Concepts for Success: 6 Ideas to Make Easter an Egg-cellent Event

Spring is just around the corner, which means it’s time to start planning for one of the biggest holidays for bakery owners and operators across Canada: Easter. The best time to start your Easter marketing is around three weeks before the event. It is the perfect time to step up your marketing and promotions to bring up extra business for your bakery. Here are some creative and easy marketing ideas for making this Easter an egg-stra fun, festive and profitable event.

Send “Easter egg” email greeting cards
Send well-designed, friendly Easter email greeting cards to your customers. You should also send some real greeting cards or postcards in the mail with a personal hand-written note, special Easter gift certificates or discounts to reward your best customers. It will help your customers feel special and appreciated, and this will certainly lead to long-term customer loyalty.

Play with Easter motifs in your window displays
Easter is all about the many varieties of colourful sweets! Focusing your bakery products around Easter theme will help catch the eye of your customers.

First, your window display should act as a teaser to entice people to come inside. Second, try to always draw up a plan before you start putting your products to the window; this plan will help you visualize the look of what you are trying to accomplish. Third, create great window displays where your bakery products will take the main stage in the window. Your customers should be able to just take a quick glance and decide to go inside to buy your beautiful cakes and pastries. Fourth, make sure that your bakery items are displayed at eye level. Go outside and take a look at your store window and just pretend that you are one of your customers walking down the street – what are they seeing? Fifth, add some fresh and dried flowers in different shaped baskets, fluffy little bunnies and Easter eggs, and voila – a perfect backdrop for your bakery products.

Bring colours and flowers inside your bakery
All bright colours are the order of the day for the Easter season. Spring is also a time when gardens start to come to life, and it is an egg-citing time to add some colour, and mild scent, to your bakery. Add some fresh soft spring pastel flowers inside and on top of your counters, tables, and throughout your bakery. Fresh-cut flowers are a wonderful addition to any space, providing a sweet aroma and bringing something fresh from the garden into a bakery.

The natural beauty of fresh and colourful flowers goes hand-in-hand near decadent cakes, cupcakes, chocolates, and desserts. Package and bundle your bakery products around a special and colourful Easter theme, and prepare your Easter baskets filled with wonderful cookies, cakes, or other sweet treats from your bakery, and don’t forget to attach a fresh flower to your packaging. You will create an opportunity to add additional freshness and to up-sell items where you can charge premium prices.

Make sure that you have the right number of staff
On Easter long weekend and most particularly on Easter Sunday, it isn’t the time to cut corners. You will significantly have more business during Easter Sunday than you normally have on regular Sundays, and therefore you should staff your bakery accordingly. Make sure that you have plenty of customer service ambassadors to help your guests have a positive experience in your bakery store.

Outfit your team with fluffy bunny ear headbands
How about super long fluffy pink ear headbands for your team members? Can you imagine your customers seeing all your staff members wearing these furry headbands? I really think your customers would remember your bakery forever. You could buy a mixture of long and bendable white and pink headbands and wash them afterward for your next Easter event. You could also outfit your street team in bunny costumes to attract attention and hand out flyers to invite customers in your bakery shop.

Make special Easter grab bags
Think outside the chocolate box. I am pretty sure that you have a lot of small items that didn’t sell well over Christmas, and instead of throwing out unwanted items, now’s the time to get rid of them via grab bags. Bundle three to five small items into special Easter grab bags, wrap with multi-coloured ribbons, and sell them for a very low price. You should also hand in an entry form for a chance to win a Mother’s Day cake. Each customer who buys a grab bag receives an entry form which needs to be filled right away, and this form is then placed in an Easter basket for a draw the following week. Place your grab bags at the cash register to take advantage of impulse sales.

Diane Chiasson, FCSI, president of Chiasson Consultants Inc., has been helping foodservice, hospitality and retail operators increase sales for over 30 years. She is recognized as the industry leader in providing innovative and revenue-increasing foodservice and retail merchandising programs, interior design, branding, menu engineering, marketing and promotional campaigns, and much more. Contact her at 416-926-1338, toll-free at 1-888-926-6655 or chiasson@chiassonconsultants.com, or visit www.chiassonconsultants.com.