A Progressive Staff Christmas Party Idea

It's not only Christmas party time for your customers, but also for your staff.

Restaurant staffs, Christmas parties are always a dilemma for restaurant owners…who usually delegate the planning to a manager… who usually delegate the planning to a supervisor, who don't have that much time or interest in party planning.

The quandary of what to do – at a reasonable cost, especially during this economy – takes a creative mind and some out of the box thinking so the party is more than just a dinner, or a drunken bash that gets everyone in a bucket of pain and trouble.

One of the best staff Christmas party ideas is the progressive restaurant Christmas block party. It's very simple to plan and inexpensive since the entire party is done on trade with other restaurants on your block.

On a few specified nights in January – when dining rooms are empty, servers and chefs are rested, and owners are looking to fill seats, pick three or four restaurants and approach the owners with the progressive block party idea.

In order to get every restaurant involved it may take three nights or even more to complete. But, you will notice a few empty seats during January, don't you think?

Participating restaurants agree to a food trade with other restaurants on the street. Each restaurant is assigned a course – cocktails, apps and salad, entr?e, dessert. The partying restaurants split their staff into two groups and on different nights they rotationally go to each of the restaurants serving the assigned course. The neighboring restaurant staff serves a set course to the group sitting at either one large table or individually in four and six tops.

After each course, the party progresses to the next restaurant and course.

Here's an example: On San Francisco's

Throughout the course of the week the other restaurants that participated reciprocate. It works out well for the owners and the employees. The partying restaurants have the option to close or not to close – which gives the owners a needed break, and probably cuts losses – and your regular customers always understand if you put a nice note on the door explaining your closed for a Christmas party.

The other benefit is your employees have a chance to see other restaurants, taste the food and probably see some of their friends who are servers.

It's a very interesting and enjoyable way to fulfill the employee Christmas party obligation. And, it doesn't cost much out-of pocket cash.

And that may be a very nice situation, come January.