Black Friday is considered one of the most important shopping seasons globally. However, in Arab countries and the Middle East, Black Friday takes on a different form, transforming into White Friday in many sectors, including restaurants and cafes.
This major shopping day is no longer limited to buying home appliances, electronics, or clothing. Rather, it’s become a consumer season that may extend throughout the month of November in some countries. Or on Fridays in November.
Global data shows a 28% increase in restaurant visits, while consumer spending on food and beverages surges during the Black Friday period.
This general increase in spending, especially around White Friday, which falls on Friday, November 28th, 2025, presents a prime opportunity for restaurants and cafés to launch their deals.
Before you can attract customers on White Friday, if you’re in an Arab country, or Black Friday, if you’re global, you need to create a smart strategy so you can capture this influx of guest spending without hurting your restaurant profit margin.
In this guide, we’ll provide a clear action plan to help you make the most of the Black Friday/White Friday season for your restaurant, without sacrificing profitability.
The Opportunity: White Friday for Restaurants in the Middle East
White Friday, or the entire month of November, is one of the most important consumerist periods in the year across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It also represents an exceptional opportunity for restaurants and cafes.
The origin and significance of ‘White Friday’
“White Friday” is the regional term for the global “Black Friday” event.
This naming originated in the Middle East due to the sanctity of Friday (Jumu’ah), which is a blessed day for Muslims. It has a positive connotation, as the color white symbolizes purity, goodness, and celebration.
Furthermore, the event was localized by Souq.com in 2014 (later acquired by Amazon) to be a socially acceptable and desirable season for the public in the region.
However, the goal remains the same: to launch the biggest campaign of discounts and sales throughout November.
Why Should Restaurants and Cafes Care About White Friday?
White Friday offers various opportunities for the different types of restaurants. Here’s how:
- Boost consumer excitement and spending: Massive marketing campaigns create buzz and consumer enthusiasm. Many consumers may hold off on spending or delay non-essential purchases ahead of White Friday season offers. This is not limited to products but extends to services and experiences, including dining out or ordering premium meals.
- Surge in online demand: Visits to restaurant websites and mobile apps dramatically increases during this season. This means your marketing efforts and digital campaigns will benefit from greater reach and effectiveness among potential customers.
- Desire for Black Friday food deals: Customers expect additional discounts. Restaurants can meet this desire by offering well-thought-out promotions and campaigns that attract customers without burning profit margins.
White Friday for Restaurants: Capitalizing on the Consumer Rush
By offering free delivery and food deals on combos, restaurants and coffee shops can encourage orders through the restaurant’s app or website, especially amid surging online food orders.
Restaurants can also offer discounts on specific dishes to increase in-house dining sales throughout November. You can also use offers to attract customers to join your restaurant’s loyalty program. Alternatively, you can incentivize them with double loyalty points during the discount period.
White Friday for Restaurants: Strategic Planning for the Season
Pre-planning is essential so you can make the most of the White Friday season.
Here are the top steps to take before your campaign begins:
- Advance planning: Start planning and coordination at least 4 to 6 weeks before the date. This gives you enough time to not only design the offers, but also to prepare the necessary infrastructure and logistics. Late planning leads to improvisation, which can harm service quality.
- Coordinate with delivery companies: Coordinate in advance with all the delivery platforms and applications you work with for enhanced restaurant delivery management. Clearly state your White Friday food offers and their duration. This will help them allocate a sufficient number of drivers to your area, ensuring fast delivery and maintaining customer satisfaction.
- Review your menu: Do not apply discounts randomly. Use menu engineering tactics to conduct a thorough audit of your menu items and identify your most profitable and most popular dishes. Use them to increase demand. You can also launch offers exclusively across your delivery menu to encourage customers to use your delivery service.
- Define your offers: You can offer deals on low-popularity but profitable dishes, or design combo offers that balance a popular dish with a low-cost item. Your goal is to increase the number of profitable orders, not just your sales volume.
