Free pasta, discount deals, or online competitions are only a few ways to celebrate and partake in World Pasta Day this year.
For some restaurants and trattorias, celebrating this international event has become a tradition. Still, for the newcomers in the Italian cuisine scene, this global event might come off as a challenge.
Nine out of 10 Americans eat pasta on a weekly or daily basis, according to the International Pasta Organization (IPO). This shows that US consumers love pasta, and hosting campaigns and activities to celebrate it is necessary.
If you have been planning on creating flashy campaigns or activities for this year’s Pasta Day celebration, we have a list for you.
If you also want to revamp your holiday menu, we added a digital restaurant menu QR code software guide to help you update your offerings.
What is World Pasta Day
This global celebration was established by the World Pasta Congress in Rome, Italy, on October 25, 1995—just five days after International Chefs Day—to honor and promote pasta’s significance in the world of cuisine.
Pasta is a beloved food around the globe, and this yearly tradition serves as a way to celebrate its diversity and versatility.
The International Pasta Organization (IPO) and Italian Association of Confectionary and Pasta Industries (AIDEPI), the organizers of this event since 1998, use this day to educate people about pasta’s nutritional benefits, its economic importance, and its role in promoting a healthy and balanced diet.
Additionally, restaurant owners, chefs, and food enthusiasts use this to explore and experiment with new recipes, food pairing ideas, and offer the best pasta dishes in the world.
Most importantly, marketers leverage this day to develop restaurant branding ideas, marketing campaigns, and other offline and online promotional efforts that will boost their businesses. If you’re asking, “When is World Pasta Day this year?” the answer is October 25, Wednesday.
List of Pasta Day deals
There are so many ways you can boost your restaurant during this special day. Think of Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) marketing, seasonal marketing, or limited-time offers.
Use the sense of urgency to your advantage. Come up with deals that are hard for your target customers to say ‘No’ to. This way, you can easily retain your loyalists, attract new patrons, increase sales, and boost your brand image.
Here are some marketing campaigns and deals you can use on Pasta Day:
Discounts for loyal customers
Reward your regular customers with discounts for their pasta of choice. This strategy will help you retain your patrons while allowing them to enjoy the holiday with their favorite dish.
You can use a QR code menu software to access your customer database.
This will help you segment or identify the customers you want to offer discounts to, such as your regulars, those who left positive reviews, or those who frequently engage with you on social media.
Free pasta to the first x number of diners
Generate buzz and increase your foot traffic through this FOMO marketing strategy. Giving away freebies—in this case, pasta dishes—is an effective tactic that encourages potential customers to visit your restaurant at an earlier time of the day.
By offering a limiting factor of, say, the first 100 customers, you can entice onlookers to arrive early, invite friends with them, and share the news on their social media.
Website sign-up reward
You can reward the customers who click the ‘Subscribe’ or ‘Sign Up’ button on your website with a house-special pasta.
This helps you establish an excellent business-customer relationship, resulting in a solid customer base. You get to earn their loyalty, plus, you can leverage from word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing whenever they promote your food and services to friends online or offline.
Make-your-own pasta activity
You’d want to drive foot traffic into your restaurant during a busy holiday like World Pasta Day in 2023. You need to showcase the food and services you’re offering so visitors will have a good reason to try your offerings.
One good way to engage with tourists, onlookers, or your target market is through an interactive activity like a Make-Your-Own Pasta dish activity and let them enjoy creating their signature baked spaghetti dishes, cheesy tortellini, pesto penne, and the like.
But you need to make sure that you display your best menus to keep food costs down for it to be profitable.
Try offering a fixed, cheaper price for this activity, say, $10, to register and get a chance to cook any pasta of their choice inside your kitchen or at a pasta station set-up.
Of course, you need to display the sauces, toppings, cooked pasta, and the tools and equipment for this.
This instantly engages your customers, allowing them to get first-hand experience of how you actually prepare their food in your kitchen.
Pasta trivia online competition
If you’re aiming to boost your online presence, try hosting a trivia contest that revolves around pasta.
You can send direct messages via email, social media, or direct mail invites to your contacts—whether they’re your customers or not.
Winners get freebies, discounts, or other exclusive deals at your restaurant.
This helps establish an excellent online reputation while strengthening your social media community.
Pasta stories on social media
Boosting your social media for restaurants and other establishments not only requires your own efforts. You can encourage your customers, visitors, and even influencers to share stories about their experience with your service and food items.
This strategy has helped multiple businesses across various industries.
Ninety-two percent of customers say they trust restaurant recommendations from the people they follow or subscribe to online. This number also significantly impacted the food industry’s average return on investment (ROI).
Studies showed that the food and beverage industry saw a 10% increase in their ROI when they started investing more in social media and influencer marketing.
Taking these numbers into consideration, there might be a need for you to rethink and rebar your marketing strategies to maximize your efforts for Pasta Day.
Unlimited pasta campaign
The latest talk-of-the-town unlimited pasta campaign is the Olive Garden’s Never Ending Pasta Bowl.
For only $13.99, customers can enjoy unlimited pasta, a soup or salad of their choice, and Olive Garden’s famous breadsticks. Additional toppings of their choice will cost another $4.99, which is a great deal.
You can benchmark from this campaign to prepare your restaurant for the holiday season, specifically for the Pasta Day celebration.
Free pasta day
A classic way to entice customers is to offer a free sample of your very own best pasta dish in the world recipe or provide a free pasta dish with the purchase of an entree.
