Restaurant marketing: the complete guide for your own place

What restaurant marketing is, and what it is not

Marketing is everything that makes the right people know your place, feel like coming and find an easy way in or an easy way to order. It does not begin with a photo on Instagram and it does not end with a pile of flyers. It is a series of choices: who you cook for, where they find you, what you charge and how you let them know.

Many owners hear the word marketing and think promotion: a special, an advert, a leaflet. Promotion is one of four parts. Work only on that one and you pay for attention to a business that has not been tuned to the people who come to look.

An independent place has an advantage a chain does not. You are in the room yourself, you know the people who come every week and you see at once whether an idea works. That short line is your best marketing tool, provided you do something with it.

The four Ps at a glance

The best-known framework in marketing is the four Ps: product, place, price and promotion. It sounds abstract, but it comes down to four questions you can ask yourself at the kitchen table.

The question of who you are doing it for comes first, because without that answer the four Ps stay generic.

What marketing does not fix

Marketing brings people to your door. It does not make the food better, the service friendlier or the wait shorter. A guest who arrives on the back of an advert and leaves disappointed will tell others and will not return. So get your product and your service in order, or at least work on them alongside.

If you want to turn all this into a document with goals, competitors and a budget, the step-by-step guide to a marketing plan is ready for you. This article is the overview around it.

Start with your guests: who is this for?

Marketing only works when you know who you are talking to. Without that picture you throw time and money into the air and hope something sticks. With it you can choose: this channel yes, that one no, this offer for this group.

What to find out about your guests

Start with who they are and what they do.

• Roughly how old are they, and are they residents, people who work nearby or visitors?
• Do they come alone, as a couple, with friends or with children?
• When do they come: lunch, dinner, Sunday afternoon, Friday night?
• How often do they return, and what do they spend each time?
• What do they order most, and do they eat in, collect or have it delivered?

Most of the answer is already in your own figures. Your till shows what sells and when. Your ordering site shows who orders, how often and for how much. With a delivery platform you see an order, but usually not the guest behind it. Add what your team sees: your waiting staff know who always asks for the same table.

From habits to a few groups

Put guests with the same habits together and give each group a name your team can work with. Not made-up people with faces, but a description that makes everyone in the building picture the same guest.

Three or four groups are enough. Fill them in with what you see, not with what you hope.

Choose who to reach first

Then comes the question that sharpens everything: whom do you want more of? Three questions help.

1. Who brings in the most per visit or per order?
2. Who comes back most often?
3. Who is easiest to reach with what you already have?

A worked example. Suppose your lunch guests spend €11 on average and come four times a month. Your Sunday families spend €48 and come twice a month. A lunch guest is then worth €44 a month to you and a family €96. You need a little over two lunch guests to replace one family. That does not mean dropping lunch, but it does show where an extra hour of marketing earns the most.

Often the answer is a combination, such as the families who order every Sunday. That is your target group for this quarter. Everything you pick afterwards gets tested against one question: does this reach those guests?

The four Ps applied to your place

With your groups in mind, walk through the four Ps. The point is not to change all four. The point is to know which of the four is weakest right now.

Product: what you do best

Your product is more than your menu. It is your food, your service, your atmosphere and the way someone can order: at the table, at the counter or on your site. It should be possible to describe in one sentence that a stranger remembers.

• What is your concept, and what do you do better than the places around you?
• Which evenings, offers or events belong to it?
• What does a good evening look like at your place, seen from your guest's chair?

Show what you do best. Put your best sellers first, give your specialities a photograph on the ordering page and choose, group by group, what appeals to them most. A place that is the only one nearby cooking with regional seasonal produce has something to say.

How you turn that into a name, a style and packaging that guests recognise is covered in the article on your restaurant as a brand. Which dishes to push can be based on your numbers: you will find that in menu engineering.

