Now that your turkey coma is in the rearview, it’s go time.
Everyone is requesting the same days off, half your team is under the weather, last-minute callouts are leaving you short-staffed, customers being less than nice, the supplier’s out of fryer oil, and some giant catering order just showed up out of nowhere.
And your delivery driver? Yeah, they’re stuck in traffic. Of course they are.
Before you pull a Carmie and lock yourself in the walk-in (accidentally or otherwise), here are a few tips that’ve helped other restaurant owners survive the holiday stretch:
Set your cutoffs.
Last-minute catering requests can explode a shift before it even starts. The smart move? Cut it off 24–48 hours out. This pro move keeps the kitchen sane, and expectant customers less cranky.
If you want to take it a step further, put those cutoffs everywhere a customer might look—order form, socials, Google, even the little laminated sign by the register. Clear expectations save you from explaining “why you can’t just do one more tray” when you’re already buried.
Trim the menu.
Even for a week. Drop the time-consuming, low-margin stuff. Shorter menu, faster tickets, fewer mistakes, less stress.
And don’t be afraid to get ruthless. If it takes one person off the line for more than a few minutes or blows up the dish pit every time it’s ordered, it can take a holiday nap. Operators tell us they’re shocked by how little pushback they get when the trade-off is speed.
Pre-batch what sells.
If you know you’re going to burn through mac or mashed potatoes, get ahead of it.
Make a game plan the night before: what historically sells the most? What do you always run out of? Pre-batching isn’t cutting corners—it’s protecting the line from going off the rails at 5 p.m. when you’re 40 tickets deep and someone just ordered five family trays.
Keep morale alive.
Between traffic, in-laws, and Christmas music playing everywhere, patience runs thin, (and not just for the scrooges among us). Toss someone a $25 or $50 gift card, or a pizza, or let a tired cook or server head out early. It goes a long way.
Morale isn’t about big gestures, either. Sometimes it’s just stepping in on expo for ten minutes so someone can breathe. Or bringing in hot chocolate. Or telling them you see how hard they’re grinding. Little boosts go further than you’d think.
Have a backup driver ready.
When delivery spikes or someone ghosts, one extra body can save the night.
Some operators keep a “holiday bench”—a former staffer home from college, a friend who’s down to make some quick cash, a second cousin twice removed who drives like the wind. Whoever it is, having that number ready avoids the slow, painful death spiral of backed-up deliveries.
Update your hours everywhere.
Google, website, socials — all of it. Avoid the “but Google said you’re open” drama before it starts.
And while you’re at it, double-check your holiday menu, your catering hours, your specials, and any delivery cutoffs. If it’s written down somewhere, update it. Someone will absolutely screenshot the one outdated version and show it to you.
Don’t forget yourself.
Drink some water. Eat real food — not just the cookies in the tin your great-aunt drops off every year. Go for a walk around the block. You can run this shift. You can run this whole circus. But not if you’re running on caffeine, adrenaline, and whatever broken sugar cookies your neighbor left on the counter.
Restaurant folks are Olympic-level at putting themselves last. But the holidays are a marathon, not a sprint — and if you burn out on day four, the rest of December gets real messy. Protect your energy the way you protect your walk-in inventory.
The holidays bring more volume for some, but not always more profit. We get it.
That’s what we’ve seen out there. We’re Menufy, part of the HungerRush crew. We work with restaurant folks every day, and we know this season’s no joke.