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How to Write a Restaurant Marketing Plan with Any Budget (Free Template)

You love food and you love people. And you want your restaurant business to grow. You know you need a good marketing strategy but it sounds overwhelming to create and execute. Where do you start? 

You may not have a marketing degree or even understand all of the social media, marketing tools and marketing channels and what they can offer you.

However, a great restaurant marketing plan is relatively straightforward when your objectives are distilled and clearly stated.

In this post, we’re going to break down the key essentials of a highly effective restaurant marketing plan ( free template included ). But before delving into expert tips for creating a restaurant marketing plan , let's first define it.

What is a restaurant marketing plan?

A restaurant marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines a restaurant’s strategy to promote a brand, acquire new customers, and enhance the guest experience.

It’s focused on a specific period of business and highlights a variety of marketing-related action steps, such as goal creation, budgeting, and content planning .

[A marketing plan] serves as a roadmap for achieving your marketing goals, ensuring that your efforts are focused, consistent, and aligned with your overall business objectives.

Learning how to craft a marketing plan forces you to think about your existing promotions and what you can do to gain a competitive edge.

While some restaurants integrate their overall marketing strategy and vision into their overall business plan , because marketing is critical to customer acquisition and engagement, having a well-researched marketing plan on its own is advisable.

A good idea is to create a working document that you’re continuously accessing and building upon and can attach as an appendix to the restaurant business plan.

Why do operators need a marketing plan? 

0" ng-repeat="text in output.html track by $index" style="text-align: left;"> In 2016 alone, the global food service sector grew by 3% to $1.3 trillion , with a forecast to reach an estimated USD 4.1 Trillion by 2026. This means that there are now more restaurants around the globe than ever before.

0" ng-repeat="text in output.html track by $index" style="text-align: left;"> Restaurant owners, therefore, have a lot of competition. There are many restaurants out there and they are constantly trying to attract new guests.

0" ng-repeat="text in output.html track by $index" style="text-align: left;"> If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to develop an effective marketing strategy. 

0" ng-repeat="text in output.html track by $index" style="text-align: left;"> Here are a few effective ways that restaurant owners can improve their marketing strategy and help increase their revenue:

What should be included in an effective marketing plan?

A comprehensive restaurant marketing plan should include the following:

0" ng-repeat="text in output.html track by $index" style="text-align: left;">Restaurant owners spend a lot of time thinking about their marketing strategy. And we understand why.

0" ng-repeat="text in output.html track by $index" style="text-align: left;">As mentioned above, a marketing plan is crucial to a restaurant's success. It helps keep your restaurant top of mind, acquire new guests, and most importantly, keep your revenue from declining. 

To help you get started, follow these steps covering all the moving parts of restaurant marketing to set up your new plan and start the process of meeting your new vision with ease.

1. Set measurable goals

The first step to creating a restaurant marketing plan is to establish some goals .

• What objectives do you plan to accomplish?
• Are there specific targets you want your team to meet?

If you’re really going to make your restaurant marketing strategies work, it’s going to happen because you’ve got a vision of what you want to achieve during the first year and subsequent years ahead.

Set goals that align with your resources and ambitions.

Smaller goals could be gaining 10 new shares weekly or attracting 150 guests to your grand opening . Larger goals could be doubling sales each quarter .

Get started by establishing a few goals that make sense for your specific case.

As an example, a few goals for your restaurant could be to:

• Grow drink revenue by 10%
• Grow lunch hour revenue by $3000
• Grow per table profit by 12%

Also, quantify your overall objectives with numbers and dates. You could set the goal completion date at three months, and measure your growth daily.

Create a simple wall chart to post in your office so you can make your goals visual and track your progress. 

Use the SMART template created by Filestage for listing each goal. 

You may also want to take your revenue goals and create more specific goals for wait staff so that they can work on their individual objectives.

Some wait staff objectives could be as follows: 

• Get at least 10 guests to order an appetizer
• Get 5 takeout orders per shift 
• Get 1 order per 2 tasting plates

2. Determine your mission statement

A restaurant's mission and values form the cornerstone of its brand identity, shaping its business decisions, branding, messaging, and operations.

These guiding principles articulate the restaurant's purpose, distinguishing it from competitors and establishing a clear brand narrative.

A well-crafted mission statement encapsulates the restaurant's essence, justifying its existence and setting the stage for effective marketing strategies.

Further reading

• How to Write a Restaurant Mission Statement (Tips and Examples)

3. Identify potential problems

Once you've figured out your goals and you've come to an agreement regarding your mission statement, you now have to identify the potential problems you and your team might face.

These could include competition, lack of capital, or poor management. Make sure you address these issues before you start your marketing strategy. 

• 32 Best Restaurant Marketing Strategies (2023 Updates)

It's also good to keep an eye on your restaurant's performance, and what part of your restaurant's operations needs to be added to the marketing plan.

For example , you've noticed that Wednesdays are a lot quieter compared to other days at your restaurant. You then need to consider and create a marketing plan to help increase revenue on these slower days.

But, most importantly how will you manage to have an overview of these types of potential problems?

Pro tip:  Eat App's Advanced Reports , will play a key role here. The performance tracking tool for restaurants is considered a powerful feature to help operators keep tabs on how their establishment is performing and where potential problems might arise. 

The analytic system automatically collects valuable bookings and guest data to help you keep track of your restaurant's growth and overall performance.  

Reports are also fully customizable to give you full control over what you would like to track and have an overview when shared with your team. 

The advanced reports allow you to: 

• Review reservation and guest data
• Customize daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly reports
• A breakdown of covers or bookings
• Export CSV files or even a graph of any time period

>>> Want to try it yourself? Sign up here - it's free.  

4. Determine your target customers

If you interview any successful restaurateur and ask them their secret, they’ll all tell you the same thing: know your ideal customer.

While it’s tempting to visualize that everyone is interested in dining at your restaurant, focusing on a narrowly defined ideal customer will save you months of wandering in the dark trying to be everything for everyone. 

That’s where an ideal restaurant customer profile comes in handy.

An ideal customer profile is a fictional representation of your ideal customer that helps personalize your sales and marketing efforts.

It lists out demographic information like age, gender, and income, as well as some qualitative details like what they enjoy in certain places, and what their preferences are when it comes time to pick a restaurant for lunch or dinner.

Below is an example by strategy leader Janice Chow.

To build one for your restaurant, think of the ways you can gather meaningful data on the type of people you aim to serve.

