23 Tactics to Increase Footfall in Your Pub

Last updated: 23 April 2026

Most pub licensees believe footfall drops because of the economy, the weather, or the competition down the road—but the real driver of low covers is that customers simply don’t know you exist or don’t have a reason to choose you. I’ve run the numbers on 15+ years of trade at Teal Farm Pub, and the pubs that hold steady or grow aren’t the ones with the cheapest pints—they’re the ones with a consistent reason for people to walk through the door. This guide covers 23 tactics I’ve tested and refined through everything from quiet Tuesday nights to Saturday match days with 180 covers. You’ll learn the specific actions that actually move the needle on footfall, not the generic “be nice to customers” advice that clutters most hospitality blogs. By the end, you’ll know exactly which tactics apply to your pub’s model and which ones will waste your time.

Why Footfall Drops—And Why Most Tactics Fail

The most effective way to increase footfall in your pub is to give customers a specific, repeatable reason to visit on a named day or time. This isn’t opinion—it’s what the data shows when you look at real booking patterns and till receipts over 12 months.

Most publicans think footfall is random. It isn’t. It’s driven by habit, social commitment, and convenience. A customer doesn’t decide to visit your pub at 7pm on a random Tuesday. They decide to visit because it’s quiz night, or because their mates always meet there on Friday, or because you do the best burger in the area and they’re bringing their family on Sunday.

Here’s the mistake I see constantly: licensees invest in one-off promotions—a poster, a Facebook ad, a discount code—and expect the phone to ring. It doesn’t work that way. A one-time discount brings in maybe 20 covers and then they’re gone. A weekly quiz night brings in 60 covers every single week, plus bar tab spend from people who stay for drinks after. The second tactic costs less in time and money, but it requires you to commit to a schedule and consistency.

The second reason most tactics fail is that pub owners try to copy the big branded chains—Wetherspoons, Marston’s premium estates—without understanding the resources those operations have. Wetherspoons runs a £1.50 pint promotion because they have 600+ pubs and margins to absorb it. You can’t compete on price. You compete on specificity, consistency, and community.

Quiz Nights, Sports Events & Fixed Programming

This is the tactic that moves the needle fastest because it costs almost nothing and it’s repeatable. At Teal Farm Pub, quiz nights happen every Wednesday at 8pm. Rain or shine, good week or bad week, it’s locked in. That commitment—more than the prize money—is what brings people back.

How to Launch a Quiz Night Without Flopping

• Pick a fixed night and stick to it for at least 12 weeks. People need to trust that it’s actually happening. Winging it week-to-week kills attendance. Pick Wednesday or Thursday—quieter nights that need a boost.
• Publicise it 3 weeks before launch. Tell regular customers, post it on your Google Business Profile, mention it in conversations. People need time to plan and tell their mates.
• Run it from a simple phone or tablet app, not a printed sheet. You’ll spend less time scoring and you can adjust categories on the fly. The software does the work.
• Keep the entry fee low (£1–2 per person, or free with a 2-drink minimum). The money comes from the bar, not the entry fee. The entry fee is just a commitment device so people show up.
• Start with 8–10 teams, not 30. A tight quiz with a tight competition feels different than a crowded room where half the teams aren’t engaged. Quality beats volume.

The revenue isn’t the £2 entry fee. It’s the drinks. A quiz night team of 6 people, each buying 2–3 drinks over 2 hours, is £50+ of bar revenue you wouldn’t get otherwise. Run that weekly for 52 weeks, and you’ve added £2,600 of revenue in a dead slot. Most publicans never do the maths.

Sports Events & Match Days

Football, rugby, boxing, darts—if your pub has a screen, you have a tool to generate footfall on fixed dates. The tactic is simpler than quiz nights: make sure you have the subscription, promote the event, and make sure your till system can handle the rush.

This is where your EPOS system actually matters. On a match day with 180 covers, you need a till that can process bar tabs, card payments, and kitchen tickets simultaneously without grinding to a halt. During my evaluation of best pub EPOS systems guide, I tested this exact scenario—a Saturday night with a full house, card-only payments, and kitchen orders running at the same time. Most systems that look good in a demo struggle when three staff are hitting the same terminal during last orders. That real-world pressure is what matters.

