Will the New Year season take place? The opinion of restaurateurs and hospitality workers

On September 17, a business breakfast was held at the Willing Hotel conference hall for restaurant business owners and HoReCa employees, dedicated to the upcoming New Year season. The organizer – Relax.by.

Four experts were invited to the business breakfast "New Year's banquets: from customer attraction to positive feedback". More than 80 guests came to listen to the speakers, meet and exchange opinions.

The moderator of the meeting, host with 10 years of experience, Yegor Danchenko, cited data from the Relax.by study, according to which 55% of more than 100 surveyed companies plan to celebrate the New Year. From his own experience, Yegor identified several reasons why the winter season will still take place:

- Despite the situation in the country, my forecast for the upcoming season is moderately optimistic. Based on the feedback from my clients, the events are planned. There will most likely be few large banquets for 200-300 people. But local companies will hold corporate events. Another feature of this season is the later booking of banquets. If last year it was already August, then this, I think, everyone will become more active by the end of October-November.

The first speaker at the business breakfast was Ekaterina Ovseichik, head of the Guardo event agency. She spoke about the key moments of the agency's interaction with the restaurant.

Tatyana Anisimova, the founder of the educational project "Academy of HOREKA HELP", spoke about the culture of serving corporate clients and the secrets of proper service.

The speech of the co-founder and development director of the ARTOX company Maxim Mikhalev “Digitalization of the menu in a restaurant” became an excursion into the near future. Maxim spoke about the innovative Relax.by service - QR-menu.

- This is a ready-made IT solution that easily replaces or supplements the restaurant's own website, is implemented within one day, allows you to take orders for delivery and takeaway, and make electronic payments.

The information block was completed by an online speech by Russian consultant, business coach and blogger Natalia Kulakova. She focused on how to make the holiday unique, how to be friends with clients and turn them into partners. Natalia emphasized that it is necessary to sell the New Year now, and gave several life hacks on how to do it unobtrusively and effectively.

Another point of Natalia Kulakova's speech was lean management. The main idea of this approach is to earn more with fewer resources and with minimal risks.

After the main part of the event, the guests switched to networking.

- We received some marketing tools that we plan to use. I liked Natalia Kulakova's performance very much: cool cases, professional analysis, many interesting moments that can be adopted, - notes Marina, a marketer at the Rakovsky Brovar restaurant.

- The New Year's season this year will definitely take place, - convinced her colleague, the director of Perec Lounge Dmitry. - There are always people who want to have a good rest, to celebrate a holiday in an institution with their employees. We will invite such optimists to our place.

Relax.by is an information portal about rest and entertainment in Belarus, created in 2006. The project is a part of the ARTOX company, which has been a resident of the High-Tech Park since 2012.