Giving out free samples introduces your pasta dishes to potential customers. This helps encourage repeat businesses by offering discount deals, limited-time offers, or upsell initiatives with your other menu items.
If they love your samples and counterpart deals, then great. Chances are that they will come back for more and use the discount you gave them.
Also, offering a free pasta dish to your customers who purchased an entree urges them to try and pay for your pasta offerings in the future.
World Pasta Day menu ideas: pasta and wine pairings
The “perfect wine pairing” is subjective. Your customers might find it amusing to pair a light white wine with blue cheese-based pasta. Or they might consider having a full-bodied red wine with pesto pasta.
However, if you are looking for ways to upsell or cross-sell your wine offerings during International Pasta Day, we have listed a few pasta and wine pairings for you to consider:
Cacio e Pepe with Chianti Classico or Pinot Noir
Your customers need a light-bodied Pinot Noir or Chianti Classico to balance the richness of the cheese and pepper.
These two wine choices have the right acidity to cleanse out the palate after each bite.
The good amount of tannins in Chianti Classico and Pinot Noir elevates the flavors without overpowering them while ensuring the palate refreshes after every sip, preparing your customers for another bite.
Pasta al Pomodoro with Verdicchio or Barbera
A classic Pomodoro pasta has distinct acidity due to the amount of crushed tomatoes the recipe calls for. This well-loved pasta needs a wine that can match its acidity.
You can offer a Verdicchio for those who love white wines or Barbera for the red wine lovers.
These wine options range from medium to full-bodied and have high acidity to balance the Pomodoro sauce.
Fettuccini Alfredo with Chardonnay or Pinot Noir
Alfredo pasta is known for its thick and creamy consistency, which works perfectly well with Pinot Noir or Chardonnay’s fruity and earthy flavors.
Additionally, since the Alfredo sauce is rich in fat, you’ll need to offer the perfect drink with the right acidity to cut through the fattiness.
Seafood Linguine with Pinot Grigio
Seafood-based pasta calls for lighter wines. If you’re serving Crab or Shrimp Linguine, you need to offer a crisp white wine that will not overpower the thickness or richness of the sauce.
A middle-weight Pinot Grigio goes perfectly with seafood pasta because it offers just the right bitterness and acidity.
Baked Spaghetti Dishes with Chianti or Merlot
Baked spaghetti dishes tend to be rich and savory with tomato sauce, cheese, and perhaps some meat like ground beef or sausage. Naturally, it needs a wine that would complement these intense flavors.
Chianti, a red wine from Tuscany, Italy, is known for its medium body, acidity, and flavors of cherry and earthiness. It pairs well with tomato-based sauces and the richness of baked cheese.
Similarly, Merlot’s soft tannins and fruity flavors can make it a versatile choice for many pasta dishes, including baked spaghetti. Its smoothness can complement the overall richness of the dish.
How to run your restaurant campaigns smoothly
Here’s a pro tip: invest in interactive restaurant menu software. It’s an all-in-one tool that facilitates your restaurant workflow, marketing, and branding strategies.
This will give you a boost, especially during holidays when campaigns are staggering and customers are queueing at your restaurant.
If you can’t decide which one to use (because there are a lot you can find online), check out MENU TIGER and try its features.
Mainly, it is a smart menu software that allows digital ordering and payment. You’ll need to know how to scan a menu, those with QR codes, to grasp the entire functionality and integrations of this tool.
Once integrated with your entire restaurant service, fewer staff members (despite the busy hours), efficient and more streamlined operations, effective marketing strategies, and more.
Solution to staff shortage
You’ll never worry about having fewer staff members than needed during such a busy day with digital restaurant software.
It’s an all-in-one tool that offers all the features and functionalities you’ll need to manage any type of restaurant.
From handling orders, recording payments, tracking customers’ requests, activating a restaurant waiter call button system, and implementing marketing strategies to distributing surveys for feedback and reviews, this software—MENU TIGER—has it for you.
Streamlines ordering and payment
A restaurant software’s main capacity is a seamless ordering and payment flow, especially if it has a QR code integration.
You can also use a QR menu for ordering without payment integrations, such as Paypal, Venmo, or Stripe, if you only accept cash payments or cards. It can serve as your digital menu, rerouting your customers to an online page for easier browsing of your restaurant offerings.
However, if you accept multiple e-payment options, fret not: You can integrate those, as well.
All you need is an active paid account for a trusted restaurant software.
Customizable QR code menu
When strategizing for seasonal campaigns, consider re-structuring and re-designing your menu. Doing this is inconvenient and impractical with a traditional or paper menu.
This is not the case with smart menus.
By logging into your account, you can access all the customization tools needed to design your menu QR code.
You can edit, update, and design your smart menu outright and in real-time.
Boosts branding strategies
Apart from customizing your menu, you can also develop your website through MENU TIGER. No coding and other programming is needed.
This means you can easily establish your online page and smart menu and design them according to your visual branding.
It’s advantageous to have this from the get-go. You’ll be able to change your website and menu designs without hassle.
Kickstart your holiday campaigns with a digital restaurant menu QR code
The International Pasta Day is just a one-day event, but it will surely pay off if you strategize the right way.
Don’t miss out on the fun and the opportunity to boost your restaurants.
Need help setting up and manning your business? Log in to MENU TIGER, a trusted digital restaurant menu QR code, and experience a seamless campaign.
