Festive Season Playbook for Singapore F&B: CNY, Hari Raya, Deepavali and Christmas

Festive seasons in Singapore compress a lot of revenue into a few days. Families book the same week, offices hold parties on the same Fridays and takeaway orders arrive in waves around eve-of-holiday pickups. An outlet that runs smoothly on a normal Saturday can struggle when every table wants the same set menu at 7pm and the counter has forty pre-orders waiting for collection.

The fix is not working harder on the day. It is deciding weeks ahead what you will sell, how many you can make, when customers will collect and who will be on shift. A written plan also helps new or part-time staff, who often make up a large share of festive rosters.

Start with the dates. Public holidays move every year for Chinese New Year, Hari Raya Puasa and Deepavali, so always check the Ministry of Manpower public holidays page. As of September 2026, MOM lists Deepavali on 8 November 2026, Christmas Day on 25 December 2026, Chinese New Year on 6 and 7 February 2027 and Hari Raya Puasa on 10 March 2027. The peak for your outlet usually starts well before the holiday itself: reunion dinner falls on the eve of Chinese New Year, and Christmas parties spread across December.

Chinese New Year: reunion dinners, lo hei and takeaway sets

For many Singapore restaurants, Chinese New Year is the biggest festive period of the year. Typical demand includes:

• Reunion dinners on the eve, often large family tables booked weeks in advance, with fixed set menus for eight or ten people.
• Lo hei and yu sheng, served as a starter at dine-in meals and sold as takeaway kits for home and office gatherings through the fifteen days.
• Takeaway and delivery sets, such as poon choi, braised dishes and whole fish, for families who prefer to eat at home.
• Gifting, especially pineapple tarts, love letters, bak kwa and hampers for bakeries and cafés. See our bakery POS page for handling pre-orders and pickup volumes.
• Company lo hei lunches in the first weeks after the holiday, which can fill weekday lunch slots in CBD outlets.

Many outlets close or run shorter hours on the first days of the new year. Decide early, tell customers and plan staff leave around it. Price any festive surcharge or set menu clearly on the menu and booking confirmation, so there are no disputes at the table.

Hari Raya Puasa, Deepavali and Christmas

Hari Raya Puasa

The fasting month before Hari Raya Puasa changes the shape of the day. Demand often shifts to the evening, with buka puasa (breaking fast) meals, and later dinners and supper. Around Hari Raya itself, families host open houses and buy catering trays, kueh and cookies, and ketupat or rendang sets. Takeaway and catering pre-orders are common, so pickup scheduling matters as much as table bookings.

Deepavali

Deepavali brings demand for sweets and savouries such as murukku, for vegetarian feasts and family meals, and for gift boxes. Indian restaurants and sweet shops often see pre-orders for boxes and trays in the days before. Other outlets can join in with a festive special or a vegetarian set, but only if it is done with care and respect for the food’s origins.

Christmas

Christmas and year-end bring corporate parties, group bookings, buffets and takeaway roasts, log cakes and party platters. Demand spreads across December rather than one night, with Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve the sharpest peaks. Group bookings benefit from a fixed set menu, a deposit and a final headcount deadline.

Menu and set planning

Festive menus work best when they are short and designed around what your kitchen can produce in volume. A few principles:

• Offer sets, not the full à la carte menu. Two or three set menus by party size are easier to cost, prep and serve than a long list during a peak.
• Cost each set properly. Include packaging, festive ingredients that cost more in season, and extra labour. Check supplier lead times for items such as whole fish, abalone or seasonal produce.
• Design for the kitchen. Choose dishes that can be partly prepared ahead and finished quickly. Avoid sets where every table needs the same station at the same moment.
• Set up the items in your POS early. Create festive sets, modifiers (such as spice level or portion size) and takeaway codes before orders start, so reports track them separately from your usual menu.
• Plan capacity by slot. Decide how many sets you can make per pickup slot and per seating, and stop selling when you reach it.

Pre-orders, deposits and pickup scheduling

Pre-orders are the most useful tool for festive periods. They tell you what to buy and prep, and they spread collection across the day. A simple process:

1. Open pre-orders with a clear cut-off date, such as a week before the holiday, so you can place supplier orders with confidence.
2. Take payment or a deposit at the time of order. Unpaid festive orders are the ones most likely to go uncollected. State your cancellation and refund terms in writing.
3. Offer fixed pickup slots, for example every 30 minutes, with a maximum number of orders per slot. This prevents a queue of everyone arriving at 5pm on the eve.
4. Send a reminder the day before, with the pickup time, address and order number.
5. Set up a separate pickup point away from the dine-in counter if volumes are high, with orders bagged and labelled by name and number.

