Restaurant marketing ideas you can run this month

Pick your problem first, then your idea

A list of twenty-eight ideas is not twenty-eight jobs. Read it like a menu. Choose two or three, do them properly, and after four weeks look at what they brought in. Then choose again.

It helps to know first where your business is stuck. Revenue grows in three ways: more new guests, the same guests coming more often, or more spent on each order. Every idea below mostly moves one of those.

Every idea is built the same way: what it is, why it works and how to do it, followed by two short lines on what it costs and which number to follow. Many of them cost hours and not money, and those come first on purpose.

Know who you are cooking for

Marketing that misses your guest is the most expensive kind. The first three ideas cost an afternoon, and they decide what you do with the rest.

1. Find the question nobody is answering

Start with what people in your town search for, and what the places around you offer in reply. Where demand is bigger than supply, you have room.

Type something like “pizza delivery” plus your neighbourhood into Google and look at the suggestions under the search box and the questions under “People also ask”. For numbers, use Google's Keyword Planner. It is free with a Google Ads account, even if you run no ads, though the volumes it shows are estimates.

Then open Google Maps, find the five places your guests would see as the alternative and read their worst reviews. What keeps coming back is a gap: a long wait, no vegetarian dish, no delivery after nine. Run your findings through the four Ps: product, price, place (where and when they can be reached, online too) and promotion.

Cost: an afternoon. How you know: you have written down three gaps you can fill, with one sentence on what you will change to fill them.

2. Describe your ideal guest from your own numbers

Your business is not for everyone. A place beside a station has different guests from one in a residential street, and that shapes your menu, your opening hours and your tone. Split it into who they are and what they do.

The answers are already in your till and your order history. Whatever you cannot find there, ask at the counter. Then write it down in three sentences, for example: families from the neighbourhood who collect on Fridays and usually order for four. With that sentence you know what to send, when, and with which offer.

Cost: an hour. How you know: you can describe your best guest without hesitating, and your team describes him the same way.

3. Make your brand look like that guest

Your brand comes down to three things: the food you serve, the way you talk about it and the way guests are looked after. When those fit together you hardly need to explain yourself. A neighbourhood pizzeria for families sounds different from a lunch spot for people who have to be back at the office in twenty minutes.

Pick one thing for each. The food: a menu that suits your guest. The talk: a tone that sounds the same on your site, in your emails and on the board outside. The welcome: the three things your front-of-house team always does, even when it is busy. Write those three down and pin them up behind the bar.

Cost: an hour and a chat with your team. How you know: a new guest can say in one sentence what kind of place you are.

Make sure guests can find you

Anyone searching Google for food wants to know within seconds where, until when and what. These four jobs sort that out.

4. Put your business on the map, tidily

For local guests Google is often the first step, because people who search are usually already hungry. Start with your Google Business Profile: claim it, fill in every field and keep your name, address and phone number identical everywhere. A full walkthrough is in our guide to the Google Business Profile.

Use the words guests search with in your description, such as “Italian restaurant” or “pizza delivery” with your area, in normal sentences and not as a string of keywords. Then put the same details wherever guests and map apps look: Apple Maps (through the free Apple Business Connect), Bing, TripAdvisor, TheFork if you take bookings, the Gouden Gids and your profiles on Thuisbezorgd and Uber Eats. One odd phone number or an old address is enough to make search engines and guests doubt you.

Cost: two to three hours, once. How you know: in the statistics of your Google profile, watch route requests, calls and visits to your site, and compare them with the month before.

5. Give every dish that matters its own page

Somebody typing “lasagne delivery” is not looking for a restaurant but for a dish. A page per dish gives Google something to show and gives your guest somewhere to order straight away. Start with your best sellers.

Such a page holds the name of the dish, two sentences on what is in it and how you make it, your own photo, the price, the allergens, an order button and the town you are in. Write it the way you would tell it at the table. Begin with five pages and add one a week.

Cost: half an hour per page. How you know: in Google Search Console, Google's free tool for site owners, check after a few weeks whether the dish name shows up in search queries.

6. Describe every photo

A search engine understands a photo mainly through text: the words around it and the alt text, the short description you fill in when you upload it. People who use a screen reader hear that same text read out, so you help those guests as well.

