A nail salon's March checklist before sandal season

By late March the quiet stretch is over for most nail salons. Square’s advice for beauty businesses describes January and February as traditionally slower months, and the owner of Urban Nail Box in Seattle summed it up for Square in one line: winter is the slowest time for the salon.

What comes next arrives quickly. The first warm weekends bring sandals out, and in our experience pedicure bookings climb from April, earlier across the Sun Belt and later up north. Mother’s Day falls on May 10 this year, and wedding season follows straight after it. The work that decides how much of that a salon catches is mostly done in the next three weeks, while there is still time to do it.

The next ten weeks, as a salon books them

• April. Pedicures return with the weather, along with spring break and Easter appointments.
• Early May. Mother’s Day on May 10. The National Retail Federation expected Mother’s Day spending to reach $34.1 billion last year, and a salon visit or gift card is one of the easier presents to buy at the last minute, if it can be bought online.
• May into the fall. The Knot’s 2026 wedding data, published in February, puts 76% of weddings between May and October, with 14% in May and 16% in June. Many of those weddings bring a whole wedding party that wants nails done the same week.

Make the footspa routine something clients can see

Pedicure season is when the cleanliness question gets asked most. California’s Board of Barbering and Cosmetology tells consumers, in a fact sheet revised in March 2024, that footspas must be cleaned after every client and that they have the right to ask to see the footspa cleaning logs. Texas requires its own cleaning steps after each client, and its licensing department offers a foot spa cleaning record to download in English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

Most salons already do the work. Few show it. Before April:

• Take a short video of a footspa being cleaned between clients and add it to your Google profile.
• Hang the cleaning log where a client in the chair can read it, not in the back room.
• Photograph your posted establishment license, which the California fact sheet also tells clients to look for.
• Add one paragraph to your website describing what happens at a station between clients.

A first-time client who has seen all four before arriving has less reason to wonder, and less to write about if anything goes wrong.

Read the menu and the polish wall like an inspector

Spring menus get reprinted in March, which makes this the right moment to check the wording. Since January 1, 2025, California has banned the sale of cosmetics with intentionally added formaldehyde or dibutyl phthalate, and a second list of banned ingredients takes effect next January. In California, then, “formaldehyde-free” describes every legal bottle on the shelf rather than anything special about yours.

OSHA’s guidance on nail salon chemicals adds a warning for every state: in a California Department of Toxic Substances Control study, a limited number of products sold as free of one or more of the toxic trio, toluene, formaldehyde and dibutyl phthalate, tested positive for the chemicals they claimed to leave out. If the new menu says “non-toxic” or “5-free,” replace it with the brands you stock and a line about your ventilation. Those are claims you can prove.

Put gift cards online before April ends

Gift cards are not only a December product. In the NRF’s survey for the 2025 holidays, 43% of shoppers planned to give at least one gift card, the second most popular gift. Mother’s Day draws the same buyer: someone who wants to give an experience and decides late.

A salon that sells gift cards only at the front desk misses that buyer. Set up online gift cards through your booking system or point of sale, link them from your Google profile, your website and your Instagram bio, and test the purchase yourself on a phone. Have it working by mid-April, since the shoppers who plan ahead start then.

Spring hours, services and photos on the profile

Three profile changes matter more in spring than at any other time.

Hours. Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors, an annual survey of local search experts, ranks “business is open at time of search” fifth among map pack factors. If you add evening hours for the season, change them on the profile the same day, and set special hours for Easter and Memorial Day.

Services. List each pedicure and enhancement by the name a client types: gel manicure, dip powder, acrylic fill, spa pedicure. Whitespark ranks the primary category first, so check that yours says nail salon, not beauty salon or spa.

Photos and reviews. Post new photos of spring sets every week through April. BrightLocal’s survey published in February found 74% of consumers only care about reviews written in the last three months, so the reviews that will sell your May are the ones you ask for in March and April.

Start with the regulars

Square’s 2026 Local Economy Report, published last week, counts a regular as anyone with four or more purchase days a year, and found that regulars bring six times the annual revenue of transient customers and leave tips 11% higher. Its own example of a thriving neighborhood is the nail salon around the corner with every chair full.

Before any spring promotion goes public, send your regulars a short text offering first pick of April and early May appointments, including the Saturday before Mother’s Day. It fills the calendar with the clients you most want, and whatever is left is what you advertise.

What to do this month

• Film a footspa being cleaned and post it, with photos of the log and your establishment license, to your Google profile.
• Check every product claim on the spring menu, and swap “non-toxic” for brand names.
• Put gift cards on sale online and link them from the profile, the website and Instagram.
• Update spring hours and special hours for Easter and Memorial Day on the profile.
• Text your regulars first pick of April and Mother’s Day week before anyone else sees an offer.
• Ask every client for a review this month, by text after they leave, with nothing attached.

March is short on bookings and long on time, which is why it is the month to get this done. How we keep a salon’s profile ready for the busy months is on our Google Business Profile page, and the full nail salon year, from the slow winter to the December gift card rush, is on our page for nail salons.