If you want full tables on Easter Sunday, restaurant Easter brunch reservations need a plan that starts months out, not the week of. Easter falls on Sunday, March 28, 2027, according to both Farmers' Almanac and Time and Date. That is early. Your build window is this winter. This post gives South Jersey owners a dated timeline for email sends, a way to decide on deposits, and a method for turning every booking into a guest record you own. It is one piece of the larger job of choosing restaurant loyalty program software and owning your guest data. The question is whether your Easter list ends up in your hands or in someone else's app.
Confirm the date, then count backward
As of October 20, 2026, the sources above agree on March 28, 2027 for Easter Sunday. Easter moves every year, so last year's calendar will mislead you. Orthodox Easter is a different date, May 2, 2027, per Farmers' Almanac. If your guests include Orthodox families, plan a separate, smaller push for that weekend.
Good Friday is the Friday before, March 26, 2027. Palm Sunday is March 21. Both can pull in extra covers or change your staffing, so decide now whether you are open and what you serve on each.
Work backward from March 28. The table below is a starting schedule, not a rule. Move it to fit your kitchen, your seating and how far ahead your regulars book.
| Target date | Weeks out | What gets done |
|---|---|---|
| By Sunday, January 31 | 8 | Decide seatings, menu format, deposit or prepaid rule. Add the signup form to your site. |
| By Sunday, February 14 | 6 | Reservation page live and tested. Email 1 to your existing list: date, format, early access. |
| Week of February 21 | 5 | Public booking opens. Phone staff use the same intake form. |
| Sunday, March 7 | 3 | Email 2: which seatings are filling. Send only if it is true. |
| Sunday, March 14 | 2 | Email 3 to booked guests: details, parking, allergy notes, how to change a booking. |
| Monday to Wednesday, March 22-24 | 1 | Confirm-or-release message. Release unconfirmed tables to the waitlist. |
| Thursday, March 25 | 0.5 | Final headcount to the kitchen and floor. |
| Monday, March 29 to Friday, April 2 | After | Thank-you email, feedback ask, signup invitation for walk-ins. |
The email sequence: four messages, each with one job
Most restaurants send one "Easter brunch is coming" blast and hope. A short sequence does more work because each message has a single purpose. This is the same discipline behind the CRM-connected email automation we build: one trigger, one message, one next step.
Email 1: early access for people already on your list
Send it around six weeks out. Give your existing list a 48-hour head start before public booking opens. This is the cheapest reason you will ever have to ask someone to join a list, so put the signup link in the message for anyone who forwards it.
Say the date, the format (buffet, plated, prix fixe), the seating times and the price per adult and per child. State the deposit rule in plain words. Surprises at checkout produce angry replies.
Email 2: a status update, only if it is true
About three weeks out, tell people which seatings are filling. If 11:30 is gone and 2:00 has room, say so. Do not invent scarcity. If nothing is filling, skip this email or change it to a menu preview. Guests notice false urgency, and it teaches them to ignore the next send.
Email 3 and the confirm-or-release message
Email 3 goes to booked guests only. It covers parking, high chairs, allergy notes, and how to change or cancel. The confirm-or-release message follows in Easter week and asks one thing: tap to confirm or tap to release. It is the single most useful email in the sequence, because a released table can go to someone on the waitlist.
For wording and cadence ideas beyond Easter, our post on restaurant email marketing ideas covers the rest of the year.
Deposits or prepaid seats: pick one rule before you open booking
Easter brunch is a fixed-menu, fixed-seating day. An empty four-top at 12:00 can't be resold at 12:30 the way a Tuesday table can. That is why deposits and prepaid seats show up on holidays. We are not going to quote a no-show rate here, because we did not retrieve a source for one, and you know your own numbers better. Check last year's Easter and Mother's Day no-shows and cancellations before choosing.
- No deposit, card on file: lowest friction. You only charge a fee if a guest does not show. Fewer bookings are lost at checkout, but you carry the risk of a chargeback dispute.
- Deposit per head: a partial payment applied to the final check. Good for a menu with a wide price range.
- Prepaid seats: the full price paid at booking, like a ticket. Best for a set menu or a buffet with one price. It gives you the firmest headcount and the most questions about refunds.
Whichever you choose, write the cancellation cutoff in the booking page, the confirmation email and the reminder. Pick a cutoff that lets you refill the table, such as the Wednesday before Easter. Your reservation platform and your card processor set limits on what you can hold and refund, and processing fees apply. Read both sets of terms. How a deposit or prepayment is treated for sales tax is a question for your accountant, not for us.
One more decision: who handles it when a guest wants to change the party size? Name one person. A deposit rule nobody enforces is worse than no rule.
Capture the guest list from every booking
This is the part that outlasts Easter. Every booking carries a name, an email, a phone number, a party size and a reason for visiting. If those details stay inside a third-party reservation tool, you rent your own customers back from it. The export problem is covered in detail in what you can export from your POS, delivery app and loyalty tool. Run that audit on your reservation platform before you open Easter booking, not after.
