Black Friday, Done Brilliantly: Our Favourite Customer Wins
Black Friday is one of the biggest gifting moments in the hospitality calendar, and nobody does it better than our customers. So we have pulled together a few of our all-time favourite wins, what made each one work, and where to read the full story.
Parogon Group: the record breaker 🏆
Parogon Group, the restaurateurs behind much-loved venues across Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire such as The Swan With Two Necks, The Orange Tree and Willow at Trentham, set out to beat their previous Black Friday, and they did it in style. Physical Gift Cards took pride of place in every restaurant, with eye-catching signs on the tables so no guest could miss them. Rather than the usual 10% off, they offered 20% added value, and every card could be spent at any Parogon restaurant, turning a single gift into a reason to explore the whole group. Then they kept the party going, running the promotion from 20 November through Black Friday and Cyber Monday, all the way to 4 December.
The result was £428,782 in Gift Card sales, up 527% on the same period the year before. Best of all, Black Friday did not steal from Christmas, with December going on to bring in over £390,000 more.
Read the full Parogon Group story →
Giggling Squid: Floral Friday 🌸
Black Friday can feel like a sea of identical discounts, so Giggling Squid gave theirs a name of its own. Floral Friday offered a £50 Gift Card for £40, wrapped in a campaign that felt unmistakably theirs, and it landed beautifully. With 1,481 cards sold and £74,000 banked, they finished as one of our top Togglers of the weekend, all in their very first Black Friday with us!
Read the full Giggling Squid story →
The Cut and Craft: a cut above 🥩
For The Cut and Craft, the steak specialists with flagship restaurants in York and Leeds, generosity did the talking. Their Black Friday offer was a £75 Gift Card, digital or physical, with a complimentary bottle of prosecco thrown in. They then made sure the right guests heard about it, sending personalised messages shaped by each guest's preferences and visit history.
Black Friday week brought in £50,000, and by the end of December their total had climbed to £160,663, with more than two-thirds of those sales coming through their online Toggle shop.
Read the full The Cut and Craft story →
Brewhouse & Kitchen: festive gifting on tap 🍺
Brewhouse & Kitchen, one of our very first Togglers, showed just how much heavy lifting your own website can do. They grew their festive Gift Card sales by 43% year on year by putting gifting front and centre. Experiences such as whisky and beer pairings and gin masterclasses sat alongside their much-loved Mini Kegs, tidy categories guided shoppers straight to checkout, and a homepage link plus a well-timed pop-up made sure every visitor knew Gift Cards were on offer.
Read the full Brewhouse & Kitchen story →
What they all got right ✨
Look closely and the same thread runs through every story. Each brand treated Gift Cards as a proper campaign rather than a button tucked away on their website. They gave guests a genuine reason to buy, whether that was extra value, a bonus bottle or an Experience worth unwrapping, and they put the offer everywhere their guests would see it, in venue and online. Then they made it easy to spend, so every card sold became a visit waiting to happen.
Ready to write your own success story? 🎁
Black Friday lands on Friday 27 November this year, and shoppers will be looking long before then. If you are not on Toggle yet and fancy seeing your name on a list like this one, say hello at sales@usetoggle.com. There is still time to get Digital Gift Cards live and selling for the big day, and our team will happily share the ideas that have worked so well for the brands above.
