The Holiday Holding Pattern: Keeping Your Customers Engaged When Routines Disappear

December is a unique time for heat-and-eat meal delivery businesses. One day you're fulfilling record orders. The next, everything slows to a crawl – pauses spike, customers go dark, and even your most loyal subscribers start skipping meals.

It’s not churn. It’s a holding pattern – a seasonal gray area where people aren’t canceling, but they’re not engaging either. They're traveling, attending parties, hosting relatives, eating out more. Their schedules (and their appetites) are all over the place. So, how do you keep customers engaged when their routines disappear?

In this post, we’ll break down what causes the holiday slowdown, what you can control, and how to maintain momentum through the most chaotic weeks of the year, so you don't start January playing catch-up.

1. Understanding the Holiday Holding Pattern

Let’s start with the basics: What causes it?

The holiday season creates a perfect storm of factors that disrupt your customer base:

• Travel: Customers are visiting family, taking winter getaways, or just spending more time away from home.
• Events & Parties: Company dinners, neighborhood potlucks, school concerts, holiday happy hours – meals are replaced by occasions.
• Cooking at Home (But Not Your Meals): Even customers who love your service might take a break to do traditional holiday cooking.
• Overspending Elsewhere: Gifts, travel, decor – people feel financially stretched and cut “non-essentials” temporarily.

What makes this tricky is that these behaviors don’t always show up as full cancellations. Instead, they manifest as:

• Pauses
• Skips
• Lower AOVs
• No engagement with emails or SMS

It’s not a “goodbye forever.” It’s just a seasonal pause. But unless you take action, that distance can turn into full-on churn come January.

Why Engagement Still Matters in December

You might be thinking: If people are distracted and disengaged, why not just let them go quiet and hope they return next month?Because Q1 success depends on Q4 strategy.

Customers who disengage completely during the holidays often take longer to return, or don’t return at all. On the other hand, even light-touch engagement during this time can keep your brand top of mind and preserve loyalty.

Think of it as relationship maintenance. You're not trying to win every order. You're trying to keep the connection warm, so when customers are ready to reboot in January, they come back to you.

How to Spot the Holding Pattern in Your Metrics

Before you can fix the holiday lull, you need to recognize it. Watch for these data signals:

• Increased skip/pause rate starting mid-November
• Decline in average order value (AOV)
• Fewer add-ons or customizations
• Lower open/click rates on weekly emails
• Fewer new referrals
• Dips in reactivation among paused customers

If you see more than two of these happening at once, you’re likely in the thick of a holiday holding pattern. The good news? It’s reversible.

7 Ways to Keep Customers Engaged Through the Holiday Chaos

These strategies are designed to meet customers where they are: distracted, overcommitted, and craving simplicity.

1. Embrace the Skip, but Own the Comeback

If a customer’s going to pause or skip a week, don’t fight it. But make the return path easy and irresistible. What to do:

• Launch a “We’ll Be Here When You’re Back” email series for customers who skip.
• Offer an early-January bonus: “Skip now, get $10 off your first week back.”
• Pre-schedule a nudge: “We’ll check in January 2nd. Ready for a reset?”

2. Introduce Holiday-Adapted Meals

Your customers may not want their usual weekly meals, but they still need something to eat between the big dinners. What to offer:

• No-cook or minimal prep meals for travel days
• Party recovery meals: light, nourishing options for post-indulgence days
• Heat-and-serve sides or desserts to supplement holiday cooking

Frame these as holiday helpers, not full replacements for holiday meals.

3. Create a “Travel Mode” Option

Let customers take you with them, or at least feel like you're still part of the plan. Ideas to test:

• “Deliver to my travel address this week.”
• “Send a gift box or travel bundle instead of meals.”
• “Pause my meals, but send me snacks.”

Even if only a fraction of customers use this feature, it keeps engagement high and builds flexibility into your model.

4. Run a “Gifting Season” Campaign

People might not order for themselves, but they’ll send meals as gifts. What to try:

• Promote gift cards for holiday gifting
• Offer pre-curated gift bundles (e.g., comfort food kits, winter warm-up boxes)
• Encourage corporate gifting: “Want to thank your team with something actually useful?”

Create urgency with shipping deadlines and limited-time bonuses for gift orders.

5. Lighten Up Your Messaging

Your customers are being marketed to death during December. Stand out by sounding more human.

Tone shift ideas:

• “You’ve got 37 things on your to-do list. Dinner shouldn’t be one of them.”
• “Skip the store. We’ve got meals covered while you do literally anything else.”
• “Let us feed you between the parties, potlucks, and panic.”

Drop the high-pressure sales copy and speak like a helpful friend.

6. Reward the Stick-Around Crowd

Some customers will stay loyal through the holiday slowdown. Make them feel seen. Try:

• A surprise add-on: “This week’s delivery comes with a sweet holiday treat, on us.”
• Loyalty points or a thank-you note in their final December order.
• A holiday card with a teaser of what’s coming in January.

It doesn’t take much to create delight and that delight turns into retention.

7. Set the Stage for a January Comeback

Use December to preview what’s coming in January. Think of it as a soft launch for your Q1 strategy. Ideas:

• Drop hints about new menu items, health-focused bundles, or updated features.
• “Resolution-Ready Meals Are Coming…” (tease it like a product launch).
• Encourage customers to pre-schedule their January deliveries now.

Customers who feel like they’re already signed up for success are less likely to explore other options in January.

What Engagement Looks Like (Even If They’re Not Ordering)

December engagement might look different than other months. Here’s what “success” can look like in a holiday holding pattern:

• Someone who pauses but clicks “Remind Me in January”
• Someone who reads your gift guide and forwards it to a friend
• Someone who skips meals but adds a snack bundle
• Someone who interacts with your SMS reminder even if they don’t order

If you’re staying present, useful, and easy to return to, you’re doing your job.

Final Thoughts: Don’t Fear the Quiet, Strategize Around It

The holiday holding pattern isn’t a failure. It’s a predictable, seasonal shift – and it’s an opportunity in disguise. Instead of fighting the slowdown, use it to:

• Build long-term loyalty with light-touch connection
• Introduce smart seasonal offerings (gifting, travel meals, snack kits)
• Set up January for a faster, stronger return to regular ordering

Because when everyone else starts screaming “New Year, New You” on January 1, your customers won’t need convincing. You’ll already be on their radar.

‍