28 marketing ideas for your restaurant
Written for owners, not marketers: every idea is specific, free or nearly free, and most take under 30 minutes. Grouped by what you are trying to make happen.
More customers this month
Fix the photos people order from
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.
About 45 min
Ask the booking question
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.
About 0 min extra
Shoot one dish properly
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.
About 20 min
Reply to every review, especially the bad one
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.
About 45 min
Take the number at the table
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.
About 20 min
Give regulars a reason to bring four
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.
About 15 min
Read the sheet, then rota to it
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.
About 15 min
Fill my quiet days
Name the dead service
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.
About 15 min
Build one recurring midweek reason
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.
About 30 min
Tell the Friday crowd about Tuesday
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.'
About 25 min
Book the room out midweek
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.
About 45 min
Post the midweek plate the night before
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.
About 20 min
Run it and ask the tables
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.
About 0 min extra
Judge it on covers and margin
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.
About 15 min
Want these as a day-by-day plan instead of a list? The free 7-day plan arranges them for your exact goal, no account needed.
Launch something new
Write the menu's one line
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.
About 20 min
Tease the pass, not the plate
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.
About 15 min
Feed the regulars first
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.
About 45 min
Open with the best plate and a booking link
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.
About 30 min
Post full tables, not empty ones
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.
About 15 min
Chase the people who didn't book
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.
About 15 min
Cost the launch properly
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.
About 20 min
Get known locally
Be findable and identical everywhere
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.
About 45 min
Decide what you're famous for
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'.
About 15 min
Put the kitchen on camera
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.
About 25 min
Show up in the local rooms
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.
About 20 min
Cook with someone local
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.
About 45 min
Give the room one photogenic corner
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.
About 25 min
Hold the rhythm
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?'
About 20 min
Or stop doing this alone.
Kate, an AI CMO, and twelve specialists do all of the above for your restaurant: the posts written, the pictures planned, the numbers read. 14-day trial, card to start, cancel before it ends to avoid a charge.