Place: where guests find you

Place is your street, but also your spot on Google and on your guest's phone. The best message does nothing if it reaches the wrong people. You can have thousands of followers who like your photos and never walk down your street. For a place with its own neighbourhood, what counts is who lives or works within a few kilometres.

You cannot move your building, but you can move your digital spot. What does Google show when someone searches for food in your area at night, and what happens when they click your name?

Place is also about the ways a guest can order: at the table, collecting, delivery, by phone, on your own ordering site or through a platform. Thuisbezorgd and Uber Eats are good for reach and for guests who do not know you yet. Your own ordering site is where your regulars order and where you know who they are.

Price: profit for you, fair for your guest

Price is about what you keep and about what your guest expects. If the price does not match what you deliver, no marketing helps. Start with your figures.

• Which part of the day earns the most: lunch, dinner or delivery?
• Which dishes leave the most money, not just the most revenue?
• Which days and seasons are busiest, and which are quietest?

Use what you see to fill the quiet moments. If Wednesday afternoon is empty, a fixed lunch price often does more than another stack of flyers. Then look through your guest's eyes: is your menu cheap, premium or about right, and how does it sit next to the two or three places they could have eaten at instead?

An example for an evening menu for two. Suppose a starter to share, two main courses and two drinks cost €52.00 separately and you charge €46.50 for the menu. Your guest sees €5.50 off, and you sell five items where you might otherwise have sold three. Work out what the ingredients cost beforehand, because the discount comes out of your margin.

Promotion: letting the right people know you are there

Promotion is the part everyone starts with, and it belongs last. It is how you reach the groups from the previous chapter. For each group you answer three questions.

• How does this group want to be approached: online, on the street or straight in their inbox?
• What moves them: a new dish from the chef, a good-value menu, a friend's recommendation?
• What persuades them to come for the first time: real reviews, a mention in the local paper, photographs of the food?

What you do follows from that. The explorer gets the new menu with photographs in an email. The lunch regular sees your lunch price at the top of Google and on your site. The undecided neighbour reads a few reviews first. What excites one group leaves another cold, so talk to one group at a time.

Digital weighs more than paper for many places. A flyer disappears into a drawer, an ordering page is always one tap away on your guest's phone, and your own app with notifications works the same way: the order button sits on their home screen. A regular is also worth more than a new guest who orders once, so keep your email list and your loyalty programme in shape. And do not forget other people's proof: new guests believe other guests faster than they believe your own copy.

If alcohol is part of your offer, look at the rules first. Municipalities may restrict price promotions on alcohol in hospitality. Amsterdam has banned offers lasting 24 hours or less that take alcohol below 60% of the normal price since 1 April 2022, according to Koninklijke Horeca Nederland. Other municipalities have their own rules, so check your municipality's alcohol bylaw before you plan a happy hour.

Your website: where everything else lands

Every channel you pick ends up pointing at the same address: your site. A guest who finds you on Google, on Instagram or through a friend wants to know one thing: what is there to eat, what does it cost and how do I order or book? Your site answers that, or it does not.

A site is also the one channel that is truly yours. Your Instagram account, your listing on a delivery platform and your Google profile all run on other people's rules, and those rules change without you having a say. Your own site and your own guest list change only when you decide so.

Why an order on your own site is more than an order

An order through a platform is an order. An order on your own site is a guest: you see who they are, what they chose, when they ordered and whether they come back. That is the basis of every way of inviting someone back, from an email to a loyalty programme to a message about their favourite dish. Platforms stay good for reach and for guests you do not know yet. If you want to see such a guest a second time, it helps if that second order starts with you.

What a good restaurant site does

• It loads fast on a phone, even with a weak signal.
• It shows your menu as plain text, not as a PDF.
• It shows photographs of your own food, not of a stock library.
• Guests can order or book in a few taps.
• Opening hours, address and phone number sit at the top, with no hunting.
• A short about page shows who is in the kitchen.

Setting up a site from scratch

If you do not have a site yet, start here. Seven steps, in this order.