Sports events only work if your staff can deliver drinks and food fast enough to keep customers happy. Speed matters more than price on match days. If your kitchen can’t push food out in 15 minutes, don’t advertise food on match days—stick to bar snacks and pre-prepped items.

Live Music, Open Mics & Entertainment

Live music works if two conditions are met: the performer is consistent (same night, every week, or published schedule), and the sound level doesn’t kill conversation. Many pubs run live music once, it goes badly, and they never try again. That’s a missed opportunity.

Open mic nights are cheaper to run and they build community faster because regular customers become performers and bring their own audiences. The economics: one acoustic performer, £50–100 appearance fee, covers cost within 10 customers. If you get 30 covers, you’ve added £150 of margin and built a habit.

Food Service & Kitchen Integration

Food service is the single fastest way to increase both cover numbers and average spend per customer—but it’s also the easiest to get wrong. Many pub owners add a kitchen and then wonder why it doesn’t move the needle.

The mistake: thinking that food is a separate business from the bar. It isn’t. The best food-led pubs are the ones where the kitchen is integrated into the bar operation, not hidden away. That means your bar staff need to know what’s in the kitchen, prep times need to be visible, and your EPOS system needs to push orders to the kitchen the moment they’re placed.

What Menu Works for a Wet-Led Pub Adding Food?

Don’t copy the gastropub menu from the 10-cover fine-dining place next door. Your customers aren’t coming for a 2-hour tasting menu. They’re coming for comfort food that’s fast, consistent, and good value.

• Burgers, pies, fried chicken, fish and chips. These are fast (10–15 minutes), forgiving (margins stay good even if you give away 5%), and familiar. People know what to expect.
• Loaded fries and nachos. Bar snacks with premium pricing. Low prep, high margin. A £6 nacho order nets £4 margin and it takes 3 minutes to assemble.
• Sunday roasts (if you have kitchen capacity). A sticky driver for Sunday footfall. Market it hard and keep the price competitive—people compare Sunday roasts across their area.
• Avoid: salads, multiple dietary options, and anything that requires more than 4 ingredients. You’re not a restaurant. You’re a pub with a kitchen. Complexity kills speed, and speed is what keeps customers happy.

The menu should be designed around your kitchen’s peak capacity during your busiest times. If your busiest time is Friday/Saturday nights and you have one person in the kitchen, your menu should handle 60 covers in 3 hours without stress. That means burgers, not beef wellington.

Linking Food Service to EPOS Data

Here’s the insight most pub owners miss: your till knows which menu items sell, which times are busiest, and which staff are fastest. Use that data.

If you see that burgers are your top 3 items and they drive £400 weekly revenue, you should feature them on the blackboard, mention them to every customer who walks in, and train staff to upsell them. If you see that pies only sell on Sundays, don’t waste kitchen space stocking them Tuesday through Thursday.

When selecting technology for Teal Farm Pub, I tested EPOS systems during peak trading—specifically a Saturday night with full house, card-only payments, kitchen tickets, and bar tabs running simultaneously. Most systems that look good in a demo struggle when you’re actually pushing the limits. The real cost of an EPOS system is not the monthly fee; it’s the staff training time and the lost sales during the first two weeks of use. Get this wrong and you’ll waste more in lost time than you save in monthly fees.

EPOS-Driven Upselling & Data Intelligence

The most accurate way to understand which tactics increase footfall is to measure cover numbers, average spend, and repeat customer rate against the specific tactic you tested. Without data, you’re guessing. With it, you’re leading.

Your EPOS system should tell you:

• How many customers you served, broken down by time of day and day of week.
• Which items sell together (e.g., pints and crisps, wine and cheese boards).
• Which customers are repeat visitors (loyalty ID, card payment frequency, or regular tab names).
• Average spend per customer and per transaction.
• Staff performance on speed, accuracy, and upselling.

Most wet-led pubs ignore this data completely. They run till reports, see total revenue, and call it a day. That’s like a farmer checking if the rain fell but not measuring if the crops grew.

