How to attract customers to your bar on weeknights

The essentials in five points

• Pick one night and stick to it: a fixed weekly event takes several weeks to become a habit.
• Give a specific reason to come rather than a blanket discount.
• Announce the event where your customers look: Google listing, event calendars, social media, a poster at the counter.
• Test one lever at a time for 6 weeks, backed by figures.
• Never use contact details collected for an event to promote your own business.

Klarrro Pro, our event software for bars, matches lever no. 4, the singles night. The other seven can be set up with or without a tool.

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Before you choose: measure your starting point

Without a starting point, you cannot tell whether a lever worked. For the night you want to fill, record the last 4 weeks, always on the same day:

• time-slot attendance: the number of till receipts gives an approximation, a head count at the door a more accurate measure;
• time-slot revenue: over the same hours, not the whole day;
• average spend per ticket: revenue divided by the number of receipts;
• time-slot cost: the staff on duty that night;
• context: school holidays, a televised match, the weather, an event in the neighborhood.

A lever is worth it if it earns more than it costs. That calculation, not the number of people in the room, is what decides.

The 8 levers to attract customers on weeknights

The first four create a reason to come. The next four bring people in and make them return. They can be combined, but test them one by one.

1. Set up a fixed weekly event

A customer who knows that “on Tuesdays, there is the quiz” can plan ahead. One who discovers the event the same evening only comes if they happened to walk past. So the first lever is not an activity but a habit: same day, same time, same name, several weeks in a row.

• Give the event a short name and keep it.
• Announce the following dates from the start, not just the first one.

With Klarrro, bulk creation schedules in a single action one event per week, or one event per month on the same day of the week (the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th or last Tuesday, for example). The whole series is counted as soon as it is created: it must fit within the events you have left to create. With Étoile and Pro, it counts against the quota of the month of creation, even if some dates fall in the following month.

2. Theme nights

A theme gives people something to talk about and a reason to choose your bar that night. It works best when it extends your identity: beers from a region, a musical decade, a cuisine, a sport, a language exchange night.

• Keep the day fixed and rotate the theme, not the other way round.
• Prepare little, but make it visible: a chalkboard, a music selection, a short menu.

Before turning up the volume, keep two rules in mind, as reminded by Bpifrance Création. Playing music requires authorization from Sacem, with two fees: author’s rights (Sacem) and equitable remuneration (Spré). Beyond 6 concerts or shows a year, a show-promoter declaration is required.

3. Quizzes, blind tests and games

A quiz is played in teams until the final ranking: it is a whole evening, not a quick visit. It also gives teams a reason to return: the rematch. Two ways to run it:

• With a provider. On the Évènementiel pour tous directory, the first 16 “Animation blind test - Quizz” listings show “from” prices ranging from €150 to €999. Mondevis puts a karaoke night at from €200. These prices mainly target private or corporate events: for a weekly event, negotiate.
• With your team and a tool. A team member hosts the game and the questions are shown on a screen. The cost is mostly preparation time.

With the Pro and Élite plans, Klarrro offers a quiz, a Truth or Dare and a prize draw, launched from the dashboard or by a team member with the “Host” role. They are displayed on the VideoWall Love: a web page to open in the browser of a computer connected to a television or a projector, or directly on a smart TV. The screen is optional. What each plan includes is listed on the Pricing page.

4. The singles night

It targets customers who might not have come that night anyway: people who go out alone or with friends to meet others. With Klarrro, this is not speed dating: no tables or rounds, everyone stays in the room and writes to other badges whenever they like.

• Participants scan the event QR code, or enter its code in the ABC-123 format. The app opens in the phone’s browser.
• When signing up in the app, each participant provides an email address and a phone number, then receives a badge number assigned in sequence by the app. Participants are identified by this number, with no name displayed.
• A match is when two badges have written to each other. Match celebrations on the VideoWall Love are anonymous.
• The Safe Place button lets a participant send an alert to your team during the event. The collected contact details can be used if law enforcement requests them, during their retention period.

For step-by-step organization, read our guide to the singles night in a bar and the Safe Place page.

Want to see how a Klarrro event is run? Book a demo

5. After-work events and partnerships

The shortest path to an audience goes through someone who already has one. On weeknights, three kinds of partners often look for a venue:

• Local companies: a team after-work, with a reserved area, a set time, a short menu. Contact the general services or the works council.
• Associations: sports clubs after training, cultural associations, alumni groups. Many meet on a fixed day and look for a place to gather.
• Students: student unions and student associations organize regular events and pass the word on to their members.

Put the agreement in writing, even in three lines: the night, the space, what you offer (welcome, reserved table, dedicated menu) and what the partner does (announce the event). Offer them the night you want to fill, not your Friday.

6. Local communication

An event nobody sees does not exist. Start before the first date.

• Your Google Business Profile: creating and managing it is free of charge. Publish an “Event” post (title, dates, times): it appears in your profile, on Google Maps and in Google Search, on mobile and on desktop. Each “Event” post has its own start and end dates: publish one for each date of the event. Also keep your evening opening hours up to date.
• Your city’s event listings: tourist office, local media. A Klarrro event can also appear in the klarrro.com agenda, and an agenda widget can be embedded in your website.
• Instagram and your social media: announce the date in advance, then remind people on the day. Klarrro generates, from templates, a vertical video story of 1,080 × 1,920 pixels (MP4).
• In the bar: your weekend customers can become your weekday ones. Display the date at the counter and in the restrooms. For a Klarrro event, the A4 poster with the event QR code can be downloaded from the dashboard.