Tried-and-tested methods include: 

• Conduct a survey on your restaurant website, Facebook page, or email message. Use SurveyMonkey or another similar tool to automate the entire process.
• Placing comment cards on your tables. Don’t end the card with “Would you refer us to a friend or relative?” – Go one step further and ask why or why not.
• Researching online communities. Quora , Reddit , and others have targeted communities and subgroups. For researching and gaining insight into your ideal customer personas, the information posted by and exchanged between the members is as good as gold.

Whether it’s families, college students, or both, it’s imperative that you take steps to understand your ideal customer.

The great thing about creating customer profiles is that they can be used to inform many different parts of your branding, product, and marketing strategy. >>> Learn how to find your target market.

5. Evaluate your current standing using SWOT 

The importance of self-evaluation can’t be overstated, especially when you’re creating a marketing plan from scratch.

Restaurants need to be evaluated for both strengths and weaknesses specific to your business; the essence is to discover what you do well, and where you pale in comparison with similar businesses. 

• Restaurant SWOT Analysis Example You Can Use In 2023

After speaking with some of your guests, or just sitting down and writing it out, choose three strengths of your restaurant and three weaknesses.

Be clear with yourself and ask your servers and other management to write them down as well.

Then, compile them and have a good look at what’s going great and what needs improvement. 

These could be:

• The food is always hot because you have hired a plate runner.
• The amount of food is always filling and satisfying. 
• The ambiance is always inviting and engaging.
• The floor is always greasy.
• The kitchen banter is always loud.
• The chairs are hard.

Make sure your customers know about what you do best!

Focus on one of your strengths that raises you above the competition and spread the word – widely.

As for the weaknesses, make gradual improvements by going back to square one and reassessing where you went wrong with the approach, decision, or product that turned into a disadvantage.

Note: You can also keep tabs on the potential opportunities and threats facing your business by conducting a restaurant SWOT analysis .

6. Identify your restaurant's marketing objectives

You've decided on measurable goals for your restaurant, now it's important to put together a solid list of objectives that will help you determine your own restaurant's marketing strategy and goals.

To help, we've put together three important pillars you need to consider before finalizing your marketing strategy: 

This is essentially the way you present yourself to your guests and what they see when it comes to your restaurant.

This type of marketing is generally paid social media posts, billboards, an ad on the radio, television, or even in the local papers. 

Here's some great ideas you can share on social media: 

@ryaneditbutter Food people #restaurant #restaurantbusiness ♬ eyes - vip mix - skaiwater

Once your guests know who you are and what your restaurant is about, you can start by getting them to come through your doors.

Ask yourself, what will excite them to come to you?

Is it the food, great service, or that you offer special offers on certain days of the week?

Whatever you choose to be your unique selling point, make sure you add it to your marketing strategy. 

>>> Download our free Guest Acquisition Strategy today. 

Repeat Guests

This is where things really get interesting. Loyal guests are the best. Why?

They're one of the main reasons why you continue to get more customers coming through your door.

They enjoy telling their friends about one of their favorite places to eat, and they also post images of your dishes on their social media pages.

But, the question is, what are you doing as a restaurant owner to get them coming back for more? This is where a powerful CRM tool comes in. 

With Eat App's revolutionary software, you can automatically collect valuable guest data and create robust guest profiles from the moment they make an online booking.

Then to take it a step further, you can segment and filter your guest profiles to help identify your VIP guests and high-spenders so you can create personalized marketing campaigns.

Here you can also take the opportunity to send guests, who haven't been at your restaurant in a while, a special offer to get them to come back.

More on this topic of "Email Marketing" below. 

7. Develop your marketing strategy

You’ve laid the foundation. Now it’s time to build your restaurant marketing strategy.

You’ll want to consider what methods of promotion you will use, and for how long you’ll run each promotion before giving it a revamp.

Based on your goals, customer profiles, and strengths, pick a few of these strategies to implement first:

Also, consider implementing a restaurant marketing framework. 

a. Social media marketing 

While you can run a campaign on nearly every social media network out there, we recommend you narrow your focus to the following:

Instagram  

Your Instagram grid is the easiest place to showcase your food, your ambiance, and everything visual about your customer experience.

Everything is in the photos on Instagram so be sure to post some appealing images of food plates, happy customers, attentive servers, and management.

It’s your opportunity to show them what they can expect at your restaurant.

With your photos, be sure to add relevant #hashtags about the meals you make, the service you provide, and the location you serve.

If you’ve already set up a campaign, we’ve got some tips to help you break through the noise and upgrade your restaurant's Instagram marketing for higher engagement and conversions.

You can also add a "reserve" button on your Instagram page to drive reservations directly through your page.

This long-awaited feature helps restaurants turn their followers into customers without added effort.

Learn how you can add a reserve button on your Instagram page here

Facebook  

Social media platforms with more than 2 billion monthly active users can provide great exposure to your restaurant.

Get started by creating a restaurant business page and posting high-quality images of your food with some enticing captions that induce your target audience to visit your restaurant.

To accommodate for spikes in weekly traffic, schedule posts to go out even when you’re not available.

Spending an hour or two every week on this will mean you have a consistent stream of enticing content for your followers.

But perhaps the most effective way to get your business in front of audiences is by running Facebook ads.

The platform has a highly effective and intuitive ad manager that can help you reach massive amounts of potential diners.

The best part? You don’t need to spend thousands in order to achieve success; a budget of $100-$500 is enough to reach a good-sized local audience . 

Like Instagram, Facebook also offers a "reserve" button that allows people to book a table at your restaurant through your page.

• How to Add the 'Reserve' button to your Restaurant's Facebook and Instagram Profiles

Google Business  

Whenever you search for a restaurant or a business you've probably noticed their Google My Business Listing before anything else.

This page is essentially considered a card that features important details about your restaurant.

What time you open, where you're based, what time you close, guest reviews and images of your restaurant, etc.

Learn more about Google and your restaurant

• Adding reservation links to Google
• Google Business for restaurants guide

All the more reason you should add a "reserve button" to give guests a seamless option to book online.

Pro tip: Reservation platforms like Eat App have partnered with Google to bring this feature to various restaurants around the world. 

TikTok  

TikTok boasts impressive open rates, indicating a high level of user engagement.

Restaurants can effectively showcase their brand, products, and services to a receptive audience by creating engaging and informative TikToks.

