28 marketing ideas for your restaurant

1. Fix the photos people order from45 min

Add ten daylight photos to your Google Business Profile: five dishes, the room full but not chaotic, the bar, the frontage from the street. Then upload the current menu — a missing menu loses bookings before anyone picks up the phone.

2. Ask the booking question0 min extra

Add 'how did you hear about us?' to the booking sheet and ask walk-ins at the door. A fortnight of that tells you whether covers come from Google, Instagram, the booking platform or simply the street.

3. Shoot one dish properly20 min

Photograph your most-loved dish in daylight by the window, close up, and post it with a real review quote and 'book a table'. One good dish photo works harder than a month of menu screenshots.

4. Reply to every review, especially the bad one45 min

Answer every Google and TripAdvisor review from the last three months. Reply to the bad ones calmly, in public, saying what you changed. Diners read the reply more carefully than the complaint.

5. Take the number at the table20 min

Ask for an email or a number at booking or on the bill: 'first to hear about the new menu and the Sunday roast.' A restaurant's own list fills midweek tables at zero cost.

6. Give regulars a reason to bring four15 min

Tell your regulars and your list: 'bring a table of four this month and dessert is on us.' Bigger tables at the same service cost is the cheapest revenue in hospitality.

7. Read the sheet, then rota to it15 min

Read a fortnight of 'how did you hear'. Feed the one route that's genuinely working, and set your staffing to the nights it fills. A busy kitchen with a thin front of house loses the customer you just won.

8. Name the dead service15 min

Pull covers by service for the last month. Nearly every restaurant is empty Monday to Wednesday evening. Pick one of those services and aim everything at it — not at 'midweek' in general.

9. Build one recurring midweek reason30 min

A Tuesday set menu at a fixed price, a Wednesday steak night, a Monday rate for local hospitality staff. A named, repeating night beats a floating discount, because people can plan around it and tell friends about it.

10. Tell the Friday crowd about Tuesday25 min

The people already booking your weekend are the cheapest to move. Table talkers, a line on the bill, one email to your list, one post: 'Tuesday's ours now — here's what's on.'

11. Book the room out midweek45 min

Offer the quiet night to a group that needs a home: a quiz, a running club's post-run meal, a supper club, a business breakfast, a local band. Ten booked covers beat an empty room, and they bring their own photos.

12. Post the midweek plate the night before20 min

Shoot the set-menu dish and post it at 8pm with 'tomorrow, tables from six'. Food posted the evening before catches people at the exact moment they decide not to cook.

13. Run it and ask the tables0 min extra

On the night, ask every table what brought them in and have front of house note the answers on the sheet. You're testing a night, not hoping for one.

14. Judge it on covers and margin15 min

Compare covers and spend per head against the same night last week. Up on both? Keep it for a month and print it on the menu. Up on covers only? The offer is too generous — change the offer, never the night.

15. Write the menu's one line20 min

Finish this: 'it's [what], for [who], and the reason to come is [the one dish or idea].' 'The new autumn menu' tells nobody anything. A headline dish gives people something to repeat.

16. Tease the pass, not the plate15 min

Post the deliveries, the chef tasting, the handwritten menu draft, the specials board being wiped clean — with a date. Kitchens are theatre, and the build-up is free reach.

17. Feed the regulars first45 min

Run a tasting for your regulars, your staff and your list the night before you open it, at cost. They'll fix what's wrong, then spend a week telling people they ate it first.

18. Open with the best plate and a booking link30 min

Launch post: the strongest daylight dish photo, the one-liner, the price, one ask — 'book a table'. Update the menu on Google, your website and the booking platform in the same hour, or the launch leaks out of sync.

19. Post full tables, not empty ones15 min

During week one, photograph service in progress and real people eating it, with permission. A busy room is the single most persuasive image a restaurant can put online.

20. Chase the people who didn't book15 min

A week in, post again for everyone who scrolled past: different dish, same sentence, plus 'midweek tables still free'. Most bookings come from the second telling.

21. Cost the launch properly20 min

Count what sold, the gross profit per dish, and what came back on the plates. Cut the two dishes nobody ordered — a short menu that sells out beats a long one that goes in the bin.

22. Be findable and identical everywhere45 min

Google, Apple Maps, TripAdvisor, Instagram, Facebook and your booking platform: same name, same hero photo, same hours, same phone, current menu on all of them. Wrong bank-holiday hours costs you a whole service.

23. Decide what you're famous for15 min

Pick one dish or one idea to be known for and put it in most of what you post. Towns say 'the place that does the pie'. Nobody has ever said 'the place with a varied menu'.

24. Put the kitchen on camera25 min

Post the chef, the supplier, the 6am market run, the reason you buy that meat from that farm. Restaurants that show their sourcing get remembered, and it's the post that travels furthest locally.

25. Show up in the local rooms20 min

Be genuinely useful in your town's Facebook groups and community feeds — recommend other places, answer questions, congratulate people. Never advertise. That's who gets tagged when someone asks where to take their parents.

26. Cook with someone local45 min

Do one real collaboration: a brewery tap takeover, a guest chef from another local kitchen, a producer's night with the farm named on the menu. Two audiences, one service, borrowed trust both ways.

27. Give the room one photogenic corner25 min

One wall, one light, one dish that arrives looking like an event. People photograph their food anyway — make sure the photo is unmistakably yours, and put your handle at the bottom of the menu.

28. Hold the rhythm20 min

Three posts a week — one dish, one from behind the pass, one human — plus ten minutes a day on comments, reviews and tags. Six weeks of that makes you the default answer to 'where shall we eat?'