Halloween 2026 lands on a Saturday, the first since 2020, and the data says it is now a spirits night more than a beer night: CGA measured spirits rate of sale up 28.7% on Halloween itself, with vodka up 71% and tequila up 51.6% against a normal day. So the stock job is specific. Lift your vodka and tequila par, get the delivery in the week before, batch the themed serves properly, and do not order a single extra cask for it. Here is the plan I am running.
Most years Halloween is a decent midweek bump. This year the 31st is a Saturday and the party has nowhere else to go. The last Saturday Halloween was 2020, when nobody could use it. On top of that CGA's tracker data from 2023, the last big Halloween-plus-weekend alignment, showed drinks sales up 7% across the week and 11% up on the night itself. In October 2025 a flurry of Halloween trading on the final day of the month was enough to push managed pubs to 1.9% like-for-like growth for the whole month. It is one of the few dates left that reliably pulls 18 to 34s through the door: CGA found 32% of 25 to 34 year olds and a quarter of 18 to 24s go out for it.
What actually sells on Halloween
Not what sells the rest of the year. CGA's Key Dates analysis is clear that the uplift concentrates in spirits, and inside spirits it concentrates hard: vodka up 71% and tequila up 51.6% on the day, against spirits up 28.7% overall. Wine and standard lager mostly just do their normal Saturday. The younger crowd that turns out for Halloween drinks cocktails, shots and flavoured serves, and they respond to drinks promotions more than the average customer.
That has an unglamorous stock meaning. The lines that will run out on you are vodka, tequila, the shot liqueurs and whatever goes in your themed serve, plus soft drinks and mixers for the drivers. The lines that will not move any faster are the ones most of us instinctively over-order for a big night, which is beer.
The ordering plan, week by week
| Week | Job |
|---|---|
| w/c 12 Oct | Pull last October's sales and stock report. Decide the themed serve list and cost each one per serve |
| w/c 19 Oct | Place the main order: spirits and mixers up, beer flat. Book the delivery for the 26th to 29th, not the week after |
| Sat 24 / Sun 25 Oct | Warm-up weekend. Early costume crowd lands here, so the first par uplift applies now, not just on the 31st |
| Sat 31 Oct | The night. Spot check the fast spirits lines at close or first thing Sunday |
| w/c 2 Nov | Full count. Anything themed left over gets a plan, not a shelf |
Two date traps in there. The clocks go back on Sunday 25 October, and the clocks-back Sunday is historically the flattest day of the month: in 2025 it was the single biggest daily drop CGA logged in October, down 11.7%. Do not book a delivery or an event against it. And CGA's own advice is that the weekend before Halloween carries real volume, because a chunk of the crowd celebrates early. With the 24th and 25th sitting seven days out this year, you effectively get two Halloween weekends. Stock for both, which is why the delivery needs to land midweek between them if you split it, or cover both if you do not.
How much to lift the par
Do not apply 71% to your annual vodka volume. The CGA uplifts are rate-of-sale on the day, measured against an ordinary day. My working method: take your normal strong Saturday for each line, apply the uplift to that one night plus a smaller lift for the warm-up weekend, and round up to whole bottles. If vodka does two bottles on a good Saturday, plan four for the 31st and three for the 24th. That is arithmetic you can do off your own GP report, and it is deliberately conservative because the failure mode of over-ordering spirits is not waste, it is cash sat on a shelf. Spirits keep. Which is also the honest safety net: if the night disappoints, an unopened bottle of vodka is not a loss, it is just November's stock bought early. A stack of extra kegs is a different story, because a tapped keg is on the clock. Beer par stays at normal strong-Saturday levels. If anything, watch cask: the crowd this night skews away from it, and cask you do not pull through is wastage you chose.
Batch the themed serves, and give them till buttons
The "witches' brew" punch and the blood-red shot tray are where Halloween margins live or die, for two reasons.
First, the law quietly helps you. A cocktail of three or more liquids is exempt from the 25ml and 35ml measure rules, so a batched serve is legal to pour freely. That only pays if the batch is costed: work out the cost per serve when you build the batch, price it, and stick to the recipe. I wrote up the measures law in the optics and free pour guide, because a vodka and coke is still a measured serve on the busiest night of the autumn, exemption or none.
Second, every themed serve needs its own till button before Saturday, priced to the recipe. A batch rung through as "misc drink" or under a lager button is how a great night turns into a variance you cannot explain on Monday. Ten minutes on the EPOS on Friday afternoon saves the argument.
The Sunday-morning count
Busy nights are where stock quietly goes. Not through anything dark, just through volume: free-handed top-ups, spilled trays, the batch that got a second unmeasured bottle late on. A five-minute line check on vodka, tequila and the shot liqueurs on Sunday morning, against the till, tells you what the night really did while it is still fresh enough to explain. Then the full count in the first week of November puts a number on the whole exercise. If the themed stock did not sell through, deal with it while it is still October stock: my dead stock guide covers the options, and a lurid green liqueur has precisely one selling window a year.
Halloween is not Christmas. It will not rescue a bad quarter. But a Saturday Halloween with the right eighty quid of extra spirits in the building, costed serves and the buttons set up is the cheapest strong night you will get before December, and the pubs that lose money on it lose it on stock they bought for the wrong crowd.
Sources
- CGA by NIQ Key Dates analysis, reported by Club Mirror — spirits rate of sale up 28.7% on Halloween, vodka up 71%, tequila up 51.6%, participation by age group, the weekend-before effect and promotion responsiveness (GB OPUS 2024 and managed EPOS daily data).
- Morning Advertiser, 13 November 2023 — CGA Daily Drinks Tracker: Halloween week sales up 7% year on year, up 11% on the night, up 15% on the Sunday before.
- Morning Advertiser, 19 November 2025 — CGA RSM Hospitality Business Tracker: managed pubs up 1.9% like for like in October 2025, credited partly to Halloween trading on the final day.
- Morning Advertiser, 24 November 2025 — CGA Daily Drinks Tracker for October 2025: spirits up 2.4% in Halloween week after a 12.6% drop the week before; the clocks-back Sunday down 11.7%, the biggest daily fall of the month.
- Calendar facts: 31 October 2026 falls on a Saturday, the first since 2020; UK clocks go back on Sunday 25 October 2026.
- The par uplift worked example and the ordering timetable are the author’s own method, not CGA figures. Your own October sales history is the better forecast.