Food and Music Ideas for Halloween

I cannot get enough of Halloween. I love hosting pumpkin-carving parties, visiting haunted houses and coming up with a great costume. And those are things your business can do, too. Taking advantage of Halloween is not only fun but can also conjure up business for you. I have some ideas below for fiendish food and mood music – things that are easy to do at this late hour. Let me know if you have suggestions as well!

Food If you work in an office, host a potluck. Or if you work in a brick-and-mortar shop and don’t have to worry about food inspections, lay out an eye-popping spread. Dye white frosting with orange food coloring for festive cupcakes or make a meat hand courtesy of Not Martha (I’ll bet vegetarian ground beef would work as well). Speaking of creepy hands, I like to make a simple punch of orange sherbet and lemon-lime soda and float an ice hand in it. Simply fill a plastic glove – make sure it’s not one of those powder-lined ones – with water, tie off the end and freeze. Then cut away the glove, being careful not to snap off the fingers, and float it in the punch. You can do this with a red beverage, too, like cranberry juice or fruit punch. A fun dessert is to take a sheet cake or cheesecake, crumble up just the dark part of Oreo cookies over it to look like dirt, and then decorate your cemetery cake with those Milano cookies from Pepperidge Farm – use black or red icing to write “RIP” and the like on the cookie gravestones and then shove them in the dirt. Also add gummy worms or candy pumpkins to your cemetery. Music I had a lot of fun compiling a spooky soundtrack during the past couple of weeks. I posted a starter list on Facebook and asked friends to contribute their favorite Halloween songs. This is a compilation you could play in your shop or in your office’s breakroom and reception area. The best part: You can keep adding to your setlist and play it year after year. Here’s a sampler of the one I made:

• “Everyday Is Halloween” - Ministry
• “Werewolves of London” - Warren Zevon
• “Dead Man's Party” - Oingo Boingo
• “Bela Lugosi's Dead” - Bauhaus
• “Thriller” - Michael Jackson
• “The X-Files” theme
• “This Is Halloween” - From “The Nightmare Before Christmas” soundtrack
• “Pet Sematary” - The Ramones
• The theme from the movie “Halloween”
• “Don't Fear the Reaper” - Blue Oyster Cult
• “Living Dead Girl” - Rob Zombie
• “Ghostbusters” - Ray Parker Jr.
• “Scary Monsters” - David Bowie
• “I Put a Spell on You” - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
• “Monster Mash” - Bobby “Boris” Pickett
• “Goo Goo Muck” - The Cramps
• “I'm Your Boogie Man” - KC & the Sunshine Band
• “Welcome to My Nightmare” - Alice Cooper
• “People Are Strange” - Echo & the Bunnymen
• “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)” - Concrete Blonde
• “Red Right Hand” - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
• “The Future” - Leonard Cohen
• “Down in the Park” - Gary Numan
• “Season of the Witch” - Donovan
• “Science Fiction/Double Feature” - From “Rocky Horror Picture Show” soundtrack
• “Spooky” - Atlanta Rhythm Section
• “Ghost Town” - The Specials
• “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” - Charlie Daniels Band
• “Psycho Killer” - Talking Heads
• The theme from the movie “Psycho”
• “Bark at the Moon” - Ozzy Osbourne
• Beethoven's Symphony No. 5
• “Somebody's Watching Me” - Rockwell
• “Enter Sandman” - Metallica
• “Halloween” - The Misfits
• “Devil Town” - Daniel Johnston
• “Superstition” - Stevie Wonder
• “Time of the Season” - The Zombies
• “Whistlin' Past the Graveyard” - Tom Waits
• “Attack of the Ghost Riders” - Raveonettes
• “Paint It Black” - Rolling Stones
• “Witchy Woman” - Eagles
• “The Number of the Beast” - Iron Maiden

If you can think of any others, please let me know – this is a work in progress! More Halloween marketing tips

• Hand out treat bags.
• Host a costume contest.
• Stay open late.
• Hold an online contest.
• Advertise with Halloween themes.
• Host a haunted house.