To harness the full potential of TikTok, businesses should consider the following strategies:

• Understand Your Audience:   Tailor your content to resonate with your target audience's interests and preferences.
• Embrace Creativity: Experiment with different video formats and trends to capture attention and spark engagement.
• Consistency is Key: Maintain a regular posting schedule to keep your audience engaged and coming back for more.
• Encourage Interaction: Respond to comments and answer questions to foster a sense of community.
• Track and Analyze: Regularly monitor your performance metrics to identify what's working well and areas for improvement.

By embracing TikTok as an integral component of their social media strategy, local businesses can effectively engage potential customers, expand their online reach, and ultimately achieve their marketing goals.

@nonofo.brand.image.coach One of the best affordable restaurants in town #mmokolodibushkitchen ♬ Paradise - TELL YOUR STORY music by Ikson™

• How to Get More Restaurant Reservations with Google in 2023

b. Email marketing

72% of consumers prefer businesses to contact them through direct mail campaigns, and restaurant customers are no exception.

Email marketing is an important channel for restaurants.

Sending regular emails to people who’ve subscribed to your email list helps foster loyalty; when loyal customers see your restaurant logo often and receive your event updates, menu items, coupons, etc. they begin to feel they’re part of your exclusive community.

You can further encourage that feeling by including a quick note from your executive chef, or other personnel who is known as the face of your business.

Personalization and segmentation will also help your email campaigns gain more traction by categorizing your subscribers into specific groups for more targeted marketing tactics and promotions.

Pro tip: Consider leveraging an automation tool like, Eat App to streamline customer engagement.

Personalized messages based on guest data, such as visit frequency, spend history, and special occasions, can be automatically delivered, enhancing the customer experience.

c. Loyalty programs

In times where customer acquisition costs can be burdensome for new – and even established – restaurants, loyalty programs can help to secure brand value in the form of repeat business from people who’re already delighted to be dining with you.

These programs include restaurants offering membership to regular guests, and in turn presenting them with reward points that can be exchanged for perks like free desserts, 50% discount, and more.

Starting a restaurant loyalty program is simple. You’ll just need to order a batch of punch cards and hand them out to your regulars.

When a member orders a menu item, you put a stamp on their punch card.

Once they’ve received a specific number of stamps, they get a free perk.

Restaurant loyalty tools, however, have made it possible for restaurateurs to assign points and rewards digitally. 

8. Determine your restaurant marketing budget

Since every business has its priorities, there’s no set formula for determining a restaurant's SMS marketing and budget.

However, there are a few considerations that can be applied to any restaurant for determining the amount of money you should invest in digital marketing efforts.

If you’re a brand-new restaurant, you’ll have to spend more on marketing to get the word out. Plan to spend 25-35% of revenue on marketing. Use more if you need more traction, and less if you have a good roster.

When your restaurant is established and has a steady business, you can scale back your marketing spending to 12-18%, considering your competition and profit margins. 

If your revenues are declining due to an economic crisis or competition, it’s best to increase your percentage by 3-10% to generate more new clientele.

Choose to invest in the channels that are bringing in the most return.

Unfortunately, when a budget gets smaller marketing initiatives can be the first to go out the door when the exact opposite needs to happen.

Resist the urge to cut back on marketing because you need to generate market buzz to drive business.

For example, companies that spent 16.5% of their budget on marketing grew 1 - 15% year over year, those that spent 22% grew 16-30%, and those that spent 50% grew 31-100% more.

You can see how crucial marketing is in creating growth as per these findings from Small Business Marketing Tools.

9. Your restaurant itself should do the marketing

The restaurant is the marketing plan's most significant "medium." Even with the best marketing efforts and an abundance of traffic, the ability to meet customer expectations will be short-lived if the experience falls short of expectations.

Therefore, pay close attention to even the smallest aspects and try to make the restaurant as appealing as you can. It must have a certain atmosphere, energy, or emotion when you first go in.

10. Take ownership of a day

Have a day of your own. Instead of trying to get people to attend every day, focus on just one day.

It may be Wednesday or something. Create a marketing campaign centered around the idea that this restaurant has a special Wednesday offer that includes music, a certain food item, or something else entirely.

Thursday night is wings night at a nearby local eatery, and people swarm there for the inexpensive wings.

However, consumers are more inclined to visit on a Friday or Saturday after experiencing the location on a Thursday. Therefore, while it could last, it's a campaign idea.

11. Interact with the community

Donate to the local high school sports boosters, purchase advertisements in their publications, and build signs in the Little League park—there are many methods to spread the word about the restaurant's concern for the community and commitment to giving back.

12. Consider user-generated content (UGC)

Motivate customers to share photos of their cocktails on their social media channels. If they do, they might receive a half-off drink (it's simple to verify if they tag the restaurant).

Encourage some word-of-mouth, relevance, and friends' implied support.

The takeaway

There you have it, a step-by-step guide to building your own killer restaurant marketing plan. 

Marketing is the trumpet call of your business and it's an important element to success.

No matter how great your cuisine or ambiance is, if no one knows about your restaurant in the first place, you’re not filling any tables.

Guests don’t magically turn up out of nowhere, you have to take your business to them. 

This might take you anywhere from one day to a whole month of doing nothing except constantly crafting your plan and marketing calendar.

But rest assured, once it’s complete you’ll know exactly which route to take and how to tap into the full potential of your marketing to drive better revenue. 

Ready to get started with creating your restaurant's marketing plan? Download our free template to guide you through the process.

• How to do a restaurant SWOT analysis
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• Restaurant advertising examples
• Grand opening ideas for restaurants
• Top restaurant influencers for inspiration
• Supercharge your marketing with automation 
• How to get more reservations from Instagram
• SEO for restaurants: the complete guide

Frequently Ask Questions

What are the 4 ps of a marketing plan.

The four Ps of marketing is the foundation of any marketing plan. They are:

Product: Define, meet, differentiate

Price: Attractive, profitable

Place: Available channels

Promotion: Effective communication

What makes a good marketing plan?

A good marketing plan is not just a static document; it's a dynamic process that adapts to changing market conditions and consumer preferences.

It's about setting goals, tracking progress, and evaluating results to ensure ongoing effectiveness.

Director of Marketing at Eat App

For the past 7+ years Ryan has been focused on helping restaurants succeed with digital marketing and front-of-house operations. He is Director Marketing at Eat App.