1. Get a domain name that is easy to say and spell, preferably your business name ending in .nl.
2. Decide how to build it: yourself with a website builder, through an agency, or through a system that supplies the site and the ordering together.
3. Make the pages a guest looks for: menu, ordering, about and contact with opening hours and directions.
4. Put your menu on the site as text and name your dishes the way guests type them.
5. Test the site on your own phone over mobile data, not on wifi.
6. Connect it to your Google Business Profile and put the address on your receipts, your bags and your profiles.
7. Only then start promoting it.

Which software belongs with it depends on what you still do by hand. Look for what saves time, cuts costs or lifts sales: ordering, till, stock, staff scheduling, booking and marketing. Choose a system that grows with you. An overview of what exists and what you need from it is in marketing tools for restaurants.

A goal, a number and a calendar

Only once you know who you are doing it for and what is on your site do you pick a goal. Without a goal every campaign is a good one, and afterwards you do not know whether it worked.

A goal you can calculate

Make your goal specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. Not “more orders”, but “in six months, fifty direct orders a week instead of forty”. Then you know at any moment whether you are on course.

The numbers that go with the goal

Hang a few numbers on your goal so you can follow it. If you want more revenue, look at these.

• The number of new guests per month
• The number of orders on your own channel
• Average revenue per day
• The average order value

One goal and three or four numbers is enough. You will not read more than that anyway.

Choosing channels

Which channels you use follows from your groups: an email, a flyer in the bag, a post, an advert in the local paper. The more specific you are, the better it lands. For people who have ordered from you before, direct contact by email and SMS is often the most on target.

A calendar with an end date

Decide how long a campaign runs and what happens each week. A calendar keeps two kinds of things together: one-off things, such as a table at the street party, and recurring things, such as a weekly email. Without a calendar you will not remember in three months what you did, and so not what worked.

An example for a six-month campaign: an email every week, three Instagram posts a week, one neighbourhood offer a month and a short look at your figures every two weeks.

Being found on Google

When someone types “pizza takeaway” or “lunch nearby” into their phone, they are hungry and searching now. Those visitors are close to choosing. Search engine optimisation, SEO for short, is the work that makes sure Google knows your place and shows it to the people looking for it.

Your site and your Google Business Profile together are your spot in Google. It works like your building: a place on a quiet through road gets found less often than one on the corner of the square.

Three things every place can do

1. Get your Google Business Profile in order.
2. Get your site and menu in order for people who search.
3. Collect reviews.

Your Google Business Profile is the listing that appears next to your name in Google and on Google Maps. Claim it, check your name, address and phone number, set your opening hours correctly, holidays included, add real photographs and pick the right categories. The full walkthrough is in the guide to Google Business Profile.

Name, address and phone number must match everywhere: on your site, on Google, on Apple Maps, on Facebook, on TripAdvisor and TheFork and on the delivery platforms. One wrong house number somewhere plants doubt with Google and with guests.

On your site, put what you are and where in the title and the headline of the homepage. “Pizzeria in Utrecht Oost” says more than “Welcome”. Put your menu on the page as text and keep the site quick to load. The full explanation is in the article on SEO for your restaurant site, and what matters specifically for the neighbourhood is in local SEO for restaurants.

What you can check yourself today

Nobody can promise you a position in Google, not even an agency. What you can do is make sure Google has everything it needs to know about your place. The rest is patience.

Direct contact: email, SMS and your loyalty programme

On Google you are found by people who do not know you yet. With email, SMS and a loyalty programme you reach people you already know, with no third party standing between you and your guest. That is the revenue that takes the least effort: a guest who already knows it is good.

Email

People often leave their address at the checkout, sending costs next to nothing and an email lands in the same inbox where they read their confirmations. You build the list yourself and you set the rules of that list.

Keep it calm. Some places email twice a week, but that takes more content than most places have. Begin with one email a week or two a month and watch your unsubscribes. Three kinds are a good start.