Keep it factual and use the ordinary name of the dish. A useful pattern is dish, detail, place: “Pepperoni pizza from the stone oven, Utrecht” or “Garlic bread with herb butter, Zwolle”. Choose the common name. Somebody searching for garlic bread rarely types your own name for it.

Cost: a minute per photo. How you know: in Search Console the image search type shows how often your photos appeared.

7. Keep your details current, holidays included

Nothing earns a bad review faster than a guest standing at a closed door while Google says you are open.

Make one person responsible. They check your profiles whenever opening hours or your phone number change, and above all before the days you deviate: New Year's Day, King's Day, Ascension Day, Whit Sunday and Monday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, your summer closure. In Google you can enter special hours per date. Put a reminder in your diary every quarter.

Cost: ten minutes per change and a quarter of an hour each quarter. How you know: you stop getting reviews and calls from people who found a closed door.

Let your site and your order button do the work

A guest who has found you decides within seconds. Treat your site as your shop window and your order button as your till.

8. Put your homepage in the right order

What a visitor sees first on a phone should answer four questions: what kind of place is this, what does it look like, what do others think of it and how do I order. Start with a short description and a good photo of a dish. Under it goes a row with your best dishes, each linking straight to ordering, then a few real reviews with a name and a source, and a visible order button all the way through.

Cost: a few hours, or a conversation with whoever builds your site. How you know: what share of visitors click to order, and what share of those go on to pay.

9. Remove whatever makes ordering hard

A visitor who has to hunt gives up. Walk through your own ordering on your phone, with somebody who has never seen your site. Wherever that person hesitates, your guests hesitate too.

• An order button that stays visible while you scroll
• A short explanation at the top: choosing collection or delivery, what time, the minimum order and the delivery charge
• Both collection and delivery, as far as you can offer them
• Payment methods guests know: iDEAL, debit card at collection, credit card and Apple Pay or Google Pay
• An email field with a consent box that is not ticked in advance

On iDEAL: from 2026 iDEAL is being phased into its European successor Wero, in stages. Your payment provider can tell you what that means for your ordering site, so ask now.

On the system itself: ordering platforms charge a percentage of each order. Your own ordering system usually costs a fixed monthly amount plus payment fees. It is not a choice of one or the other. The platforms bring you new guests. On your own site you know who your regulars are and can invite them back. Work out both with your own numbers.

The email address at the first order is the basis for ideas 12 to 16. Without it you cannot send a guest anything.

Cost: an hour of testing, then some adjusting. How you know: the share of visitors to your order page who pay, and how many taps it takes.

10. Your own app for guests who come back anyway

An app puts your menu on your guest's home screen. Ordering takes a few taps, and next time the previous order is already waiting.

An app only makes sense when guests order more than a few times a year and your site already works. Look at your own figures: how many guests order three times a year or more? If that is a small group, start with a good site and a loyalty scheme. If you want to read what an app for a single restaurant can look like, begin with the page about the app.

Cost: depends on the route, with a set-up fee or a monthly fee and time to make it known. How you know: what share of your orders comes through the app, and whether app users come back more often.

From first order to regular

A first order seldom pays for itself. The second and third do. Everything in this part aims at that second order.

One rule covers every email and text below. According to the ACM, the Dutch regulator, you send advertising only to people who gave their consent beforehand. You make clear that you are the sender, you make unsubscribing easy and you can show your consent. For existing customers there is a limited exception for similar products. This is not legal advice, so if you doubt your set-up, check it.

11. Surprise a new guest with something of yours

An unexpected gesture sticks and gets passed on. It does not have to be a discount. Better is something from your own kitchen that costs you little, with a handwritten line: a bag of kruidnoten (small spiced biscuits) with a first order in November, an extra sauce with a first portion of chips.

A guest works out a discount, but feels a gift. Choose one thing a month, give it only with a first order and say who it comes from. More actions like this, with what they cost, are in Eighteen promotions that actually lift your online sales.

Cost: the purchase price of one product per first order. How you know: what share of new guests order again within a month.

12. Remind whoever forgot their basket

Somebody fills a basket and does not pay, because the doorbell rang or a child shouted. A short email showing what is still waiting can win back some of those orders. It only works if the email address was already entered, so put that field early in the process.

