Restaurants
Restaurant marketing that fills tables, not reports
Restaurant marketing is not posting more often. It is knowing which shifts lose you money, which guests are cheapest to bring back, and which channel actually delivers a cover for less than it costs. We do that work for independent restaurants and small groups — and nothing else.
The problem
Why most restaurant marketing quietly fails
Most restaurants are not short of marketing activity. They are short of marketing that is aimed at a specific problem. Posting three times a week, boosting a photo of a burger and hoping is activity, not strategy — and it usually lifts demand on the nights that were already busy.
The economics are unforgiving. Friday and Saturday cover their costs. Monday to Wednesday carry the same rent, the same chef and half the covers, so a single quiet midweek period can wipe out the margin the weekend earned. Marketing has to be pointed at those shifts specifically.
Then there's the cost of the introduction. A guest who searched your name, went via a platform and paid a commissioned booking fee was never a new guest — you paid to be introduced to someone who already knew you. That leak is fixable, and fixing it is usually the fastest win available.
Built to answer
- “restaurant marketing”
- “restaurant marketing ideas”
- “restaurant marketing strategy”
- “how to market a restaurant”
- “restaurant marketing services”
- “marketing for independent restaurants”
If you searched one of these, this page is the answer — no generic agency deck, no minimum twelve-month lock-in.
What’s included
What restaurant marketing with us includes
Shift-level campaigns
Paid social and search planned per service — Tuesday dinner, set lunch, Sunday roast, brunch, party season — with budget capped inside a catchment you can realistically fill from.
Local search and the map pack
Google Business Profile, review velocity, menu and location pages so you show up for "restaurants near me" at the moment someone decides where to eat.
Direct booking path
A reservation route on your own domain that is faster than the platform, with tracking that shows the true cost of a direct cover against a commissioned one.
Email and returning guests
Guest data captured at booking and used properly: seasonal menus, event invitations and lapsed-guest campaigns — the cheapest covers you will ever buy.
Content that sells the room
Photo and video capture on site, edited for the platforms where people choose restaurants, not generic stock that could be any dining room in the country.
Reporting in covers and revenue
Monthly reporting on covers, revenue by channel and commission saved, with a call to talk it through rather than a PDF and silence.
How it runs
The first 90 days
- 01
Audit and baseline
Week one is measurement: search visibility, booking and enquiry paths, commission exposure, review recency, and what a booking currently costs you by channel. Nothing gets changed until we know the starting number.
- 02
Fix the fundamentals
Weeks two to six clear the blockers — listings, tracking, page structure, booking friction — because paid spend on top of a broken path just buys expensive proof that the path is broken.
- 03
Scale what converts
From week six we push budget and content behind the segments that produce revenue, and cut the ones that don't. You get a monthly report in revenue terms, not impressions.
Illustrative outcomes
What restaurant marketing work tends to move
Hospitality operators are pragmatic, so we lead with outcomes rather than adjectives: covers, room nights, direct revenue and commission saved.
+42%
online bookings in 3 months
Independent gastropub, Surrey
+28%
direct room-night revenue in 6 months
Boutique hotel, Cotswolds
£45k
annual OTA commission moved back in-house
14-room country inn, Yorkshire
2.1x
midweek covers in 5 months
High street bistro, Manchester
Illustrative examples for demonstration, not verified client results.
FAQs
Restaurant marketing questions
- What does restaurant marketing actually involve?
- For an independent restaurant it is normally four things: being findable in local search, filling named quiet shifts with paid campaigns, keeping guests coming back through email, and moving bookings off commissioned platforms onto your own site. Everything else is optional.
- How much should a restaurant spend on marketing?
- A common benchmark is three to six per cent of revenue across management and media. Our retainers start at £650/mo with most independents between £950 and £1,800; media spend is separate and stays in your own ad accounts.
- How quickly does restaurant marketing work?
- Paid campaigns can influence next fortnight's bookings. Local search usually shows within one to two months, and content-led organic growth over three to six. We set the expectation channel by channel before we start.
- Do you only work with restaurants?
- We work across hospitality — restaurants, pubs, bars, breweries and boutique hotels — and nothing outside it. That is why you never have to explain how a service period works.
- Is there a lock-in contract?
- Three months so the work has time to show, then rolling monthly. No twelve-month tie-ins.
Next step
Book a free restaurant growth audit
Thirty minutes, no deck. We'll look at your local search visibility, booking path and quiet shifts, then tell you the three things we'd fix first.