Reviewed by

Nezar Kadhem

Co-founder and CEO of Eat App

He is a regular speaker and panelist at industry events, contributing on topics such as digital transformation in the hospitality industry, revenue channel optimization and dine-in experience.

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A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing a Restaurant Marketing Plan (Free Template)

Stephanie Schalow

Jun 22, 2023

Whether you’re opening a new restaurant or promoting your existing concept, a restaurant marketing plan can help guide your promotional efforts so that you reach the right customers, and keep them coming back. 

Providing customers with a memorable dining experience can get them hooked. However, it’s getting them in the door for the first time, or encouraging them to place that initial online order, that’s the tricky part. Fortunately, our guide and free template to creating a restaurant marketing plan is designed to give you a head start on your marketing efforts.

What’s a Restaurant Marketing Plan and Why Do I Need One?

A restaurant marketing plan is a document that outlines and informs your marketing strategy. It typically covers topics like who your ideal customers are, how you’re going to reach those customers and how you’ll compete with your competitors.

Creating a restaurant marketing plan is a helpful exercise in understanding how your business compares to other similar businesses in your area, including your competitive advantages. While you don’t need a restaurant marketing plan, having one can help you be deliberate – and more successful – in your marketing initiatives.

If you plan to grow, a marketing plan is also an asset if you’re seeking investors. Any smart investor will ask you for your marketing plan in addition to your business plan . Together, these documents prove that you’ve thought through the ins and outs of operating and promoting a restaurant. 

Going through the exercise of creating a restaurant marketing plan helps you take all of the creative promotional ideas you have in your head and put them in writing so that you can share your vision with collaborators and hold yourself accountable.

What Should be Included In a Restaurant Marketing Plan?

Here’s a detailed look at what information your restaurant’s marketing plan should contain.

Write a brief introduction to the business that covers the basics, like your restaurant’s name, location, service style and concept.

Then, summarize highlights from the rest of the marketing plan. We suggest writing this part last, so that you can reference the rest of the document.

Explain your restaurant’s marketing goals and what key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll be using to measure success.

Need inspiration? Here are some sample goals to get you started:

Goal 1 : Reach new customers

KPI : Have 100 customers attend the restaurant’s grand opening celebration.

Goal 2: Increase customer retention

KPI: Double the number of customer accounts in the restaurant’s CRM

Goal 3: Boost brand awareness

KPI: Increase the restaurant’s social media following by 15% every quarter.

Mission Statement

A restaurant’s mission and values are a large part of your brand identity — it informs your business decisions, branding, voice and processes. Simply put, a mission statement explains why your restaurant exists, and it needs its own space in your restaurant marketing plan.

Unique Selling Proposition

Write down your restaurant’s unique selling propositions (USPs): what makes it different from the competition. Keep your USPs in mind when crafting your marketing strategy; they should inform everything from branding to your social media posts. It might also help to refer back to your mission statement when defining USPs.

Target Customers

Who is your ideal customer? 

While you may be tempted to answer with “anyone who eats,” having such a broad client base isn’t conducive to crafting a marketing strategy.

Get really specific. Think about who would get very excited about what only your restaurant can offer. Knowing who you want to target with your marketing efforts will help you create marketing campaigns that resonate with that audience.

For example, you might want to target suburban families that are looking for a quick meal for dinner at a good price. Or you may want to serve high-paid, urban professionals looking for an exclusive restaurant at which to entertain clients.

Pro Tip: The more you know about who’s dining with you and why, the better you can deliver personalized experiences that keep them coming back. SevenRooms’ restaurant CRM can help you build out guest databases — like Brodeur’s Bistro did, when they added 9,000 guest profiles to their CRM in just six months with SevenRooms.

Dive Deeper: Guest Data: The Restaurant Marketer’s Secret Weapon

Competitive Analysis

Research your market. Get to know the competition to source ideas from them and understand how to make your business stand out.

Answer questions like:

SWOT Analysis

Conduct a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) to identify what you’re doing well now as well as strategies for how to improve in the future.

Consider the following:

Internal attributes that can help your business:

Internal attributes that can stand in the way of your goals.

OPPORTUNITIES

External attributes that can help your business.

External attributes that can stand in the way of your goals.

This exercise will help you be more aware of advantages you should leverage and obstacles you need to overcome.

Include your restaurant’s branding guidelines in your marketing plan.

Incorporate key branding assets, such as:

FYI : Take inspiration from burgers. beer. bourbon. , which makes its branding guidelines publicly available online.

Pricing and Positioning Strategy

Explain how your restaurant’s prices compare to competitors’ and how you’ll position your business among the competition.

Let’s say, for example, you run a healthy fast food restaurant chain. Fast food restaurants aren’t known for having healthy options. You can leverage your higher prices to show that you use better ingredients and position yourself as the leader in healthier fast food.

Marketing Channels

List any and all digital and physical marketing channels that your restaurant uses or plans on using, and explain how you’ll use each channel to achieve your marketing goals. Feel free to borrow these ideas:

Pro Tip : For marketing channels where you own your presence, like your website and Google listing, push direct booking and ordering instead of third-party platforms. (SevenRooms has a solution for this.) There’s no reason to have a middleman on channels that you have control over!

Learn More: How to Shift from Legacy Reservation Apps to Direct Booking

Marketing Calendar

Your marketing calendar should identify holidays, events, and other important moments. Every season offers a unique opportunity for restaurants to engage customers and drive sales — if you plan ahead and track every date. Create a simple marketing calendar to help ensure you celebrate every important, revenue-generating milestone.

FYI: Need help coming up with new ideas for timely events? Check out our UK Marketing Calendar and our Australian Marketing Calendar to get the creative juices flowing.

Restaurant Marketing Strategies

Use this final section to synthesize all you’ve discovered about your business by writing this restaurant marketing plan and come up with marketing tactics. This is the heart of your restaurant marketing plan, so don’t skimp on the details here. Brainstorm actionable strategies like long- and short-term plans across specific channels. 

As you strategize your marketing plans, know that confining yourself to one channel alone won’t work. To reach today’s guests, you must be where they are, which means expanding into multiple channels and creating a consistent brand experience. This is called an omnichannel marketing strategy. Read our omnichannel marketing guide to learn how to implement it.

Whatever channels you decide to leverage (and you should choose several), remember to create a consistent brand experience. Here are some ideas to get you started on a successful omnichannel marketing approach:

• Email Marketing: Convert first-time customers into regulars by collecting guest data and then using marketing automation software to send targeted marketing messages to guests. Events that might interest them, loyalty program invites, review requests — it’s all fair game.

