The five weeks from Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve are when people go out. Friends are home for the holidays, offices book their parties, shoppers stop for lunch, and the night before Thanksgiving brings everyone back to their old neighborhood bar. In the National Restaurant Association's 2023 holiday survey, 63% of adults planned to eat out at a restaurant in the weeks ahead, and 48% planned to order takeout or delivery.

A lot of those plans aren't made far in advance. They're made in a group chat at five o'clock, or on the way to somewhere else. And a lot of holiday nights out start and end in a rideshare. That's where Vugo puts your restaurant or bar: on the streets around you, and in the back seat on the way out.

The 2025 holiday calendar

  • Wednesday, November 26. The night before Thanksgiving, when everyone is back in town.
  • Thanksgiving weekend, November 27 to 30. Black Friday shoppers, Small Business Saturday on the 29th, and families looking for a night off from leftovers.
  • Party season, the first three weekends of December. Office parties, team dinners and friends' nights out.
  • The week before Christmas. Last-minute gift cards, and dinners with family in town.
  • New Year's Eve, Wednesday, December 31. A midweek New Year's Eve, which makes reservations and ticketed dinners worth selling early.

What each format does for you

In-vehicle screens play your short video with a QR code to your menu, booking or delivery page in the back seat of rideshare and taxi cars, in the markets where screens are available. With TripIntent®, your ad goes first in cars around dining and nightlife, and on rides headed to them when the driver sets the destination. It's a priority, never a filter: your ad still plays everywhere else your campaign is allowed to run. And you choose the hours your ad plays first, so it's lunch for a lunch special and evening for happy hour.

TripIntent reads the area around the car, not the person in it. Screens don't sense who is in the car, and Vugo doesn't build rider profiles.

Standard Wraps, which you can now buy in Vugo Platform, put your name on both sides of the car and the rear window. You design once on 1:10 templates, a professional shop installs it on every car, and the start date is at least 14 days after you submit. Submit the artwork this week and a Standard Wrap can start in early December and stay on the road two months or more, through the holidays and into the new year.

Full and partial custom wraps turn the whole car into your brand. They take longer to design and install, so they suit a new location, a January relaunch or a spring push.

Swarms bring your wrap campaign's cars to one place for the hours you schedule: your block on the Saturdays before Christmas, the holiday market down the street, the arena district on a concert night.

A wrapped car gets seen. In Nielsen's 2019 Out-of-Home Advertising Study, 64% of U.S. residents 16 and older had noticed a wrapped-vehicle ad in the past month.

Five plays for the holidays

  1. Tonight's table. Screens with TripIntent on dining and nightlife, first in the evening hours, and a QR code that opens your booking page. One line does the work: "Tables tonight. Scan to book."
  2. The party room. Office and group holiday parties book weeks out. Run a screen ad in early December with a QR code to your private-dining or group-booking form, first in weekday business hours, when parties get planned.
  3. The gift card. From mid-December, switch the offer to gift cards, with a QR code straight to the purchase page. It's an easy last-minute gift, and it brings people back in January, when restaurants need it most.
  4. The weekend swarm. With a Standard Wrap on the road in December, schedule a swarm on the busiest shopping Saturdays so your wrapped cars fill the blocks around you while the sidewalks are full.
  5. New Year's Eve. Sell the night early. Run screens first around nightlife in the last two weeks of December, with a QR code to your reservation or ticket page. If the ad shows a ticket price, show the total, including any mandatory fees.

Liquor rules

Alcohol ads follow state liquor rules, and some states ban or limit happy hours and drink specials, or how they may be advertised. Your business stays responsible for its ad meeting those rules, so check your state's rules, or ask your counsel, before you lead with a drink special. Vugo reviews every ad against its own Content Guidelines before it runs.

A rideshare is also how a lot of people get home after a night out. That makes it a natural place for a bar's message, and a good reason to keep it about the night, not the number of drinks.

A plan for the season

A four-step plan under "A plan for restaurants and bars: From now to New Year's Eve, week by week.": Week 1, pick the offer, one per ad reads best; week 2, screens on the road, first around dining, nightlife; week 3, wraps arrive, a Standard Wrap on every car; December 31, New Year's Eve, tables and tickets sold early.
Six weeks, one offer at a time.
  • Pick the offer to lead with. One per ad reads best: the menu, the party room, gift cards or New Year's Eve. Change it as the season moves.
  • Choose the area. The neighborhood around you, or the whole metro if people travel for you.
  • Choose the hours. When you're open and want to be busier: lunch, happy hour or late night.
  • Make the page work on a phone. Menu, booking or gift cards, in one tap from the QR code. A page only the ad points to lets your own analytics show what it brought in.
  • Decide how you'll judge it. Scans, bookings and covers on the nights the campaign runs.

Screens are priced by budget and wraps per car per month, and every campaign is quoted for its format, market and dates.

See how Vugo works for restaurants and bars, learn about in-vehicle screens, vehicle wraps and swarms, or talk to Vugo about the holidays.