Send the reminder within a few hours, with a photo of what was in the basket and one button leading back to exactly that basket. Start without a discount: a reminder is often enough. If you want to add something later, choose free delivery or a small product over a percentage. The full set-up is in Email marketing: eight emails that bring guests back.

Cost: an hour to set it up once. How you know: what share of reminded baskets are paid after all.

13. Send more than a receipt after the order

The order confirmation is the email everyone opens. Say what the guest can expect, such as when the order will be ready. That is a service message and not advertising, so keep that text clean. Advertising goes in a separate email, and only to people who said yes.

A day after the order, send a thank-you with a photo of a dish that goes with what they ordered, and within a week a suggestion for next time. Now and then slip in a story about yourself: who runs the place and why you cook this menu.

Cost: an evening to write the emails. How you know: what share of guests order a second time within thirty days.

14. Win back guests who have gone quiet

A guest who ordered three times and then said nothing for six weeks is not angry. Something came up. An email at the moment the silence starts suits that guest better than a newsletter to everyone. You set it up once and it sends itself, guest by guest.

Mention what that guest orders most, give one reason to come back and add one button. A photo of the dish he likes feels more personal than a general “we miss you” with a discount. Make the offer bigger as the silence gets longer, and offer a product rather than a percentage.

Cost: an hour, once. How you know: how many of the guests you wrote to order again within two weeks.

15. Reward the guests who order more often

A loyalty scheme works when guests understand what they get. Every fifth order a free starter is clearer than points you have to convert. Show guests how far along they are and tie it to their account on your own site.

Make joining easy: a notice on your site that appears once and asks one question, and closing it has to simply work. Choose a reward you make yourself, so it costs you the ingredients and not a percentage of the whole order. The set-up, the rewards and the pitfalls are in Loyalty programmes that actually bring in orders.

Cost: the purchase price of the rewards guests redeem. How you know: what share of your online orders comes from members.

16. Use text messages for the moment itself

A text lands straight on your guest's screen, so use it sparingly. It suits short messages about right now: your order is ready, there is fresh pasta tonight. Anything that is advertising needs the same consent as email.

Good moments are the confirmation of an order (a service message), a Friday afternoon message about your special and a small birthday gesture. For the last one, ask only for the day and month of birth, not the year. Put who you are and how to unsubscribe in every text. What is allowed, what works and what to leave alone is in our guide to text-message marketing for restaurants.

Cost: a small amount per message and a quarter of an hour to write each one. How you know: how many orders come in within a day of sending, compared with the same weekday a week earlier.

Make every order worth more

You can grow without one extra guest. If guests spend a little more on each order it goes straight to your revenue, and your kitchen and your floor do nothing extra for it.

17. Suggest what goes with it

“Would you like something to drink with that?” is the best-known suggestion in hospitality and it still works. The suggestion has to fit the dish and earn more than it costs: a drink, a sauce, a side, a dessert. Choose suggestions with a good margin.

Have your order page show two or three suggestions at checkout that match the basket, with a photo. At the counter or on the phone, your team says one fixed sentence. Thirteen ways to go about it are in Thirteen ways to increase your average order value.

Cost: an hour to choose the suggestions. How you know: the average order value and the share of orders with an add-on.

18. Build your menu around what it earns

Start with the sum: what does a dish cost you to buy in, and what margin do you want to keep? That number sets your price, and only after that do you look at psychology. How to work it out is in How to price your menu without guessing.

Menu designers use a handful of rules of thumb. Treat them as things to try. Whether they work on your menu you only see in your own sales figures.

Then let the menu itself steer what guests choose. Your best sellers are not automatically your best earners, so work out per dish what it leaves and put the dishes that are both popular and profitable on top. Use the season: asparagus in spring, mussels in autumn, stamppot (mashed potato with vegetables) in winter, oliebollen (deep-fried dough balls) around New Year. Give guests a reason to order now with a dish that is only there for six weeks, and cost it beforehand.

Cost: a few hours of calculating and a new menu. How you know: units sold of the dishes you moved forward and what each one leaves per portion.

19. Know who your top guests are

Often a small part of your guests brings in a large part of your revenue. A regular loyalty scheme is too small for them. Whether that is true for you, you see by sorting your guests on what they spent in the past twelve months. Look at the top of that list.