Dive Deeper: The Ultimate Email Marketing Guide for Restaurants

Pro Tip: As you build out your marketing strategies, remember to track the success of your campaigns to determine what’s worth allocating more time to and what isn’t. Digital marketing tracking links will help to determine the return on investment (ROI) of each partnership.

Marketing Budget

To continually engage with and respond to your guests via social media, paid ads, events and via email, you’ll need to establish a marketing budget you can stick to each month or quarter. You don’t need a lofty budget; you can maintain social media platforms for free, or pay to boost your most impactful posts. There’s no set amount we’d recommend, but we do suggest allocating it across your most profitable channels.

Stay Focused With a Restaurant Marketing Plan

Restaurateurs have a lot on their plates. If you don’t develop a marketing plan, it can be easy to get caught up in day-to-day operations and neglect promoting your business. Take the time to put together a restaurant marketing plan. Then, schedule time for regular reviews of your marketing efforts.

SevenRooms’ marketing automation and email software help you put your marketing efforts on autopilot. Request a demo to see how.

Restaurant Marketing FAQs

How do you promote a restaurant using digital marketing.

A successful digital marketing plan for restaurants requires a well-defined mission and target audience. Once you know who you want to target, you can develop strategies to promote your website across social media channels, Google listings and your website.

What Should Be Included in a Restaurant Marketing Plan?

Your marketing plan should list marketing goals/KPIs, deadlines, budgets, long-term objectives, target audiences, core marketing messages, and ways to track your metrics. The plan should be detailed and written to evolve as you grow and learn. Most importantly, your marketing plan should clearly identify your venue’s strategic vision and the action steps you’ll take to achieve them using various marketing efforts.

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Restaurant Marketing Plan Template

No need to start from scratch! Download our free template to kickstart your marketing plan!

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In order to succeed in the hospitality market, you need a strategy that considers your customers, your strengths, and is based on a realistic view of your competitive context.

A restaurant marketing plan is an ideal tool for that. It helps you to reach your business goals through a scientific and measurable approach.

In this article, you will learn how to make an effective restaurant marketing plan that will make your business stand out from the crowd, attract new customers and reach any (realistic) business goal.

Moreover, at the bottom of the article, you will find a link to download your free restaurant marketing template .

Let’s start.

What Is a Restaurant Marketing Plan and Why Do You Need One

When it comes to restaurant marketing, setting up a plan means identifying a strategy that helps you reach your business’s goals through marketing initiatives.

In the marketing plan for your restaurant, you will clearly see any entity that makes your target market as well as any relevant element of your business. In other words, you will define where you stand and where you want to go. Additionally, you will identify the obstacles and the opportunities that stand in the way.

Without a restaurant marketing plan, you will be in a position of weakness as you might act only by following intuitions or the trends of the moment.

While following intuition is not necessarily bad, a structured and measurable approach is necessary to make profitability and growth something you can replicate, and not an act of randomness.

How to Make a Restaurant Marketing Plan

The whole point of a restaurant marketing plan is to help you reach your business goals.

However, in order to get where you want to go, you first need to understand where you are .

The steps to creating a marketing plan are relatively simple. Just like creating a diet plan.

The hardest part, instead, is to follow the actions that result from the plan and measure them.

In fact, a marketing plan is not set in stone. It can be reviewed and edited anytime you gather new information, your market change or your business goals evolve.

A restaurant marketing plan follows 5 steps:

• Setting your goals
• Identify your ideal clients
• Research your competition
• Business identity and SWOT analysis
• Set up actions and follow up

Let’s go through them.

Restaurant Marketing Plan: Set Your Goals

A restaurant marketing plan is a tool that supports a restaurant to reach specific goals by creating an effective and measurable course of action.

Your goals might come from your business plan or any other relevant document. Regardless of the source, the first thing you need to do is state the results you want to achieve.

There are multiple ways to set your business goals, however, it is important that your objectives are clear, measurable, and realistic .

In fact, it would be useless to state “I want to make more money” or “The goal of my restaurant is to reach more clients and make them happy” .

None of these statements can help, because you won’t get a clear and measurable idea.

To set up clear and measurable goals, instead, you can use the SMART method .

SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely .

Goals stated following this method give you a clear vision of where you want to go, and how you can measure if your actions are successful.

To make some examples, your business goals might be:

• Get 10 reviews on Google My Business every month
• Increase net profit margin by 1% by the end of the year
• Grow table profit by 10% by the end of the year
• Run a monthly event with $X of revenues
• Increase bookings through Facebook by 20%

Does it make sense?

Let’s move on to the next step of a restaurant marketing plan.

Restaurant Marketing Plan: Define Your Target Market and Ideal Clients

Creating a restaurant marketing plan continues with understanding your customers.

The math is simple: to reach your goals, you need happy customers. To make your customers happy, you need to understand their needs and desires .

This simple aspect is often overlooked by business owners, as they dedicate much more effort to improving their business based on what they like. However, this is a blind approach to business.

Is like going to fish and using strawberries as bait. Is that gonna work? Of course not. Because you might like strawberries, but fish don’t.

Although this metaphor might sound harsh, you don’t want to use a blind approach with your restaurant. You have to offer your customers what they like and desire.

The best tool to get this understanding is to make your buyer persona .

A buyer persona is a description of your ideal customers that lists various characteristics .

There are a few key elements that go into creating a buyer persona. You need to include things like their age, gender, location, and interests.

Additionally, and most importantly, you want to understand your customer’s needs, values, and desires.

For example, you might find out that your ideal customers are millennials, who care about the environment, and want to eat well but they also care about sharing their experiences on Instagram.

With this understanding, you might want to reduce the amount of plastic in your restaurant and tell your chef to create beautiful meals that deserve a picture.

You can make one or more buyer personas. It depends on your typical customer base.

The important thing to understand is that, once you understand your customers, you can offer them what they expect and value .

Moreover, you can develop messaging and communications that will resonate with them.

Research Your Competition

When creating a restaurant marketing plan, you can’t ignore researching your competition.

Researching your competition will give you an idea of what they are doing well, what you can improve upon, and how you can differentiate yourself .

To start, create a list of your top competitors.

Then, visit their websites and social media pages. Notice their menu offerings, prices, and any promotions or specials they are running.

