Who doesn’t love a good happy hour? For many people, stopping at a bar or restaurant for a few drinks with co-workers is a great way to decompress after a hard day at the office. It can also be a great place to meet up with friends for a fun night for less.
Happy hour isn’t just good for customers. Studies show that happy hours can be incredibly profitable for bars and restaurants. Marketing these daily specials with a witty quote can be a great way to let customers know what you have available.
At Budget Branders, we are proud to partner with independently owned bars and restaurants to help them succeed. We offer a full line of high quality disposable products that can be customized with your business’ name, slogan, and logo – such as custom plastic bar cups and custom stadium cups for your drink specials. Reach out today for a quote on one or more of our products.
Why Should Your Bar or Restaurant Do Happy Hour?
Happy hour is incredibly popular for both bars and customers alike – and for good reason. Typically hosted in the late afternoon to early evening, happy hour features food and drink specials. Alcoholic beverages are often 50% off during this time period.
For bars and restaurants, having a happy hour is simply good business. According to a 2018 Nielsen study, bars and restaurants in the United States generate 60.5% of their average weekly sales from happy hour. It’s also a great way to drive traffic and bring in more customers, especially during times that would otherwise be slow. The same study found that Wednesday happy hour traffic is 23.9% higher on average than other days.
The reason why happy hour is so successful is simple: the discounts get people in the door, where you have a chance to upsell customers. Many patrons won’t simply stick to the half-off drinks or appetizers. They may order other, non-discounted food or drinks – or stick around well past happy hour to enjoy full-priced food and drinks. Even if they are only ordering the discounted drinks, bars and restaurants can still make money given the high profit margin on alcoholic beverages.
While happy hour can be a boon to business, it isn’t an option for every business owner. A handful of states – including Massachusetts, Alaska, Utah, North Carolina, Vermont, and Indiana – have effectively banned happy hour. These states have laws on the books that prohibit the sale of discounted alcohol.
If your bar or restaurant can legally offer discounted cocktails, beer, and wine, then setting up a happy hour is a good business decision. Below, check out our list of 100+ quotes about drinking and happy hour to inspire you.
Happy Hour Quotes to Inspire You
Quotes are an easy way to market your business, particularly when they’re witty or memorable. You can use these quotes as a jumping off point to help you come up with great marketing ideas for your happy hour – such as a social media post that features a pic of your drink specials paired with a great quote.
- “Why limit happy to an hour?” -W.C. Fields
- “Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.” ― Frank Sinatra
- “The answer may not be at the bottom of a margarita glass, but we should at least check.” -El Arroyo, Austin
- “To good eating belongs good drinking” -German Proverb
- “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere!” -Unknown
- “Hangovers are temporary. Drunk stories are forever.” -Unknown
- “Happy hour is slightly different in the Soviet Union. There are no ice cubes or orange-peel twists in the vodka. Also, it lasts all day.” – PJ O’Rourke
- “An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.” ― Ernest Hemingway
- “It’s beginning to look a lot like cocktails.” -Unknown
- “Don’t trust a brilliant idea unless it survives the hangover.” -Jimmy Breslin
- “Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you” – William Shakespeare
- “Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.” ― Drew Carey
- “Coffee, you’re on the bench. Alcohol, suit up!” -Unknown
- “I love a glass of champagne. It can make even the most average Monday seem like a Saturday night. I always say there’s happiness in every bubble!” -Cat Deeley
- “Happy Hour: a depressing comment on the rest of the day and a victory for the most limited Dionysian view of human nature.” – John Ralston Saul
- “The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.” – Humphrey Bogart
- “Darling, every hour is ‘happy hour’ when you are fabulous.” — Unknown
- “Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.” -W.C. Fields