What you offer them: a combination of dishes that fits their habit, at a good price for the whole. A reward when they bring somebody, preferably something from your own kitchen. And a question: what could be better, and what do they still miss. Greet them by name when you see them, because that costs nothing.

Cost: an hour for the list, then one dish for each guest you want to thank. How you know: how often this group orders and how many new guests arrive through them.

20. Put the dishes with the best margin in the light

Not every dish earns you the same. Some have a low purchase cost and a price guests gladly pay. Give those a good description, their own photo and a fixed spot at the top of the menu and in your suggestions.

Say your chicken satay costs you €3.10 to buy in and sells for €13.50 including VAT. Your pasta costs €1.80 and sells for €12.50. Take off the 9 per cent VAT and the satay leaves about €9.29 and the pasta about €9.67. The dearest dish is not the one that earns most.

Recommend what fits: a glass of wine or a craft beer with your best meat dish, a lemonade with the pasta. You may only sell alcohol to people aged 18 and over, delivery included, so check age at the door.

Cost: an hour of calculating. How you know: units sold of those dishes and what each one leaves per portion.

21. Offer a reward above a set amount

A minimum with a benefit attached pulls the basket up: order €30 or more and delivery is free, or from €35 you get a dessert on the house. Somebody with €26 in the basket often goes looking for something to reach €30.

Here is how to set the line. Take your average order value, say €24, and put the line a little above it, such as €30. Too high and nobody reaches it, too low and you give delivery away to people who already ordered that much. Work out what your reward costs: with €4 of delivery cost and twenty free deliveries a week, that is €80 a week.

Show the minimum and the delivery charge before anybody pays. That is honest, and it saves you from annoyed guests at the door.

Cost: the delivery cost or the dessert you give away. How you know: the average order value and the share of orders that land just above the line.

Your reputation and your neighbourhood

New guests often come through what others write about you, or through people who walk the same streets you do. Here are five ways to do something with that.

22. Ask for reviews and answer every one

People choosing a restaurant often read what others wrote first. What sits under your name is part of your menu. Answer every review and make sure enough new ones arrive.

Reply briefly and calmly, and within a week. Thank somebody for a good review with a line that fits what they wrote. With a bad review, say what went wrong and what you are doing about it, and offer to settle it away from the site. You are mostly writing for the next reader.

Asking works best with a QR code on the receipt and on the card in the bag, a quick word from your front-of-house team when guests pay, and a message after the order with a link. Mind one thing: Google does not allow you to offer a reward for a review, such as a discount or a free product, and it removes reviews that came about that way. Asking is fine, rewarding is not, and you must not ask only the happy guests. So ask everybody and offer nothing for it. Fake reviews are also banned across the EU and the ACM acts against them. Never write one yourself and do not let a friend write one.

Show good reviews through a link with Google, or with the writer's permission, so that only what a guest really wrote is shown.

Cost: a quarter of an hour a week. How you know: the number of new reviews a month, your average score and how quickly you answer.

23. Let a local creator taste what you make

A food blogger or photographer with a local audience reaches exactly the people you want. Look for somebody whose style suits your place and who writes about your town, rather than somebody with the biggest reach.

Agree something that works for both sides. You offer a meal, or a tasting for a small group, and say beforehand what you hope for in return, such as a post or a photo. You do not demand positive wording. One rule applies: whoever receives a free product or service, such as a meal, and posts about it has to make clear that it is advertising. That is in the Reclamecode Social Media & Influencer Marketing, the Dutch advertising code for creators, and the government's Ondernemersplein explains it. Agree that the creator does so.

Give the creator their own link or code so you can see what it brought. Ask your bookkeeper how to record meals given away, and keep a note of what you give and to whom.

Cost: the purchase cost of a meal or two and an hour. How you know: orders and bookings with the code or link, and new visitors to your site.

24. Sponsor something your guests care about too

A youth tournament, the school musical, the fair, the street party: all of them look for people to chip in, and your name appears where your guests go. Choose what fits your guest, as you worked out in idea 2, and agree what you get in return.

That can be your name or logo on their materials, a mention in their posts and a QR code or card with the meal you provide. Sponsor with food rather than money, for instance the pizzas for the volunteers. It costs you the ingredients and everybody tastes what you make. Put the amount on paper beforehand.