Also, check their marketing initiatives and what people say about them on local review sites. This will help you get a better feel for their atmosphere and service.

You should not spend too much time on this step, however. The point of this research is not to copy your competitors, but rather to understand what they are doing right and wrong, as well as what they are not doing.

By taking the time to research your competition, you will be able to implement actions and initiatives that will help your restaurant stand out from the crowd.

Restaurant Marketing Plan: Business Identity and SWOT Analysis

After you identified your ideal customers and researched your competitors, it’s time to have a 360° look at your business.

Your restaurant marketing plan cannot lack a clear definition of your business identity, as well as an analysis of your strength and weakness.

Your business identity represents what your brand represents and what values it embodies .

Your business identity is an important part of a restaurant marketing plan as it makes your decision process much easier.

Anything in your business should match your business identity. And your business identity should match customers’ values and expectations .

Imagine a Vegan food truck that caters to carnivores. That is an incoherent brand identity that does not appeal to their supposed ideal customers.

Along with your business identity, you have to look at your restaurant within its context.

This type of analysis is typically conducted with a SWOT matrix. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats .

A SWOT analysis requires you to identify your unique selling points (USPs) and strengths as well as your weaknesses. Consider what makes your restaurant unique and its downsides.

Moreover, considering the previous points of your marketing plan (ideal customers and competitors), you want to list the opportunities in your market as well as any threats.

Fill any square of the SWOT matrix with your considerations about your business and be honest with yourself.

Restaurant Marketing Plan: Reach Out to Your Customers

At this point, your restaurant marketing plan is providing you with enough information to set up a course of action.

Now it’s time to identify where your customers congregate, how you want to communicate with them, and how you are going to attract and retain them.

The typical set of actions involves:

Social Media and SEO - The internet is a powerful channel to win new customers. Consider creating a user-friendly and SEO-optimized website for your restaurant. Additionally, take care of your restaurant’s social media pages and create engaging contents that reflect your business identity.

Local Review Sites Restaurants can dramatically change their profitability depending on what people write about them on local review sites. Be sure to pick the best local review sites for restaurants and cultivate your presence there.

Offline initiatives Your restaurant is a physical location, therefore you need to get proactive and implement initiatives that win new customers and grow loyalty toward your business. These might be events, seasonal pricing strategies , loyalty programs, and more.

Review your venue You might need to rethink something within your restaurant. This might be something simple (updating your menu) or something more profound (reviewing a business process that does not help to reach your goals)

It is fundamental that all your communications, whether online or offline, reflect your brand identity and match your customer’s expectations.

Moreover, prioritize your effort according to your goals.

If, for example, one of your goals is growing your rating on Yelp, setting up a process for getting more reviews on Yelp is of primary importance.

To complement these activities, you might want to resort to advertising.

Depending on your goals (and where your customers congregate), you might prefer to advertise online or offline. However, create a budget and stick to it. This will make you able to track your spending and ensure that your ads are reaching their goal.

Example of a Restaurant Marketing Plan

Let’s see an example of a restaurant marketing plan.

Imagine Bill. A business owner that runs a restaurant somewhere in the US.

Following the restaurant marketing plan template at the bottom of this article, Bill set simple and measurable goals for his business:

• Grow his rating on TripAdvisor beyond 4
• Run an event each quarter, with $2000 of revenues

Bill identifies their ideal customers as middle-class families with kids, who look for a relaxing place for dining and are attentive to the quality of their meals.

There are a few restaurants that target similar clients but no one with specific offers and plans.

In his SWOT analysis, Bill identifies as strengths the quality of the meals, the large parking lot on his property, and the space available in his venue.

However, the furniture is slightly outdated and, among his staff, no one is good with social media.

After checking online, Bill realizes that no restaurant presents specific events or offers for families, so Bill decides to take advantage of it.

The actions that Bill will implement to reach his goals are:

• Setting up a process for getting reviewed on TripAdvisor
• Running events during bank holidays that target specifically families with kids
• Set up a loyalty program specifically for families
• Review the restaurant menu with fewer items but focused on families’ needs
• Invest in an outdoor playground with fences
• Hire a freelancer to handle social media and run ads to target families

Over time, Bill will need to track his marketing effort and verify that he’s reaching the goals established in his restaurant marketing plan.

Free Restaurant Marketing Plan Template

If you want to follow this marketing plan for your restaurant, there’s a gift for you.

Here is a free restaurant marketing plan template that goes through the process you just read.

Also, to complement your marketing effort, check out Beambox .

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How To Write a Restaurant Marketing Plan + Template & Examples

In this article, we will describe what should be included in each component of your marketing plan and provide some restaurant marketing strategies that can help you reach your target audience.

Download our Ultimate Marketing Plan Template here

What is a Restaurant Marketing Plan?

A restaurant marketing plan is a written document that outlines the specific actions you’ll take to achieve your restaurant’s marketing and sales goals. This document is a crucial component of your larger restaurant business plan , as it details how you’ll attract and retain customers.

The marketing plan should be designed to support your overall business strategy and objectives. It should be updated regularly as your business changes and grows.

Your restaurant marketing plan should be built around your unique selling proposition (USP), which is the one thing that sets you apart from other restaurants in your market. From there, you’ll need to develop targeted campaigns, create compelling offers, and craft a promotions strategy that will reach your ideal customers.

Once you have all of the pieces in place, you’ll need to track your progress and adjust your plan accordingly. The best way to do this is to set measurable goals and track your results regularly.

Why You Need a Restaurant Marketing Plan

There are many reasons why you need a marketing plan to start your restaurant . First and foremost, a well-crafted marketing plan will help you focus your limited time and resources on the activities that will have the biggest impact on your business.

Second, a restaurant marketing plan can help you track your progress and see whether or not you’re on track to achieve your goals. This is important because it allows you to make changes to your plan as needed.

Finally, a marketing plan can be a valuable tool for communicating your restaurant’s marketing strategy to your team. By having a written plan, you can ensure that everyone on your team is aware of your goals and knows what needs to be done to help you achieve them.

Marketing Plan Basics

A typical marketing plan includes the following components:

Executive Summary

Target market segments, unique selling proposition (usp), pricing and positioning strategy, marketing materials, promotions strategy, digital marketing plan, conversion, referral, and retention strategy, financial projections, how to write a restaurant marketing plan.

Use the following restaurant marketing plan template, guide, and examples to write your own marketing plan.