• An invitation: a short email that puts your place back in front of people.
• A points reminder: tell guests they have points to redeem.
• A best seller: show what sells best and ask them to order again.

Which eight emails are worth sending is set out in the article on email marketing.

Advertising by email, SMS or WhatsApp is only allowed in the Netherlands with prior consent. The Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) says that consent has to come from a deliberate choice, that a pre-ticked box does not count and that you must be able to prove it up to five years after sending. For existing customers there is an exception for messages about similar products, provided they can opt out. Every message has to carry an unsubscribe option. If you are unsure about your set-up, ask the ACM or a lawyer.

SMS

A text sits on the lock screen and so gets seen quickly. That is also why it feels intrusive sooner. Fewer people want to receive one, and those who do rarely want many. Count on no more than two a month.

The same consent rules apply to SMS as to email. Keep it short, name your business, say what the offer is and until when, and show how to unsubscribe. Do not send a happy hour message to guests who never order a drink: look at what someone ordered before and decide the subject from that.

What you need to start doing it yourself is in the article on SMS marketing.

Loyalty programme

You know loyalty programmes and you may have one already. The question is whether it works: do guests come more often because of it, and does it show you who they are? A good programme does three things.

• It brings regulars back with offers that suit them.
• It gives you guest details, so you know who your groups are and can reach them directly.
• It rewards bigger orders, for example with points that grow with the amount.

For a small place the simplest form works best: points per euro spent, or a reward after a number of visits. Guests understand it, it is easy to keep track of and you can explain it at the counter in one sentence. Attach the reward to a dish with a good margin or to your signature dish, so it does not cost you dearly.

If you collect details, the GDPR applies. Say what you do with them, keep no more than you need and let people opt out. More on set-up and rewards is in loyalty programmes that actually bring in orders, and on winning guests back in customer retention for restaurants.

Instagram and the rest of social media

There are plenty of platforms, but without paid adverts Instagram is the only one worth the effort for most places. Food is visual. A photograph of a plate, an open kitchen or a terrace says more in half a second than a sentence, and Instagram puts that in front of people nearby.

Facebook is mostly useful for your opening hours and your neighbourhood groups. TikTok can work if someone on your team enjoys filming. Pick one channel you do well rather than four you do halfway.

Local is the key word. Your account is part of your place and not a public photo album. A small account full of people from your area is worth more to you than a big account far away. Treat Instagram as second-row, though: get your site, your Google profile and your direct contact in order first.

What to do every week

• Post your food regularly, three to five times a week is realistic for many places: photographs and short videos of what actually leaves the kitchen, in good light, by the window or outside.
• Use Stories for the everyday: the dish of the day, a tray coming out of the oven, the Friday rush. Pin your best Stories as highlights at the top of your profile, such as your menu, your opening hours and how to order.
• Share photos of guests where they tag you. Ask permission first if someone can be recognised.
• Follow locally: residents, neighbouring businesses, the sports club, the school. Look at who follows the places around you and follow a few people with real interest. Do not do it in bulk, because that reads as spam and Instagram can restrict accounts for it.
• Create a spot where guests take a photo without being asked: a wall, a light sign with your name, a nicely laid table by the window.
• Tie your posts to your offers. Mention the offer on the day it starts and put the link to your ordering page in your profile.

Who does it?

Find someone on your team who enjoys it and give them a few paid hours a week. Settle it officially through your payroll. Agree what does and does not get posted and keep an eye on it. The account and the login belong to your business: make sure you always have them.

What it costs

A post costs nothing except time. If you pay for reach, a small amount a day can already do something when you aim the advert at your area and have a good photograph. Suppose you spend €3 a day for ten days: the trial costs €30. See whether that brings orders or visits before you spend more.

What to put under a photo is in what to post on Instagram when you run a restaurant. The broader approach for all channels is in social media for your restaurant.

