Preparing Your Business for Christmas: Five Tips to Get You Started

Christmas trading is undoubtedly hectic. It’s one of the busiest times of the year for most retail and hospitality businesses, so it requires a great deal of planning and preparation. So if you haven’t already, it’s time to start prepping your business for Christmas. 

During the silly season, there are holiday makers, frantic gift shoppers, and plenty of private functions. This ramp up in trading can often be coupled with inventory issues, as many suppliers may have limited stock, trading hour restrictions, or even have holiday closures.

This makes it absolutely vital that you take the time to organise properly forecast your needs over the holiday period.  To help get you on the right track, we’ve put together a quick checklist of things to get you started. 

Forecast your busiest days

Analysing your business’ previous sales data is a great tool to use in preparing your venue for the rush of the silly season.  With the reporting capabilities of your POS system you should be able to look back on your sales performance and identify your peak trading days and stock items.  This data is a great place to start, you can then use this to further plan suitable trading hours, and stock levels, giving your business an insight into what to expect when the madness begins. 

TIP: Check out our article on 8 Functional Reports You Can Generate in Epos Now 

Organise and Prepare your staff and rosters

The team you have working over the Christmas period are crucial to your success. So making sure you have enough staff members and that they are well prepared and ready for the rush is highly important.  Ensure they are aware of expectations for sales and service over this period. 

It’s also crucial to have the rosters done well in advance just in case last minute staff holiday plans pop up that need to be accommodated or staffing levels are correct.  Also, always plan for the unexpected so having a back up list of staff members available to fill in during the season can make all the difference.

Confirm Supplier delivery schedules

During this time there are numerous public holidays, and some businesses even close down completely for holiday periods.  So make sure you have planned ahead of time and know who is closing, when, and what days deliveries will be available.   

Because of this you may have to order stock for a three day period, when you usually are able to order every day, so this may require a lot of planning.

Advertise your opening hours

So maybe after analysing previous sales data you are looking to trade longer in the lead up to Christmas, or differ usual trading hours on public holidays, well you need to let your customers know.  

Working out your hours and putting a sign up ahead of time within your venue is a great way to reach those shopping directly within your store.  But it’s also extremely important to use your social media to expand your reach.  

You could utilise your Facebook cover photo and display your hours there so they are easily accessible. Do a post up and post across all your social platforms, and update your google business page.  Update your business website with these details and make sure you keep your customers well informed of any changes.

Order your consumables

While you will be busy getting your head around how much stock you need to have on hand for the holiday season, don’t forget to stock up on the consumables your business needs to run. Simple things like making sure you have enough change to cover the busy days and the public holiday, order up on takeaway utensils in your hospitality venue and checking you will have enough receipt and printer paper to get you through are things that are sometimes overlooked. 

There would be nothing worse than running out of receipt paper, when you rely on them to give your customers receipts on gift purchases or the paper that goes to your kitchen printer with all of your table orders.