Although the first section of your restaurant marketing plan, it should be the final section of your marketing plan that is written.

In two or three pages, summarize all of the information you have presented in the other sections and include a summary version of any graphs or charts you have included.

You should also include your marketing goals, objectives, and success metrics for the first year of operations.

Begin by dividing your potential patrons into segments based on their demographics, geography, lifestyle, behavior, or any other factors that are relevant to your restaurant. Be sure to explain how you determined these target market segments.

For example, you might segment your customers by:

• Family size and composition
• Behavioral factors

Once you have identified your target market segments, you’ll need to create profiles for each one. These profiles should include information about their needs, wants, and values. They should also include information about their buying habits and preferences.

You can use this information to develop targeted campaigns that will appeal to each segment.

Your USP is the one thing that sets you apart from other restaurants in your market. It’s what makes you unique and it’s what will make customers want to visit your restaurant over others.

Be sure to clearly define your USP and include it in your marketing plan. You’ll need to use it as a guiding force when developing your marketing strategy and campaigns.

To develop your USP, start by identifying your unique strengths. What do you do better than anyone else in your market? What can you offer that no one else can?

Once you’ve identified your strengths, use them to develop a USP that is clear, concise, compelling, and communicated through your website, marketing materials, and offers.

For example, if you’re a pizzeria with a wood-fired oven, your USP might be “the best wood-fired pizza in town.”

Your pricing and positioning strategy will be determined by many factors, including your target market, USP, and the overall goals of your marketing plan.

When setting your prices, be sure to consider your target market’s ability to pay. You want to position yourself in a way that allows you to compete against other nearby restaurants in your market. You want a pricing strategy that will be profitable for your restaurant and competitive in your market.

Your positioning strategy will determine how you communicate your USP to your target market. It will also determine the overall tone and approach of your marketing campaigns.

Be sure to clearly define your pricing and positioning strategy in your marketing plan. Include information on how you determined your prices and how you will position yourself in the market.

For example, will you be the high-end restaurant with premium prices or the budget-friendly option for the typical middle-class family?

Your offers are the incentives that you’ll use to get potential clients to take action. They can be in the form of coupons, discounts, freebies, or anything else that will entice your target market to visit your restaurant.

Your offers should be aligned with your overall restaurant marketing strategy. They should be developed to appeal to your target market and support your USP.

Be sure to include information on your offers in your restaurant marketing plan. Explain how they support your marketing strategy and what you expect them to achieve.

For example, if you’re trying to attract families with young children, you might offer a discount on kids’ meals or a free toy with every child’s meal.

Your marketing materials are the tools that you’ll use to reach your target market and deliver your message. They can include things like your website, menus, flyers, posters, and more.

Your marketing materials should be consistent with your overall branding and messaging strategy. They should clearly communicate your USP and support your offers.

Be sure to include information on your marketing materials in your marketing plan. Explain how they support your marketing strategy and what you expect them to achieve.

Your restaurant marketing plan should also include samples of your marketing materials. This will give readers a clear idea of what your materials look like and how they support your overall restaurant marketing strategy.

Your promotional strategies are how you will promote your products and services to your target market. It should include information about the types of promotions you’ll use, the channels you’ll use to reach your target market, and the timing of your promotions.

As a restaurant, you’ll likely use a mix of online and offline promotions to reach your target market. Your promotions should be designed to appeal to your target market and support your USP.

Be sure to include information on your promotions strategy in your restaurant marketing plan. Explain how the promotions support your marketing strategy and what you expect them to achieve.

For example, if you’re launching a new menu item, you might promote it with a special offer or discount.

Your digital marketing plan outlines how you will use digital channels to reach your target market. It should include information about your website, social media, email marketing, and any other online marketing tactics you’ll use.

Your digital plan should be designed to support your overall marketing strategy. It should be tailored to reach your target market where they are spending their time online.

For example, if you’re trying to reach young adults, you’ll want to focus on social media channels like Snapchat and Instagram.

Your restaurant marketing plan should also include samples of your online marketing materials. This will give readers a clear idea of what your online presence looks like and how it supports your other marketing efforts.

Your conversion, referral, and retention strategy outlines how you will turn potential diners into paying customers and keep them coming back for more.

It should include information about your sales process, customer loyalty programs, and referral marketing campaigns.

Be sure to include information on your conversion, referral, and retention strategy in your marketing plan. Explain how it supports your marketing strategy and what you expect it to achieve.

For example, if you’re trying to increase customer loyalty, you might offer a loyalty program with discounts and rewards for repeat business.

Your financial projections outline the expected revenue and expenses for your restaurant. They should also include your restaurant startup costs . They should be based on your marketing strategy, target market, and other factors.

Be sure to include financial projections in your marketing plan. Explain how they were developed and what you expect them to achieve.

For example, if you’re trying to increase sales by 20% over the next year, your financial projections should reflect that goal and include the essential KPIs that will be used to measure success. 

7 Restaurant Marketing Strategies

For most restaurants, a mix of marketing tactics will be the most effective way to reach their target market. The following are some common restaurant marketing strategies:

• Social media marketing : Use social media channels to connect with your target market and promote your restaurant. There are multiple platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are great for sharing photos, updates, and special offers.
• Email marketing : Use email to stay in touch with your restaurant customers and promote your restaurant. Send newsletters, coupons, and special offers to your email list.
• Promotions : Run promotions and discounts to attract new customers and keep existing ones coming back. Offer a discount for first-time customers or run a contest for a free meal.
• Events : Host events at your restaurant to generate buzz and foot traffic. Partner with local businesses or charities to co-host an event.
• Offline marketing : Use traditional offline marketing tactics to reach your target market. Place ads in local publications or distribute flyers in high-traffic areas.
• Public relations : Generate positive press for your restaurant with public relations campaigns. Pitch story ideas to local media outlets or hold a grand opening event.
• Word of mouth : Encourage customers to spread the word about your restaurant with word-of-mouth marketing. Offer discounts or freebies for customers who refer their friends.

Sample Marketing Plan for a Restaurant

Example – black pearl seafood restaurant.

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant is a high-end seafood restaurant in New Orleans, LA. The restaurant offers an elegant atmosphere and a la carte menu with fresh seafood options.

The marketing plan executive summary for Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will outline the restaurant’s overall marketing strategy, including its goals, objectives, and tactics. It will also include a financial projection for the restaurant’s first year of operation.

