In competitive socialising, the activity may attract guests, but it’s the menu that unlocks the full potential of the venue. Defined by the combination of interactive play and food-and-drink service, competitive socialising is now a key growth area in hospitality.
Competitive socialising is no longer a niche trend. As of April 2025, 30% of UK consumers reported taking part in a competitive socialising activity in the previous month, up from 24% in early 2023.1
Demand spans established formats such as pool, snooker, bowling and darts, alongside immersive concepts, making this one of the most resilient growth areas in hospitality.
Themed and experience-led venues are among the few hospitality segments to have expanded since the pandemic, as consumers increasingly seek destinations that combine play, food and drink. We’re also seeing competitive socialising concepts emerge across pubs, bars and universities.
But growth alone doesn’t guarantee profitability. As competition increases, operators must look beyond the activity itself and focus on how they convert footfall into sustainable revenue.
That’s where food and drink become critical. Over 80% of UK consumers say the price of the activity and the cost of food and drink influence where they choose to go, alongside the length of the experience.2 Menus are no longer a secondary consideration, they directly impact dwell time, spend per head and overall satisfaction.
That’s why Bidfood’s Unlock Your Menu industry support hub exists to help operators use their menus as a powerful lever for profitability, efficiency and cost control in fast-paced, experience-led environments like competitive socialising.
Unlock profitability to power the experience
With rising costs across foodservice, menus need to work harder than ever to deliver strong margins while remaining accessible, exciting and easy to execute.
Unlock Your Menu is built on proven menu-engineering principles that help operators improve profitability without compromising quality or guest experience. For competitive socialising venues, this means menus that are:
- Easy to understand and quick to order
- Built around best-selling, high-margin items
- Designed for group dining and sharing
Simple changes can deliver big results. Highlighting high-margin dishes with visual cues, improving menu descriptions to elevate perceived value, or offering small premium upgrades can all increase spend per head. Customisation plays a key role too, allowing guests to personalise orders while naturally trading up.
Crucially, not all best sellers are the most profitable. Unlock Your Menu encourages operators to analyse sales data and cost breakdowns to identify true margin drivers, then rework or remove underperforming dishes.
When done well, food and drink don’t just support the entertainment, they actively enhance the experience and the bottom line.
Unlock every hour with smarter daypart menus
One of the biggest opportunities in competitive socialising is making the menu work harder across every hour of the day.
While many venues perform strongly at peak times, targeted menu adjustments can unlock quieter periods without increasing overheads. Competitive socialising dayparts don’t follow traditional hospitality patterns, but often include:
- After-work sessions, where guests want fast food and drinks that fit around play
- Peak evening and weekend trading driven by group bookings
- Late-night dwell time between or after games
Unlock Your Menu supports flexible menu strategies using cross-utilised ingredients to maximise efficiency and profitability. For example:
- Proteins used across tacos, sliders, wraps, loaded fries and sharers
- Flatbread bases flexing between pizzas, wraps, dippers and snack boards
- Fries or hash browns appearing as classic sides, loaded sharers or late-night snacks
- Cheese used across burgers, flatbreads, nachos and toasties
- Pickles, slaws and quick-pickle vegetables adding freshness across burgers, wraps and sharers
By building menus around ingredients that work harder across trading windows, operators unlock extra revenue without increasing stockholding, prep time or waste.
Unlock consistency by easing staff pressures
Staffing remains one of the biggest challenges in foodservice, and competitive socialising venues are no exception. High-energy environments, unpredictable demand and lean teams mean menus must support staff, not stretch them.
Unlock Your Menu provides practical guidance on designing menus that are operationally efficient, including:
- Streamlining menus to reduce complexity
- Focusing on high-margin dishes that are simple to prepare
- Using batch prep and pre-portioned components, finished to order
- Introducing build-your-own formats that are easy to assemble
Menus designed with kitchen flow in mind enable faster, more consistent service, even at peak times. This reduces pressure on teams, improves morale and ensures food doesn’t disrupt the experience.
Unlock margin with simple swaps
Protecting margin while keeping menus exciting is a constant challenge. With ongoing ingredient price volatility and rising labour costs, profitability increasingly comes down to smart decisions behind the scenes.
Unlock Your Menu shows how small swaps can deliver meaningful savings without compromising quality:
- Switching to alternative protein cuts or formats that work well in sharers and loaded dishes
- Blending meat with plant-based ingredients to maintain portion size while reducing cost
- Using frozen or long-life products strategically to improve consistency and reduce waste
- Choosing versatile ingredients that work across multiple menu categories
Operators are encouraged to look beyond headline ingredient cost and consider total dish profitability, including yield, prep time and consistency.
Unlock sustainability by reducing food waste
Food waste is both a financial and environmental challenge for competitive socialising venues. Group bookings and fluctuating covers can make waste harder to control but they also present an opportunity.
Unlock Your Menu supports waste reduction through:
- Cross-utilising ingredients across the menu
- Smarter portion control, particularly for sharers
- Repurposing surplus ingredients into specials
- Effective use of freezing to protect prepped components
Reducing waste improves profitability while strengthening sustainability credentials, an increasingly important factor for guests.
Unlock more than just a menu
In competitive socialising, the menu shapes how guests move through the venue, how long they stay between games and how they remember the experience.
By applying the principles within Unlock Your Menu, operators can unlock:
- Higher spend per head
- Faster, more consistent service
- Reduced pressure on teams
- Stronger, more resilient margins
Because when your menu works harder, your venue works better.
Ready to unlock your menu and your venue?
Explore Bidfood’s Unlock Your Menu industry support hub for expert advice, tools and inspiration designed to turn menus into a true commercial advantage.