The fields worth collecting
- First and last name, email, mobile number.
- Party size and number of children.
- Occasion and dietary or allergy notes.
- How they booked: website, phone, walk-in, third-party site.
- A separate marketing opt-in checkbox, unchecked by default.
Keep the opt-in separate from the booking itself. A guest who books a table has agreed to get booking messages. They have not necessarily agreed to a spring newsletter. Rules on email consent vary, so ask your own attorney how they apply to you. Our job is making the checkbox and the record exist.
Phone and walk-in bookings are where lists leak
Online bookings arrive with an email. Phone bookings arrive on a notepad. If three staff take calls, you get three formats and a lot of lost addresses. Use one intake form for everybody: a shared form that writes to the same sheet or database as the website booking. A printed QR code at the host stand covers walk-ins and large parties who arrive without a reservation.
Where the records live matters more than which tool you pick. A spreadsheet with a clean column for each field and a consent column works for a single restaurant on a small list. Once you are merging reservations, POS visits, events and email, a custom guest database starts to earn its cost. That is what the restaurant CRM we build for restaurants and bars connects: reservations, guest profiles, events and follow-up in one record. Whether that is worth building for you is a different question, which we take up in build versus subscribe for guest CRMs.
Tag every record so the next send is easy
A guest list is only useful if you can pull a segment. Before Easter opens, agree on a small set of tags and apply them the same way every time. Four are enough to start:
- Easter 2027 booked and Easter 2027 waitlist, so you can message the two groups differently.
- Prepaid or deposit, so a refund notice reaches the right people.
- Opted in, so a promotional send never reaches a booking-only guest.
- Source, so you learn whether the website, phone or a third-party site filled the room.
Email platforms such as Mailchimp handle this kind of tagging and segmenting. iOLab Digital is a Mailchimp partner, and we mention it here for that reason; plenty of other tools do the same job. What matters is that the tags come from the booking data automatically, not from someone retyping names on Monday morning.
After Easter: send the follow-up while the memory is fresh
The week after the holiday is when a first-time guest is most willing to say yes to your list. Send a short thank-you within two or three days. Ask for one piece of feedback, and offer the signup link to anyone who was on the booking but did not opt in. Keep the offer simple. Don't attach a discount you cannot afford to honor across your whole list.
Then use what you learned. If most of your bookings were large family tables, tell that segment about your next group-friendly date. The next big brunch on the calendar after Easter is Mother's Day, so a teaser in the thank-you email costs nothing. Check the date for that holiday as well, because it also moves with the calendar.
If you are considering changing your reservation, POS or loyalty system, do not do it between mid-February and Easter. Our winter cutover checklist for POS and loyalty systems lays out why, and when a switch is safe.
What we don't know about your Easter
We don't know your capacity, your no-show history or what your reservation platform lets you export. We also haven't published a figure here for how much a deposit lowers no-shows, because we have no sourced number for it, and results differ by restaurant. What we can say: a dated plan, one intake form and a consent checkbox cost very little compared with an empty dining room or a list you cannot use. Start with your calendar and last year's covers.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I open restaurant Easter brunch reservations?
For Easter Sunday, March 28, 2027, many restaurants can open booking about five to six weeks out, in mid to late February. Offer your existing email list a 48-hour head start. The right date depends on how far ahead your regulars book, so compare against last year's booking pace before you commit.
Should I require a deposit or prepayment for Easter brunch?
If you serve a fixed menu or buffet at one price and your tables cannot be resold on the day, a deposit or prepaid seat is worth considering. Pick one rule and state it on the booking page and in every email. Check your payment processor's refund terms, and ask your accountant about tax treatment.
How do I turn Easter reservations into an email list?
Collect name, email, mobile number, party size and source on one intake form, used by the website and by whoever answers the phone. Add a separate, unchecked marketing opt-in box. Tag each record by booking status and source so you can segment the next send without retyping anything.
When is Easter in 2027?
Easter Sunday is March 28, 2027, according to Farmers' Almanac and Time and Date, as of our check on October 20, 2026. Good Friday falls on March 26. Orthodox Easter is later, on May 2, 2027. Confirm against your own calendar before you publish any dates to guests.
Plan your Easter list with us
If you want the booking form, tagging and confirm-or-release emails wired to one guest record you own, tell us how your reservations run today. We work with restaurants in Medford, Burlington County and across South Jersey and the Philadelphia area, and with clients nationwide. iOLab Digital is a Microsoft Advertising, Semrush, SiteMinder and Mailchimp partner. Where this article mentions a tool we partner with, we say so. See how our email marketing automation works, then get in touch.
Sources
Every outside claim in this article links to where it came from. These open in a new tab.
- Farmers' Almanacfarmersalmanac.com
- Time and Datetimeanddate.com