How to run a supper club or tasting night that sells out

A supper club is a fixed menu, a fixed number of seats and a fixed night, sold as tickets paid in advance. Set the number of seats by what your kitchen can plate at once, price the ticket per head from the cost of the menu plus a margin for the evening, and sell it with an early price and a deadline. Then run it on the same night every month, because the second one is far easier to sell than the first.

That is the format. Here is how to make the numbers and the night work.

Why a supper club works when a quiet night does not

A quiet Tuesday is a room full of fixed costs waiting for walk-ins. A supper club is the same room, sold in advance, to people who came for that night and nothing else.

Everything that makes normal service hard gets easier. You know the numbers, so you buy exactly what you need. The menu is fixed, so the kitchen preps once. Everybody sits down at the same time, so the floor runs to a plan. And the money arrives before you shop, not after you close.

It suits a restaurant with a dead night, a café that closes at four and has an empty room every evening, or a chef who wants to cook something that does not belong on the daily menu. A tasting night, a wine or whiskey pairing, a guest cook, a menu built around one ingredient in season: the shape is the same.

How many seats should you sell?

Count from the pass, not from the chairs. The real limit is how many plates your kitchen can send in one go without the first table's course going cold while the last is plated.

If six courses go to everybody at once, your capacity is the number of covers you can plate, check and carry in a few minutes, with the staff you have that night. For most small kitchens that is fewer than the room holds.

Start smaller than you think. A supper club of twenty-four that sells out with a waitlist is worth more than one of forty that is two-thirds full: it runs better, it feels better, and the people who could not get in are your first buyers next month.

How do you price a supper club ticket?

Per head, from your costs, and not by comparing it with your menu. People pay for an evening differently from the way they pay for a dinner.

A worked example with round figures:

• A five-course menu costs about €14 a head in ingredients.
• Two extra staff for the night cost about €240 between them.
• Thirty seats at €50 a ticket before VAT brings in €1,500.
• Food is €420 and staff €240, leaving €840 towards the room, the energy and your own time, before a single drink is sold.

Prices shown to customers include VAT, so add it before you round the ticket price. Drinks carry a higher rate than food, so if the ticket includes a pairing, ask your accountant how to split it. Plenty of supper clubs keep the ticket to food and sell drinks on the night, which keeps the ticket price lower and the bar takings on top.

Sell the tickets, and give people a deadline

A guest list without payment is a gamble on the weather. Tickets move the money to the front, so the night is paid for before you order the fish.

Write the listing as an evening, not a menu: what they will eat, who is cooking, what time it starts and roughly when it ends, whether it is a shared table, and what is or is not included. A listing with a price and a date is asking somebody to take a risk; one with a story is asking them to come.

Use an early price with a real deadline, about a fortnight out, and make the gap big enough to notice. The point is not the discount. It is a reason to decide today rather than intend to decide later.

On Mosey, you create the event with its date, capacity and price, add an early-bird price and deadline if you want one, and it appears on your venue page, in the app and on a link you can put in your own posts and emails. The money reaches your Stripe account as tickets are bought, at 4% of the ticket price, and the buyer pays a small booking fee on top. Our guide to selling event tickets covers the details.

Plan the menu for allergies before you sell it

A fixed menu and a room of strangers is where allergies go wrong, so plan for them before the first ticket is sold rather than on the night.

Say in the listing what the menu can adapt and what it cannot. The 14 regulated allergens must be declared, so know every one that is in every course. Set a date by which ticket-holders tell you their requirements, and design one adaptable plate per course rather than improvising a substitute at nine o'clock. On Mosey you can send one message to everybody holding a ticket, which is the easiest way to ask, and to remind them of the start time.

What happens when somebody cannot come?

Decide your terms before you sell, and show them on the listing. A ticket for a dated event is not covered by the 14-day right to withdraw that applies to some online purchases, so what applies is your own cancellation policy. A common approach: refunds up to a set number of days before, and after that the ticket can be passed to a friend.

A sold-out event on Mosey opens a waitlist. When somebody cancels, the next person waiting is told, so the seat is sold again rather than left empty at a dinner you already bought for. On the night, staff check each ticket's code at the door, and a code cannot be used twice.

If you ever have to cancel the whole night, cancelling the event tells every ticket-holder and refunds them in one action.

Make it monthly, and let regulars in first

One supper club is an event. A supper club on the first Thursday of every month is a habit, and a habit sells itself.

After each one, look at three numbers: how many tickets sold in the first 48 hours, how many in the last 48, and how many people had been before. The first tells you whether the idea works, the second whether the deadline works, and the third whether the night works.

Your returning guests are the core of it. If you run a venue membership, a members-only supper club, or first access before tickets go public, is the perk members actually talk about, and the reason they keep paying. If your dead night is the bigger problem, our guide to making slow days pay puts a supper club alongside the other options.

Pick a date, write the menu and put the tickets up. Claim your business free or See pricing.