Reviews and reputation

If your marketing works, more guests come, more orders arrive and revenue grows. The cheapest boost on top of that is your happy guests themselves. A review is proof for people who do not know you yet, and a signal to Google at the same time.

Before a new guest comes to you, they look at your stars and read the latest few comments. Recent, honest reviews often sway someone who is undecided. Google also weighs the number, recency and ratings of reviews when it decides who ranks high for a search nearby. The same reviews therefore do two jobs. That is why reputation is not a task you tick off once, but a channel that grows every month.

How to ask for reviews

1. Ask everyone, not only the guests who seem satisfied. Google forbids selectively asking for positive reviews or discouraging negative ones.
2. Make it easy with a QR code on the receipt, the table card, the order confirmation or the bag, leading straight to the review form of your Google profile.
3. Ask at the right moment: straight after the meal, or a day after the order in an email or text. Stay within the consent rules from the previous chapter.
4. Offer nothing in return for a review. Google does not allow payment, discounts or free products in exchange for a review. Do thank guests, without giving anything back.
5. Reply to every review that comes in.

How to reply

Reply to the good and the bad. Google and future guests both look at how you deal with guests. A reply does not have to be long.

• With a good review, say thanks, mention one detail the guest mentioned and invite them back.
• With a bad review, reply within a day, calmly and without defending yourself. Admit what went wrong, say what you are doing about it and offer to settle it away from Google.
• With a review that is wrong or looks fake, report it to Google and reply in a matter-of-fact way.

Posting fake reviews, having them posted or buying them is not allowed. Since mid-2022 the Netherlands has had an explicit ban on fake reviews, and the ACM can fine for it. That includes reviews you write about your own place or get friends to write.

Google is the most important place for most businesses, followed by TripAdvisor, TheFork and the ratings on the delivery platforms. Put a few recent, real reviews on your own site too, with the writer's permission.

Doing it by hand is where most places give up. So set a fixed moment in your week: five minutes every Monday to reply.

The neighbourhood, partnerships and offline

Digital channels weigh more and more, but offline still works, especially for a place that lives off its neighbourhood. Your guest lives or works a few streets away, and you can reach them where no screen sits between you.

Flyers and inserts in the order

The easiest paper campaign is the insert. Guests who already order from you get a card in the bag or the box. It costs little, it reaches exactly the people you already know and you can send them to your own site. Put four things on it.

• A reason to order directly: a dish that only appears on your own site, or something small on the first direct order.
• A QR code that goes straight to your ordering page, not to your homepage.
• A code that appears only on this flyer, so you can see how many come back.
• Your business name and phone number, and on the back the QR code for a Google review.

A worked example. Suppose a printer charges €85 for a thousand A6 flyers. If 25 orders come back with an average receipt of €32, that is €800 in revenue. Whether that pays depends on what you keep per order, but at least you will know.

Flyers in the neighbourhood call for care. A No/No sticker on a letterbox means no advertising print and no free local papers, according to the Dutch government. In some municipalities, distributing unaddressed advertising is only allowed at addresses with a Yes/Yes sticker. Check your municipality's website before you plan a flyer drop, and the local bylaw (APV) for handing out flyers in the street.

Working with the neighbourhood

An independent place is strong when it belongs to its neighbourhood. A few forms that work.

• Neighbouring businesses: a hairdresser, a bike shop or an office that hands out your cards while you put theirs on your counter.
• Local companies: a lunch offer for teams, or a standing Friday order.
• Schools, sports clubs and associations: a contribution to the end-of-season party or a perk for members on Saturday.
• Hotels, B&Bs and holiday lets: a card or QR code in the room, so visitors know where to eat well.
• Events: a stall at the market, the street party or King's Day, with a tasting that shows your menu.

For a stall or a terrace on the street you usually need a permit or permission from the municipality. Ask well in advance.

More ideas for each month are in marketing ideas for your restaurant, and offers for online orders in promotions that lift your online sales.