- Staff training: Be sure to train your entire team, including front-of-house and back-of-house staff to handle massive order volumes. Establish clear, well-defined plans for each individual’s tasks to ensure they maintain service quality and to avoid delays and mistakes that could cost you your reputation.
- Prepare the kitchen and order sufficient stock: Ensure you have adequate quantities of packaging materials and ingredients for all dishes, especially those included in the offers. Also, review your kitchen workflow to ensure its capacity to meet the increased demand. This may require pre-preparing some ingredients to speed up the cooking process during peak hours.
Further reading: Refine Your POS System Training: 10 Best Practices
How to Design White Friday Restaurants Deals
The goal of participating in White Friday isn’t to simply increase the number of orders, but to boost profitable orders. You must gear your discount strategy towards adding value for your customers while preserving the restaurant or cafe’s profit margins.
- Avoid aggressive discounts or “price burning”
Be wary of entering into price wars or applying excessive discounts (like ‘50% off the main course)’. This type of reduction lowers the overall profit margin. And while it may boost sales, it leads to an actual loss or a minimal profit that does not cover operating costs.
- Use data to inform pricing decisions
Use the data from your restaurant point-of-sale (POS), like Foodics, to identify profitable but low-cost items. Then, design your offers around them.
- Consider value-added offers
Instead of reducing prices, offer added value that encourages your customers to increase their spending, such as combo meals or bundled packages. You can also design fixed-price meals or a specific menu that includes a main course, a side dish, and a drink for a price slightly lower than if purchased separately.
This increases the average order value without a massive discount on the core dish, thus boosting sales. You can also offer a special dish or a unique seasonal beverage that is available only during the White Friday period or the month of November. This focuses on uniqueness and exclusivity, rather than just price.
You may also offer a low-cost-to-you but high-value-to-the-customer free addition, such as a small dessert, a free upgrade to a larger coffee size, or a complimentary appetizer when spending a certain limit.
- Use upselling
Use the White Friday period to train restaurant staff on upselling and cross-selling strategies that are persuasive but not pushy.
Use Digital Channels When Launching Your Restaurant’s White Friday Campaign
- Use social media
Start generating digital buzz two weeks before your White Friday deals by launching an online marketing campaign that creates anticipation and excitement.
Use trending and local hashtags to ensure your brand appears in top conversations and among highly viewed content.
You can use ChatGPT to create engaging, teaser content that reveals aspects of the anticipated offers without fully disclosing them.
- Focus on visual content
Images are the most powerful element in a restaurant or café’s marketing story. A campaign’s success depends on high-quality visual content that stimulates appetite.
Showcase images of upcoming offers across social media and make the meal preparation process part of the story.
- Benefit from influencer partnerships
To boost awareness and reach a targeted audience, choose local influencers and food bloggers with strong engagement, not just high follower counts.
Provide them with exclusive discount codes to increase the campaign’s credibility and incentivize customers for your White Friday restaurant drive.
- Encourage direct ordering via your app
Use every opportunity to direct the customer to your direct ordering channels, including your website or restaurant application, instead of third-party delivery apps that charge high commissions.
You can achieve this by encouraging customers to use your loyalty program to benefit from points and discounts.
- Use WhatsApp marketing
WhatsApp messages are an excellent channel for direct and instant reach. Use it to send alerts about limited-time offers to customers who have previously registered on your restaurant app.
You can also use urgent mobile push notifications to notify customers as the offers are about to expire. This increases the incentive for an immediate response and contributes to higher conversion rates.
Further reading: What Are the Benefits of Customer Engagement for Restaurants?
Use White Friday to Build Your Customer Base
The month of November and White Friday shouldn’t be viewed as a one-time opportunity to launch discounts, but as a true test of your restaurant’s readiness, operational flexibility, and marketing creativity.
You have succeeded in attracting an influx of customers seeking special offers. Now, it’s time to convert these new patrons into permanent, loyal customers. Use your loyalty program and CRM to build your customer database to build relationships and personalized experiences.
With the right planning and partnerships with solutions like Foodics, your next White Friday can be the most profitable weekend yet for your restaurant. See what Foodics can do for you!
