When you find out that something’s not working with your bar, do you automatically think it’s the product or the marketing that is the problem?

I’m working on an event that did well last year but needs to do better, and the people I’m working with want to change the days of the event – they think that’s the problem….me, I think that the day doesn’t really matter too much, if you have enough good marketing & advertising it will bring people in and the event will be successful.

So I typically always think that there’s nothing wrong with a product, it’s the marketing that’s needs to be improved. Well, in the case of today’s tip, we are going against my usual approach and we’re changing the product a little.

This week’s tip is about changing your happy hour around so it appeals to more customers.

Now onto the tip:

For all the bars that have successful happy hours from the “regular”
happy hours of 4-7 pm, there are a bunch of places that just can’t get happy hour to work for them.

The reason is that lots of customers just can’t make it to your bar in time to take advantage of happy hour. With more people working odd hours and commuting to and from urban centers, many working people miss out on happy hour times because they’re either still at work or in the car.

How can you change your happy hour to reach this other set of customers?

Two words – reverse it. Alter your happy hour to include a different set of happy hour times – turn it into a reverse happy hour.

Here’s how it works – a reverse happy hour is similar to a regular happy hour with drink specials or a dollar amount off food and drinks (like 2 4 1cocktails.) The big difference is that a reverse happy hour takes place during different times of day, i.e. NOT from 4-7 pm on weekdays.

A reverse happy hour usually creates a late night crowd and runs from around 10 pm ’til 1 or 2 am. The drink and food specials can be the same as what you offer for the normal happy hour, or you can create your own reverse happy hour menu with discounts on food and drinks.

Reverse happy hours reach younger clientele and commuters that wouldn’t normally be able to visit your bar during regular happy hour. It also appeals to the thousands of people who work retail hours.