Where to start: time and money

Nobody does everything in this article. You have a business to run. So the question is not what is possible, but what you do first and what you leave alone.

One goal, two or three channels

Pick your main goal for this quarter: more first orders, more repeat visits or a bigger guest list. Then pick two or three channels that fit it and put them in a simple calendar so nothing slips.

A rhythm you can keep up

Write down what you do when and repeat it. This is what a workable rhythm looks like.

• Every day: reply to new reviews and put up a Story.
• Every week: post your updates, send one email or text and look at your orders.
• Every month: refresh the photos and posts on your Google Business Profile, look at your figures and plan one offer or event.
• Every season: a bigger campaign around a holiday or a new menu, such as Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, the terrace season, Sinterklaas or Christmas.

If you have little time

With just a few hours a week to spare, skip the full programme. Start where you get the most back for the least effort, in this order.

1. Your site and your ordering work well.
2. Your Google Business Profile is checked and up to date.
3. Reviews and emails run as much as possible by themselves, so your marketing carries on while you are in the kitchen.

Those three cover being found, ordering and coming back, with little upkeep. Everything you add later builds on them.

What it costs

There is no amount that suits every business. Decide first what your marketing has to deliver and work back. Below is an example with round, made-up figures. It is a worked example and not a norm.

On a yearly turnover of €400,000 that is 1.2% of your revenue. That percentage is not a norm. It only shows that an amount that looks large on paper can be small next to your turnover. Start lower if you need to. A business that spends €150 a month on one channel it can measure learns more than one that spreads €600 across six.

Measuring what works

Good marketing is not doing everything, but knowing what works and doing more of it. That sounds like something for a chain with a marketing department. For a business with one till and a phone it is possible too.

The numbers that matter

• Visitors to your site and where they come from: Google, Instagram, an email, a direct link.
• Orders on your own channel and the average order value.
• The share of guests who order again, say within three months. That is the clearest sign your marketing keeps guests and does not merely attract them.
• For each channel, what you put in and what it returned.
• What a guest is worth over time.

What a guest is worth

A guest is worth more than their first order. Suppose a new guest orders €24 and then comes back about once a month for a year at €28. After that year they have ordered €24 plus eleven times €28: €332. If half of that is left after ingredients and packaging, that is €166.

If it costs you €15 of marketing to win such a person, you are doing well, even if you made nothing on that first order. Count with what is left over, not with the whole receipt.

Which channel brought this order?

That is the hardest question. A few habits take you a long way.

• Give each channel its own code: one on the flyer, one in the email, one on Instagram.
• Use a separate QR code for each spot: the bag, the table, the shop front. Add a label to the link, a so-called UTM tag, so your statistics show where the visit came from.
• Ask at the counter or on the order form how they found you, with four or five answers to pick from.
• Look at the week after a campaign and set the orders and new sign-ups beside those of the weeks before.

Ordering directly makes this possible. When a guest orders on your own site you see the route: which email, which search, which flyer, what they ordered and whether they return. With a platform that view is missing, because the platform stands between you and your guest. That is no verdict on platforms, they bring in new guests. It is a reason to let your regulars order where you can see them.

One hour a month

Compare yourself with yourself. Percentages from vendor reports are averages across all kinds of businesses mixed together and say little about your street.

What to do on Monday

Starting everything at once is the fastest way to do nothing. Seven steps, in this order.

1. Write down your three best groups of guests and which of them you want more of this quarter.
2. Pick one goal with a number and a date.
3. Check your Google Business Profile: name, address, phone, opening hours, photos and the link to your ordering page.
4. Switch on the email consent field at checkout on your site and write one welcome email.
5. Print a QR code for Google reviews and put it by the till and in every bag.
6. Put a fixed rhythm in your diary: five minutes for reviews every Monday, an email or a post every Thursday.
7. Write down your starting position: visitors, online orders, average receipt and number of addresses.

In a month you compare. That is the whole measurement. What works, you do more of. What does not, you stop.