Cost: a fixed amount or the purchase cost of a number of meals, agreed in advance. How you know: orders with the code that was on the materials.

25. A pop-up or food truck for a day

A temporary spot at a market, a fair or a business park takes you to people who never walk past your door. It is about the first bite, not about how much you sell.

Sort it out early. Every municipality has its own rules in the APV, the general local by-laws. Sometimes you need a permit or an exemption, sometimes not, and it can take time. For food safety the same rules apply as in your restaurant, so your HACCP plan too. Think about insurance, power and waste as well.

Bring one dish that you make with two hands, a sign with a QR code and a way to collect email addresses, with consent.

Cost: ingredients, the hire of a pitch or stall, any permit and a day's work for two people. How you know: new email addresses, and orders in the two weeks after from the postcodes around the spot.

26. A flyer in the neighbourhood, within the rules

A flyer works when it asks for something and offers something: a QR code to your order page and a reason to use it today. It reaches the people who live inside your delivery radius.

Watch the stickers. A Nee/Nee sticker (No/No) on a letterbox means no unaddressed advertising and no free local papers. With Nee/Ja only the local papers get through. Some municipalities work with a Ja/Ja sticker, and then you may only deliver leaflets where that sticker is. Look up your municipality's rules before you go walking.

Put a code on the flyer so you can see what it did, for instance a dish guests mention. You can also bring a tasting to the businesses around the corner: a tub of your lunch dish at reception opens doors.

Cost: printing and a few hours of walking. How you know: how often the code is mentioned or scanned.

Use the calendar

A date forces a decision. Someone who wants to go out on Mother's Day books or orders now, not next week. The calendar delivers those moments for free, and you only have to catch them in time.

27. Build your year around the moments that count

The Netherlands has a full calendar, and every occasion brings a different guest. Put them in your diary in January and note by which day your announcement has to be ready.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and moves forward by about ten to eleven days every year. In 2027 it begins in early February. The iftar, the meal that breaks the fast, is at sunset, so the time shifts during the month. Promise nothing you cannot deliver: only say halal if your purchasing stands behind it.

School holidays are split into three regions: north, middle and south. The summer and spring holidays do not fall everywhere at once. In 2027 the summer holiday starts on 10 July in the north, 17 July in the middle and 24 July in the south, according to the recommended dates of the Rijksoverheid, the national government. So look at your guests' region and not only your own. A place in a tourist town gets guests from all three.

Work each moment out in three messages: an announcement beforehand, a reminder on the day itself and a thank-you afterwards. Add something that brings the day to life: a small quiz where knowledge counts, such as guessing which ingredient is in the sauce, double loyalty points for members, or a last-minute offer for anyone whose plans changed. If you raffle anything you fall under gambling rules, so read those first at the Kansspelautoriteit, the gambling regulator.

Cost: an hour of planning in January and a few hours per moment. How you know: that day's revenue against the same holiday last year, not against the day before.

28. Turn one day of the week into a habit

A fixed day works because guests remember it. Pasta every Tuesday, stamppot every Thursday in winter, a roast every Sunday. The message can be the same every week, and so it becomes a habit of your guest rather than an email he swipes away.

Keep to four rules: the same day, the same hour, one dish or a fixed combination, and a price you worked out beforehand. Make the offer apply on your own ordering site only. That gives guests a reason to order there, and you know who orders and whether they return.

Cost: the margin on the dish of the day and ten minutes a week. How you know: orders on that weekday against the four weeks before.

How to tell whether it worked

You do not need to run a dashboard. Three numbers are enough: how many orders, the average per order and how many new email addresses. Write them down the day before you start and let an idea run for four weeks. That smooths out the weather and a quiet week, and it is short enough to adjust.

Run no more than two ideas at once, or you will not know which one worked. If your amount per order falls while the number of orders stays level, you gave discounts to people who would have ordered anyway. Compare seasonal ideas with the same moment last year. Which reports really matter is in our guide to reading your numbers.

Does it work? Do more of it. Does it not? Drop it and pick the next idea. That way you do not overwhelm yourself.

Your plan for the next four weeks

Starting everything at once is the quickest way to finish nothing. This order fits an ordinary month.

Marketing is part dreaming up ideas and part trying them out. Your biggest problem decides where you start, and the numbers decide what you keep.