How to schedule restaurant promotions with a clear end time

Write the offer rules before designing a banner

A banner can say ‘afternoon offer’ while the actual rules accidentally allow the discount all day. Start with a short brief that staff can use to explain the offer without guessing.

• Goal: the specific service period or purchase you want to learn about.
• Eligibility: included items or variants, branch, minimum spend and any customer or use limit.
• Value: the fixed amount, percentage, bundle or free item, including a maximum discount where relevant.
• Schedule: start date, end date, days of the week and opening and closing times for the offer.
• Redemption: whether the discount applies automatically or staff must check a code, and whether it can combine with other offers.

A date range and a daily time window do different jobs. The range limits the overall campaign; the daily window controls the hours within it. Confirm the timezone used by the setup and use the same times in your signs and staff brief.

Worked example: an afternoon café offer in Nepal

This is an illustrative offer for planning, not a live ScanPlz promotion or a customer result. Check your costs and choose conditions that fit your café before using it.

Make sure the system can enforce each condition you advertise. If a condition needs a staff check, put that step in the staff brief and test it. Do not assume a phrase in a banner automatically becomes a checkout rule.

Set up the schedule and guest placement in ScanPlz

ScanPlz promotions support start and end dates, days of the week and time windows. Supported offer types include percentage and fixed discounts, buy-X-get-Y and free-item offers. Ask the team to match the promotion type and conditions to your brief.

Choose the supported places where guests should see the offer, such as menu offers, a menu pop-up, a table placement or a promotion link. Placement matters: creating an offer does not mean it should appear on every surface or at every table.

ScanPlz’s active-offer feed uses the promotion schedule to determine what is currently available. Still test the complete guest and staff workflow, including an already-open phone page, rather than relying on a banner alone.

Test before, during and after the offer

1. Before the start: scan the offer link and open the menu. Check that an upcoming promotion is not presented as redeemable now.
2. During the offer: scan from the intended branch or table. Check the included items, conditions, discount and final order total with staff.
3. Outside the daily hours: repeat the check after the window closes, even if the campaign’s final date is still in the future.
4. On an excluded day: confirm the offer is unavailable when the day-of-week rule says it should be.
5. After the final end time: check a fresh scan, a saved link and a page left open earlier. Confirm with staff that an expired offer can no longer be redeemed under the old terms.

Use a short internal test schedule to exercise these stages before launching a longer campaign. If the screen or redemption result disagrees with the rules, pause the rollout and have the setup checked.

Review coupons, QR codes and printed signs together

A promotion’s active period and a coupon’s expiry or use limit are separate controls. ScanPlz coupons support expiry and usage limits; check both when a campaign includes a coupon. Agree how staff verify a valid use and handle an already-used or expired code.

Scan the actual printed QR code after editing an offer. Updating an existing promotion, creating a new promotion and disabling a QR code are different actions. Confirm what the existing code opens before deciding that a new campaign can reuse an old sign.

Digital scheduling cannot remove a printed ‘10% off’ promise from a table card. Print clear dates and hours where needed, and assign someone to remove or replace expired signage.

Review actual use and the cost of the offer

Keep a simple record of the campaign dates, eligible orders, discounts given and operational issues. Use the promotion reports available in your setup alongside staff observations. Opening an offer is different from redeeming it, so keep those counts separate when both are available.

For a quiet-hour offer, compare similar service periods and note holidays, weather or other changes that could affect trade. More discounted orders alone do not tell you whether the promotion improved the business. Review what remains after discounts and costs before repeating or expanding it.