An online ordering page or QR pre-order flow, where customers order, pay and choose a collection time, saves staff from taking orders over the phone and copying them into a notebook. ChaChaCha supports pre-order (order, pay, collect), an online ordering page and a mobile app, with orders going straight to the kitchen.

Staffing the peaks

Festive peaks need more hands at predictable times, and fewer staff are available because they want time off with their own families. Plan early:

• Use your pre-order book and last year’s hourly sales to decide how many staff you need, and when.
• Agree leave requests and blackout dates weeks in advance, and share the festive roster early.
• Assign clear roles for peak days: a pickup runner, an expediter at the pass, a cashier for takeaway only.
• Brief part-timers on the festive menu, allergens and pickup process before the first busy day.
• Check pay rules for public holiday work on MOM’s website, and keep records.

Our F&B staff roster guide covers building a roster around demand in more detail. In the kitchen, a kitchen display system with station routing and prep timers helps keep a surge of festive orders in the right sequence.

Payments and queue management

Peak days test your counter. Long payment queues at pickup cause frustration, especially when customers have already paid a deposit.

• Collect full payment up front for takeaway sets where possible, so pickup is just a name check and handover.
• Offer the payment methods customers expect. ChaChaCha accepts PayNow, PayLah!, NETS, Visa/Mastercard and GrabPay, and supports split payments for large group bills. See POS payments.
• Manage the walk-in queue. A queue system that sends an SMS when a table is ready lets customers wait nearby instead of crowding the entrance. ChaChaCha’s queue system includes SMS notifications and a digital queue display.
• Reconcile daily. Deposits, balance payments and refunds are easy to mix up in a busy week. Close each day and check that payments match orders.

Marketing timeline: weeks before each festival

Festive promotions work when customers hear about them early enough to plan. A typical timeline, which you can adjust for each festival:

When	What to do
8 weeks before	Confirm dates on MOM’s page, decide menus and sets, cost them and brief suppliers.
6 weeks before	Photograph festive dishes, set up items in the POS and online ordering page, write terms for deposits and cancellations.
4–5 weeks before	Launch pre-orders. Announce on social media, your Google Business Profile and in-store signage. Message opted-in members.
2–3 weeks before	Remind customers of the order cut-off. Follow up on group bookings for final headcounts.
1 week before	Close pre-orders, lock the roster and prep schedule, and send pickup reminders.
After the festival	Thank customers, share a return-visit voucher with loyalty members and review results.

For Chinese New Year, many outlets begin even earlier because reunion dinner tables fill fast. Our restaurant marketing guide covers the channels in more detail. If you send WhatsApp or SMS promotions, PDPC’s Do Not Call rules apply: get clear opt-in consent, include opt-out instructions and check the DNC Registry when you do not have consent. A CRM and loyalty system that records consent makes festive campaigns easier to send to the right people.

Halal considerations for Hari Raya menus

If you want Muslim customers to be confident in your Hari Raya menu, halal certification is the main question. The Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (MUIS) provides halal certification services in Singapore. According to MUIS’s scheme types page, the Eating Establishment scheme is issued to retail food establishments such as restaurants, bakery shops, stalls within a food court and temporary stalls in bazaars, while the Food Preparation Area scheme covers catering establishments and central kitchens.

MUIS’s certification process page describes steps including passing the Halal Competency Assessment, applying through the GoBusiness Licensing portal, document verification and audits. It lists an average processing time of six weeks (30 working days) for new applications, counted from receipt of complete documentation. Certificate holders update information such as menu and ingredients through MUIS’s e-service portal.

The practical point: if you are not yet certified, you cannot start a few weeks before Hari Raya and expect to be ready. Read the MUIS conditions and speak to MUIS directly about your situation. This section is a summary of MUIS’s published pages, not religious or legal advice.

Post-season review with POS reports

The week after a festival is the best time to learn from it, while details are fresh. Pull these from your POS reports:

• Sales by item and set: which sets sold out, which were left over, and which were ordered with extra add-ons.
• Sales by hour and day: when the peaks actually hit, to plan next year’s roster and pickup slots.
• Pre-order take-up and no-shows: how many orders came through each channel and how many went uncollected.
• Payment mix and refunds: any issues with deposits or cancellations.
• Loyalty and voucher redemptions: whether festive campaigns brought members back.

Write a one-page note with what to keep, what to drop and what to prepare earlier. Save it with the festive menu costing so next year’s planning starts from real data.

Where ChaChaCha fits

ChaChaCha is a Singapore POS powered by AppsPOS. For festive periods, the relevant features are pre-order and online ordering, QR ordering, a KDS with station routing and prep timers, a queue system with SMS notifications, PayNow, PayLah!, NETS and card payments, and loyalty tools including points, stamps, vouchers and WhatsApp marketing. The POS keeps taking orders if the internet drops and syncs later. Pricing is quote-based; contact us and ask us to confirm how your festive workflow would run.