks for appetizers and desserts.
3. Make it fun for the kids.
Most Easter décor ideas are also great for keeping kids happy and entertained. However, this holiday has so much potential when it comes to youngsters that it would be a pity not to capitalize on it. So, if you want to go the extra mile to make Easter special for the kids, try organizing mini family events.
One popular option would be to create an Easter egg hunt, complete with a costumed Easter Bunny to make it extra fun for children. You could also organize an egg basket raffle. If your budget allows, you may offer prizes such as free desserts for the kids or discount coupons for the families.
Crafting an Easter and Passover menu and décor plan for your restaurant should not be a hassle. These holidays do celebrate different events but there’s one important thing they have in common: spring. This season does not only offer fresh produce for your festive dishes but also serves as inspiration for your restaurant décor.
At the end of the day, it’s essential to create a welcoming, refreshing ambiance and plenty of food options for all your customers, that honors their traditions and makes them come back for more.