At a time when many business and attractions are in need of a little extra boost following a 3 month shutdown, the UK government announced a brand new scheme called ‘Eat Out to Help Out’.Below we explain how visitor attractions and tourist attractions can make the most of this government scheme at their park or site, plus we’ll explain how the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme really works. We thought we’d answer the most asked question first.
In a bid to boost the economy and encourage visitors back into attractions, restaurants, cafes and even on-site pubs, the Government’s brand new Eat Out to Help Out scheme gives customers up to 50% off meals out. That includes any food and drink purchased during their visit, not including any alcoholic beverages. This 50% discount will apply up to a maximum of £10 per person. This great discount will apply to any of your customers who visit Monday – Wednesdays during August. Your visitor or tourist attraction, as a participating business, can claim the money back from the government weekly, receiving funds within 5 working days. You must have been registered before the 7th July, if you have not registered the government advise you contact your local authority.
Any visitor or tourist attraction with on site restaurant, cafe’s pubs or kiosks can apply to be a part of this scheme. Any businesses who sign up to scheme will join a list of selected businesses where the 50% discount applies.
Visitors who come for the day to your park or attraction can then enjoy the discount for all the family, in a bid to encourage families to start spending at attractions and putting money back into the economy.
Yes, the Eat Out to Help Out scheme applies to both adults and children, meaning you can happily serve up discounts to all of your attraction visitors. So whether its a couple on a meal out at your attraction restaurant saving up to £20 or a family of four in the café, they could make massive savings of up to £40.
There’s no re-training needed for staff, simply deduct the relevant amount from a customer’s bill at the end of their meal and apply for a refund from the government on each of those sales weekly. You won’t need to input an actual voucher code from the customer, nor will the government provide vouchers to be scanned. The discount is applied at the till and the customers will simply pay their discounted price.
You may need to set up a voucher code on the till to ensure that each staff member applies the discount correctly. If you are unsure of how to set this up pleaser contact your hospitality EPOS provider. Alternatively if you are a customer of VisiSoft, you can speak to our support team, we are offering a plug in that will automatically apply the discounts within the parameters of the deal all that needs inputting is the amount of diners. If you don’t opt for the plug and take a manual approach you may have to create a discount code and apply it for every transaction based on the number of diners and work out where the discount can be applied.
The scheme starts on the 3rd August and will run throughout the whole of August. Remember though this will only apply to your attraction visitors on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The discount won’t apply on Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday. The discount also does not apply for alcohol, or for takeaway meals.
The month of August in the tourist attraction and visitor attraction industry has always been a busy one, if not the busiest month. With children out of school families are more likely to plan days out, with days out comes spend at on site retail and food outlets. Anyone who eats at a participating business, Monday to Wednesday for the month of August, can receive up to 50% off.
It will incentivise customers to eat in your restaurants, cafe’s or other eating establishment by giving them a discount which you can then claim back. The aim of the scheme is to help drum up custom on quieter days of the week and means you can build your business and attractions back up.
The government have advised that you display signage around you park to help visitors understand what restaurants and cafes are part of the scheme. As this doesn’t apply to takeaways or food vans and other pop up kiosks, you may have to be clearer in you identification of these participating outlets.
The government have also set up an online search portal so that your customers can clearly identify what restaurants are participating in this promotional scheme.
We’d encourage you to use this as an opportunity to sell days out to your customers, post on social media if your participating, get it added to your website. This is a great incentive to drive footfall in August and try to make back some of those lost revenue streams that were incurred during lockdown.
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