How to make your restaurant's New Year's Eve menu

Why a set menu on New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve is a single night with a fixed time for the most important moment. With your usual menu, it’s impossible to get every table to dessert before midnight. With a set menu:

• You order exactly what you need. Shellfish and prime cuts are expensive that night: with confirmed bookings, the order is almost exact.
• The kitchen sets the pace. Every table gets each course at the same time, and you know when each one goes out.
• Customers know what they’ll pay, drinks, the midnight toast and party favours included, before they book.
• Front of house works calmly, with no long orders on the most pressured night of the year.

Structure of a New Year’s Eve dinner

1. Welcome drink: a glass of fizz and one or two canapés on arrival, while the rest of the tables sit down.
2. Starters: oysters or a seafood starter, a terrine, or a soup.
3. Choice of main: a fish, a meat (a beef Wellington is a classic) and a vegetarian option. Ask for the pre-order when the booking is confirmed, not on the night.
4. Dessert and petits fours, with a cheese course if you like.
5. Champagne and party favours for midnight.

Work backwards from midnight. If dessert is on the table by half past eleven, there’s time for coffee and for pouring the Champagne without rushing. If the kitchen is running late, cut the lingering short rather than miss the countdown.

The countdown, the toast and the party favours

Small details that customers remember:

• The countdown: make sure it can be seen and heard throughout the dining room, with a TV showing Big Ben in the UK or the ball drop in Times Square in the US, or at least a clock in view. Decide who gives the signal so nobody misses it.
• The toast: a glass of Champagne or sparkling wine per person, and an alcohol-free alternative for anyone who doesn’t drink.
• Auld Lang Syne: in the UK and especially in Scotland, where Hogmanay is the biggest night of the year, have it ready to play.
• Party favours: hats, poppers, streamers. If they’re included, write it down; it’s part of what the customer pays for.

If the night carries on after midnight, with music or drinks, say until when and whether those drinks are included in the price. And if you’ll stay open later than usual, check your licence first: in England and Wales, if your premises licence doesn’t cover the extra hours, you may need a Temporary Event Notice from your council, given well in advance. In the US, check your state and local rules on closing time and last call.

Price, deposit and terms

The price is per head, with a line that leaves no doubt:

£95 per head · Drinks package, Champagne at midnight and party favours included

In the UK, the price shown includes VAT; in the US, say whether tax and gratuity are added.

• Drinks: say which wines and how much. If they’re not included, write “Drinks not included”.
• Supplements: if a main costs extra, the amount goes next to the dish, such as “Fillet of beef with foie gras (+£12)”.
• Children’s menu: with its own price and the age it applies to. We explain it in how to make a kids’ menu.
• Deposit and cancellation: amount, whether it comes off the bill and until when it’s refundable.
• Times: arrival time and until when the table is yours.

What matters is that customers know these terms before they pay anything. Write them at the bottom of the menu or in the confirmation message.

Allergens at the year’s last dinner

A New Year’s Eve dinner brings together almost all of December’s usual allergens:

• Shellfish: prawns, langoustines and lobster are crustaceans; oysters, mussels and scallops are molluscs. They’re declared separately.
• Beef Wellington and pastries: gluten, eggs and milk, and often mustard brushed on the beef.
• Petits fours and chocolates: tree nuts, gluten and often eggs. Check the labels of anything bought in.
• Champagne, wine and wine-based sauces: sulphites.
• Creamy sauces and soups: milk from cream or butter, and celery if the stock contains it.

Ask about allergies when people book and note them on the booking. If the night’s dishes aren’t on your usual menu, make a separate allergen matrix for them.

When to prepare it

New Year’s Eve is prepared alongside Christmas and the party season:

• October: menu, price and terms finalised. Talk to your shellfish suppliers.
• November: the menu on the door and online. Bookings open.
• Mid-December: final numbers, pre-orders and the order.

You’ll find the rest of the year’s dates in the restaurant calendar, and everything it shares with Christmas in how to make a Christmas menu.

Design and formats

New Year’s Eve calls for a gala menu. The Milano style, in black and white with high-contrast type, looks elegant without overdoing it. If you want it to match your Christmas menu, use the same style for both, for example Déco. Formats that work:

• A5 at each place setting, as a keepsake of the night.
• A4 or A3 on the door or in the window from November.
• Post and story to promote it on social media and fill the bookings.

Write the event as a custom date (“New Year’s Eve · 31 December”) instead of the automatic date.

Make it with MenuDesign

Open the New Year’s Eve template, change the dishes, price and terms, mark the allergens and download the PDF to print and the image for social media. If you’d like another design, there are more in the menu templates. Free, no sign-up.