- “My mantra is happy hour every hour.” — Unknown
- “Enough of that depressing stuff. It’s happy hour, for crying out loud.” – Jeff Davis
- “Scientists announced today that they have located the gene for alcoholism. Scientists say they found it at a party, talking way too loudly.” -Conan O’Brien
- “A happy hour should bring people in when they are not normally there.” – Thomas Morrell
- “I don’t do happy hour, I do happy hours” -Unknown
- “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.” —Oscar Wilde
- “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, point us to the nearest bar.” -Unknown
- “I drink to make other people more interesting.” -Ernest Hemingway
- “A bad happy hour will hurt, not help, your business. If you’re going to do it, do it great.” – Ray Foley
- “It’s “Happy hour o’clock.” -Unknown
- “I drink too much. The last time I had a urine sample it had an olive in it.” -Rodney Dangerfield
- “”Happy hour? I prefer to make every hour happy.” -Unknown
- “Wind up on the very same pile / Two-fifty for a decade / And a buck and half for a year happy hour / Happy hour, happy hour is here” – Gordon Downie
- “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happy hour, the long weekend, the all-inclusive island resort, the sunny beach vacation. Happiness is somewhere else, someplace with boat drinks, some secret, distant state of bliss which if they were given would bore them in minutes.” -Geoffrey Wood
- “Only count the happy hours.” -Unknown
- “When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” —Henny Youngman
- “Commercial bars have created a new term in recent years to describe the period of drinking of the ‘cocktail’. They use the expression ‘Happy Hour’ to connote the period of time.” – Mary Douglas
- “Cheers to the freakin’ weekend.” — Rihanna
- “Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.”—Dave Barry
- “Time to be a hero and rescue some wine trapped in a bottle.” -Unknown
- “Even though a number of people have tried, no one has yet found a way to drink for a living.” -Jean Kerr
- “It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
- “We go together like Fridays and happy hour.” -Unknown
- “Love makes the world go round? Not at all. Whiskey makes it go round twice as fast.”—Compton Mackenzie
- “Good vibes happen at happy hour.” -Unknown
- “What would a Happy Hour be like without drinking or a buffet when you aren’t hungry? Why do we have to go extremes to see things?” – Javier Otaduy
- “A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.”—Louis Pasteur
- “It’s always happy hour up in here.” — Unknown
- “The Lilly girl is always full of surprises. She lives everyday like it’s a celebration, never has a dull moment, and makes every hour a happy hour.” -Lilly Pulitzer
- “A man’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink.” -W.C. Fields
- “Peace, love, and happy hour.” — Unknown
- “Enjoy thankfully any happy hour heaven may send you, nor think that your delights will keep till another year.” – Horace
- “No working during drinking hours.” -Unknown
- “Live every hour like it’s happy hour.” – Unknown
- “Personally, I can’t see why it would be any less romantic to find a husband in a nice four-color catalogue than in the average downtown bar at happy hour.” – Barbara Ehrenreich
- “Every hour deserves to be happy.” -Unknown
- “Drink never made a man better, but it made many a man think he was better.” -Finely Peter Dunne
- “Happy Hour: because therapy is expensive.” -Unknown
- “Our relationship finally ended when he took to waking me up in the wee hours o the morning when he would go surfing. He thought it might be fun to have me come watch. “Fun for who?” I wanted to ask. I had never asked him to come ot Happy Hour and watch me drink.” -Chelsea Handler
- “Finish your day sparkling.” -Unknown
- “By the time a bartender knows what drink a man will have before he orders, there is little else about him worth knowing.” -Don Marquis
- “It’s happy hour again / I think I might be happy if I wasn’t out with them / And they’re happy it’s a lovely place to be / Happy that the fire is real the barman is a she” – Ian Peter Cullimore
- “Work is a good time filler between waking up and happy hour.” — Unknown
- “Happy Hour – drink until he’s cute!” -Unknown
- “The best time to offer a happy hour is outside of your normal busy hours.” – Thomas Morrell
- “The whole world is about three drinks behind.” -Humphrey Bogart