Upselling Without Annoying Customers

Here’s what actually works: train your staff to mention one premium option when they take an order. “Will that be a standard lager, or would you prefer the cask ale?” Not a hard sell. A gentle option. The conversion rate is 20–30%, and it adds 40–60p per customer. On 100 customers a night, that’s £40–60 extra revenue with zero additional cost.

The second upsell that works is food-to-drink bundling. If someone orders a burger, suggest a pint or a soft drink. If someone orders one drink, suggest a snack. The pub profit margin calculator shows that a customer who buys both food and drink spends 2.5x more than one who buys either alone.

Train your staff on this and measure the impact in your EPOS data. You’ll see average spend move within 2–3 weeks.

Loyalty & Repeat Customer Systems

One-time customers cost money. You pay for the marketing, they come once, and they’re gone. Repeat customers are the profit engine.

The most effective loyalty system I’ve seen is stupidly simple: every 10th pint is free. No app, no card scan, no faffing about. Just a punch on a card. Customers can see their progress (psychological commitment) and they know exactly when their free drink is coming. That alone drives repeat visits.

Your EPOS system should track this automatically. If you’re punching cards by hand, you’re wasting staff time that could be spent taking orders.

Local Partnerships & Community Building

Footfall grows fastest when you become the default meeting place for a specific group: dog walkers, sports teams, shift workers, parents, office workers, students. The pub they choose is usually the one closest to where they gather, or the one where someone already hangs out and invites the group.

Sports Teams & Club Partnerships

If there’s a rugby club, football team, darts league, or running club within 2 miles of your pub, approach them with a specific offer: “We’ll sponsor your team (kit, trophy, entry fee) if you make us your home pub.” The cost to you is £200–500. The return is 15–20 regular customers, 20–30 weeks a year, plus their families and supporters on match days.

This works because it creates a community. Those 15 people tell their mates, their mates bring girlfriends, and suddenly you’ve got 50+ covers on a night that would have done 20.

Office & Business Partnerships

If there’s an office, warehouse, factory, or commercial estate within 10 minutes’ walk of your pub, approach the manager or team leaders. Offer them an account (tab on company bill, settled weekly) or a discount for lunch. Happy hour from 12–1pm during the week costs you nothing in media but captures 20–30 covers five days a week.

At Teal Farm Pub, I’ve tested this extensively, and the ROI is immediate. A warehouse team that comes for lunch once a week becomes a habit. They bring their mates. Suddenly you’ve got steady daytime traffic.

Local School & Parent Groups

If you’re near a primary or secondary school, approach the parent groups, after-school clubs, or activity coordinators. Offer discounted soft drinks for kids and reasonable pricing on coffee and food for parents. Weekend family sessions (quiz with kids’ section, face painting, supervised activities in the garden) cost you £50 in materials but can drive 40+ covers on a slow Saturday afternoon.

Staff Retention & The Customer Experience

Here’s something most hospitality consultants won’t tell you: your footfall problem might not be marketing—it might be that your staff are burned out and it shows. When customers come in and your bar staff look miserable, move slowly, or can’t answer basic questions about the menu, people leave and don’t come back. Footfall doesn’t drop because of the pub. It drops because of the service.

Staff turnover directly reduces footfall because new staff are slower, less knowledgeable, and they don’t build relationships with regular customers. A customer who has had the same bartender for a year feels known and valued. A customer who gets a different person every visit feels like a transaction.

How to Retain Staff Without Breaking the Budget

• Pay 5–10% above the minimum wage for the area. You don’t need to pay London salaries, but you need to pay enough that your staff aren’t broke. Staff who work other jobs because they need the money are distracted and unreliable.
• Offer consistent hours. Most pub staff juggle 3–4 jobs because no single pub offers full-time work. Give them a published schedule 4 weeks in advance and stick to it. Reliability matters more than an extra £50 per week.
• Invest in training. Spend 2 hours showing a new barista how to make drinks properly. Spend 1 hour training them on your menu. The time investment pays back within 2 weeks in faster service and fewer complaints.
• Recognize good performance visibly. Post a handwritten note on the staff board: “Joe had the fastest service time last week.” Sounds silly, but staff care about this. It’s proof their work matters.
• Ask staff what they need. If your kitchen staff say they need a better fryer, listen. If your bar staff say they want later shifts, explore it. Staff who feel heard are staff who stay.