7. Targeted offers rather than a blanket discount

Lowering all prices on Tuesday cuts your margin on customers who would have come anyway, without giving the others a specific reason to come. An offer tied to the event, by contrast, rewards those who come for it: a sharing platter for the winning quiz team; a group rate for a partner’s after-work, with no all-you-can-drink alcohol package; a drink created for the theme.

Two rules of the French Public Health Code, as reminded by Bpifrance Création, govern these offers. A happy hour on alcohol requires you to also offer non-alcoholic drinks at reduced prices. And open bars are prohibited: no alcohol offered in unlimited quantities for a commercial purpose, nor sold mainly for a flat fee, except at declared or authorized traditional festivals and fairs (articles L3322-9 and L3334-1 of the Public Health Code).

In a Klarrro event, the Bar Mini Challenges bring people to the counter without a discount. The app proposes that a participant, drawn at random or chosen by your team, offer a drink, with or without alcohol, to another badge. They can decline the challenge; otherwise, they scan the bar QR code at the counter, then the recipient confirms. You enable these challenges and set their maximum number per badge.

8. Bringing customers back

The easiest customer to get in on a Tuesday is often one who has already come on a Tuesday.

• Announce the next date before the end of the night: on the mic, on the screen, on the poster. In a Klarrro event, your team can send a message to all participants.
• Offer simple loyalty: a stamp card, or a multi-week ranking of the quiz teams.
• Build your own audience: the bar’s Instagram followers, a newsletter. To send advertising by email or SMS to individuals, their prior consent is generally required, as the CNIL reminds.
• Listen to feedback: after a Klarrro event, send a review request by email from the dashboard. Participants rate the event from 1 to 5, and the average rating is shown in the Feedback module.

What not to do: reuse the emails and phone numbers of a Klarrro event’s participants to announce the next one. The terms of use prohibit the organizer from using participants’ data outside the scope of the event.

How much each lever costs

The prices below are those published on October 10, 2026 by the Mondevis price guides and the Évènementiel pour tous directory. They mainly target private or corporate events and do not always specify whether they are excl. VAT or incl. VAT. Where there is no reliable public source, the table says “variable”.

These services are not equivalent: a DJ gets people dancing, a host runs a game, Klarrro provides an event format and the tools to run it. Compare each one to what the time slot must earn, not to one another.

A weekly event means 4 or 5 events a month. The Étoile plan (€199 excl. VAT/month or €1,990 excl. VAT/year) lets you create up to 3 events a month, the Pro plan (€349 excl. VAT/month or €3,490 excl. VAT/year) up to 10. To schedule a 6-week test in one go, you therefore need the Pro plan, or the Élite plan, on quote. Étoile and Pro are subscriptions with a commitment, specified in the terms of your subscription. The Solo plan is paid per event, with no commitment: each event is bought and created individually.

The method: test one lever over 6 weeks

A weekly event does not take hold in one night. Six weeks give it time to become known, while limiting what you commit if the lever does not work.

1. Week 0: record your starting point, including the time-slot cost.
2. One lever, one night: same day, same time, same format for 6 weeks. If you change two things at once, you will not know which one mattered.
3. Announce before you start: the first date must be visible before it takes place.
4. Measure every week attendance, time-slot revenue, average spend and the cost of the activity (provider, subscription, offers granted, extra staff hours). For a Klarrro event, add the dashboard figures: participants, messages, matches and reports, as well as the average review rating in the Feedback module.
5. Decide at the end of the 6 weeks, not before.

The decision rule

Compare the average of weeks 4 to 6 with your starting point: the first weeks launch the event, the last ones tell you whether it holds.

• Time-slot revenue, net of the activity cost, exceeds your starting point: keep the lever, and test the next one on another night.
• The trend is rising but has not yet passed the starting point: extend by 2 weeks, changing nothing else.
• Nothing moves: stop this lever on that night and move on to the next.

This method guarantees no result. It stops you from keeping a format out of habit, or dropping one too early.

Common mistakes

• Changing night every week: your customers cannot form a habit around a moving target.
• Lowering all prices: you give the discount to those who would have come anyway.
• Not measuring: a good night can hide a bad month, and the reverse.
• Testing several levers at once: if the quiz, the after-work and the happy hour fall on the same night, there is no way to know what worked.
• Stopping after two events: a weekly event needs several weeks to become known.
• Forgetting the team: the server who announces the next date at the counter is worth a poster. Explain the event to them.

Frequently asked questions

Take action

Pick your night, measure your starting point, test one lever for 6 weeks. If that lever is the singles night, Klarrro Pro gives you the tools: badge numbers assigned by the app, VideoWall Love, Safe Place, statistics after each event and, with the Pro and Élite plans, quiz, Truth or Dare and prize draw.

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See also: the guide to the singles night in a bar and the Delirium Café case study.