- “A European brewery has purchased Anheuser-Busch, the makers of Budweiser, for $52 billion. Which is a shame because if they had waited until happy hour, they could have paid half that.” -Conan O’Brien
- “We go together like Fridays and happy hour.” — Unknown
- “How much of our literature, our political life, our friendships and love affairs, depend on being able to talk peacefully in a bar!” -John Wain
- “Happy Hour is from 6 PM to 8 PM seven days a week. All drinks are two-for-one. An ATM cash machine is inside the bar.” – Mac Jamison
- “Happy hour is where my coworkers turn into work besties.” -Unknown
- “When I was young I made it a rule never to take a strong drink before lunch. Now it is my rule never to do so before breakfast.” -Winston Churchill
- “I don’t have a drinking problem, ‘cept when I can’t get a drink.” —Tom Waits
- “Just because it’s called happy hour, Happy, don’t mean you gotta be there.” – Adam Horowitz
- “Happy hour is the best hour.” — Unknown
- “There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.” —Bette Davis
- “Looks like you have a lot on your mind. Wanna drink about it?” -Unknown
- “I work until beer o’clock.” —Stephen King
- “Happy Hour – where all the best business decisions are made!” -Unknown
- “Yet a little while and (the happy hour) will be over, nor ever more shall we be able to recall it.” -Lucretius
- “Happy hour / One taste and I am wasted / Gets me high / You’re my happy hour” – Joe Thomas
- “I drink to make other people more interesting.” —Ernest Hemingway
- “It’s thirsty Thursday.” -Unknown
- “If you were to ask me if I’d ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I’d have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.” -Luis Bunuel
- “Keep calm and go to happy hour.” — Unknown
- “It was a woman that drove me to drink, but unfortunately I never had the chance to thank her.” -W.C. Fields
- “I’m not really a social drinker. I would say it’s mostly work-related.” -Unknown
- “Some bars choose to only serve food during happy hour, a period of time designed to draw a crowd with special pricing and promotions.” – Ray Foley
- “Jobs! Those annoying 8 hours before happy hour!” -Unknown
- “I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren’t open that early.” -Daniel Boorstin
- “You’re somewhat useful at work but irreplaceable at happy hour.” – Unknown
- “The promised land at day’s end, where felid martinis – conical pools of bliss – glow with platinum dew and sit atop their long pelican legs on the mahogany bar, sentries overlooking bowls of salty nuts.” -Eno Putain
- “Here’s to alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all life’s problems.” —Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
- “An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.” – Dylan Thomas
- “Time flies when you’re having rum.” -Unknown
- “That’s what I do. I drink and I know things.” —Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones
- “Taverns are universal places, like churches, hallowed meeting places of all mankind.” – Iris Murdoch
- “Beer, if drunk in moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health.” —Thomas Jefferson
- “My misdeeds are accidental happenings and merely the result of having been in the wrong bar or bed at the wrong time, say most days between midday and midnight.” -Jeffrey Bernard
- “Happy hour is necessary on days when meetings could have been emails.” -Unknown
- “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.” —Oscar Wilde
- “In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.” ― Benjamin Franklin
- “It’s time to wine down.” -Unknown
Make Your Happy Hour a Success with Budget Branders
Happy hour can be a boon to your bottom line – but only if customers know about it. Advertising your specials online, on social media, and in traditional media can help to bring in a crowd. Once you have patrons there, you can expand your marketing efforts by using custom branded disposable products.
Budget Branders works with businesses of all sizes to help them achieve their marketing goals for pennies on the dollar. Our high quality disposable cups, bags, and bowls can be printed with your bar or restaurant’s name and logo. When your patrons snap shots of their drinks or take their empty cups home with them to reuse, they’ll be spreading the word about your business – which can help bring in more customers.
To learn more or request a quote, reach out today by filling out our online contact form or hitting the live chat button on the bottom right of your screen.