The benchmark for UK pub labour cost is 25–30% of turnover. At Teal Farm Pub, we’ve held it at 15% while still paying above minimum wage and keeping staff turnover below 20% annually. How? Consistency, proper training, and treating people like they matter. It’s not rocket science, but it’s rare.

When your staff are stable, happy, and competent, customers feel it immediately. They come back more often. They spend more. They recommend you to friends. That’s the real driver of footfall growth.

Digital Visibility & Local SEO

Most pubs ignore SEO and digital visibility until footfall drops. By then, it’s too late. Your customers are finding your pub on Google, on their phone, before they decide to visit. If you’re not there, they go somewhere else.

Google Business Profile (The Non-Negotiable)

Your Google Business Profile guidelines are the foundation. If you don’t have one, create it today. If you have one but it’s outdated, fix it immediately.

What matters:

• Accurate opening hours and phone number (customers call to check if you’re open).
• Real photos of your pub interior, garden, and food (taken on your phone, not stock photos).
• Weekly posts about events (quiz night, match day, food specials).
• Star rating and reviews (ask customers to leave them; respond to every review within 48 hours).

This takes 30 minutes per week and it’s the single most important digital asset you have. Customers find your pub here first, before Facebook, Instagram, or your website.

Website & Local Keywords

You don’t need a fancy website. You need a website that answers three questions: Where are you, what do you serve, and when are you open?

Optimize it for local searches: “best pub in Washington,” “quiz nights near me,” “Sunday roast Washington,” “sports bar NE38.” These keywords are less competitive than national queries and they drive people who are actually near you.

Internal links within your site matter. If you write a blog post about your weekly quiz, link it to your menu page and your booking page. If you mention your food offer, link to your Google Business Profile location. The web is about connection. Build it.

Social Media (Not for Broadcasts, for Community)

Stop posting drink specials on Facebook. Nobody cares. Start posting behind-the-scenes photos, staff achievements, customer photos from events, and stories about why you love running the pub. People follow people, not brands.

Your best social content is:

• A photo of a packed quiz night (FOMO is real).
• Your cook plating a burger (shows care and skill).
• A customer review or testimonial (third-party validation).
• A poll or question asking what your customers want to see next (engagement and feedback).

Post 2–3 times per week, not every day. Quality over frequency. Respond to every comment and message within 24 hours. That’s what builds community on social media.

For a deeper understanding of the full technology stack your pub might need beyond just marketing, see Pub IT Solutions UK: The Technology Stack Every Modern Pub Needs. It covers EPOS, cellar management, booking systems, and staff scheduling—all of which feed into footfall and profitability.

23 Tactics Summary: Quick Reference

Here’s the full list in order of impact:

1. Weekly quiz night (Tuesday or Wednesday).
2. Fixed sports event broadcasting (football, rugby, boxing).
3. Sunday roast service.
4. Loyalty scheme (10th drink free).
5. Team sponsorship (local sports club or league).
6. Office/workplace lunch partnership.
7. Live music or open mic night.
8. Food menu optimization based on EPOS data.
9. Staff training and retention program.
10. Upselling training (1 premium option per customer).
11. Google Business Profile optimization.
12. Weekly social media posts.
13. Weekly Google Business Profile posts about events.
14. Family sessions (weekend activities for parents and kids).
15. Happy hour for office workers (12–1pm weekdays).
16. Local school/parent group partnerships.
17. Website local SEO optimization.
18. Photo documentation of events (social proof).
19. Email list for regular customers (event invitations).
20. Dog-friendly area and dog walkers’ meetup.
21. Charity partnership or community fundraiser (annual or quarterly).
22. Staff recognition board (public acknowledgment of good performance).
23. Seasonal menu rotation (keeps existing customers coming back to see what’s new).

Don’t try all 23. Pick the 5 that match your pub’s location, capacity, and personality. Test them for 12 weeks, measure the impact on cover numbers and average spend in your EPOS data, and then expand what works. That’s how you grow footfall sustainably.

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