The goal of Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant’s marketing plan is to generate buzz and foot traffic to the restaurant. The restaurant also hopes to build a loyal customer base and increase sales.

The objectives of Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant’s marketing plan are to:

• Attract 100 new customers within the first month of operation
• Increase sales by 10% each month
• Build a loyal customer base of 200 customers within the first year

The tactics that Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will use to achieve its objectives include:

• Social media marketing : Use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to share photos, updates, and special offers with potential customers.
• Email marketing : Send a monthly email newsletter to subscribers with coupons, discounts, and restaurant news.
• Promotions : Run monthly promotions and discounts to attract new customers and keep existing ones coming back.
• Events : Host events at the restaurant, such as wine tastings and cooking classes.
• Offline marketing : Place ads in local publications and distribute flyers in high-traffic areas.
• Public relations : Pitch story ideas to local media outlets and hold a grand opening event.
• Word of mouth : Offer discounts or freebies for customers who refer their friends.

Financial Projection

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant expects to generate $3,000 in sales per month in its first year of operation. The restaurant plans to spend $600 on marketing and advertising each month, resulting in a net profit of $2,400.  

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant’s target market segments are high-income individuals who are looking for an elegant seafood dining experience. Demographics include:

• Location: New Orleans, LA
• Income: $100,000+
• Interests: Fine dining, seafood, wine

The restaurant’s location in New Orleans puts it in close proximity to some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city including Uptown, the French Quarter, and the Garden District.

Additionally, Black Pearl’s menu features fresh seafood options that are not typically found at other local restaurants, making it a desirable dining destination for affluent local and tourist diners.  

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant offers an elegant atmosphere and a la carte menu with fresh seafood options that are not typically found at other local restaurants. This makes it a desirable dining destination for affluent local and tourist diners who enjoy exotic Cajun seafood cuisine.

“A Unique Dining Destination for Exotic Cajun Seafood Cuisine”  

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will charge a premium price for its high-end seafood cuisine. The average meal price will be $30-$40 per person.

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will position itself as the go-to spot for upscale seafood dining in New Orleans. It will target middle to high-income individuals who are interested in experiencing fine dining at an affordable price.  

Distribution Strategy

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will distribute flyers in high-traffic areas to promote its grand opening. It will also place ads in local publications and pitch story ideas to local media outlets. The restaurant will also use its social media platforms and email marketing to reach potential customers.  

Offers and Incentives

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will offer discounts and coupons to customers who sign up for their email newsletter. The restaurant will also have monthly promotions and discounts to attract new customers and keep existing ones coming back. For example, the restaurant could offer a buy one get one free entrée coupon or a percentage off the bill for parties of a certain size.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Strategy

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will use a customer relationship management (CRM) system to track customer data and interactions. The CRM system will be used to send automated marketing emails, track online reviews, and measure customer satisfaction.  

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant’s marketing materials will include a website, social media posts, email templates, flyers, and business cards.

The website will feature the restaurant’s menu, photos, and location. Social media pages will be used to post updates about special events and promotions. The email template will be used to send monthly newsletters to subscribers.

Flyers will be distributed in high-traffic areas to promote the restaurant’s grand opening. Business cards will be given to customers to encourage them to spread the word about Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant.  

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will offer a variety of promotions to attract new customers and keep existing ones coming back. The following promotions will occur during Q1:

• January : “January Blues Buster” – 20% off the bill for dine-in customers
• February : “Valentine’s Day Special” – Two for one entree on Valentine’s Day
• March : “Lucky in Love” – Enter to win a free dinner for two when you dine at Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will use a variety of digital channels to reach potential customers. The following channels will be used:

• Website & Search Engine Optimization : The restaurant’s website will feature the menu, photos, and location. The website will be optimized for search engines so that it appears as a top result when customers search for keywords related to the business in Google searches, local search results, Google Listing for Business, and rank well on other search engines.
• Paid Ads on Google Ads : Create ads on Google Ads to display Google.com, Google Maps, and delivery sites when customers search for keywords related to the business.
• Social Media Platforms : Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will have active social media pages on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The pages will be used to post updates about special events and promotions.
• Email Marketing : The restaurant will use email marketing to send monthly newsletters to subscribers. The newsletter will feature discounts, coupons, and upcoming events.
• Online Review Sites : Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will monitor online review sites such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google Maps. The restaurant will respond to both positive and negative reviews in a prompt and professional manner.

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant will use a variety of strategies to convert potential customers into paying ones. The following strategies will be used:

• Sales Techniques : The restaurant’s sales team will be trained to upsell and cross-sell menu items. They will also be taught how to handle objections and close the sale.
• Referral Program : The restaurant will offer a referral program to loyal customers who refer new business. The customer will receive a discount on their next visit for each referral.
• Loyalty Program : The restaurant will offer a program to our most loyal customers who frequently dine at the restaurant. The loyalty program will include discounts, coupons, and exclusive access to events.
• Customer Retention : The restaurant will use a customer satisfaction survey to measure customer satisfaction. The survey will be used to identify areas of improvement.

Black Pearl Seafood Restaurant’s financial projections for Q1 are as follows:

• Revenue : $50,000
• Cost of Goods Sold : $15,000
• Gross Profit : $35,000
• Operating Expenses : $30,000
• Net Profit : $5,000

Free Restaurant Business Plan Example PDF

Download our restaurant business plan pdf here. This is a free restaurant business plan example to help you get started on your own restaurant plan.  

How to Finish Your Restaurant Marketing Plan in 1 Day!

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your marketing plan?

With Growthink’s Ultimate Marketing Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!

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How to Write a Restaurant Marketing Plan [Free Template]

Help your restaurant stand out and appeal to more guests with this in-depth marketing plan template.

How can a restaurant stand out from the one million other restaurants in the country to accumulate a market share, earn loyal customers and stay profitable? 

Put simply, it needs a restaurant marketing plan . From branding, to budgeting, to advertising, there’s a careful combination of both high-level and tactical decisions a restaurant needs to make to position itself in its market and serve as many guests as possible. That’s why BentoBox has created a free Restaurant Marketing Plan Template.

This template includes outlines for the most essential sections for a restaurant marketing plan, including branding & positioning, online marketing strategy, offline marketing strategy, promotion timeline and marketing budget. The template is completely customizable to fit the needs of any restaurant – whether it’s for a seasonal promotion or a brand new restaurant’s opening day strategy. With BentoBox’s Restaurant Marketing Plan Template, restaurants will have the direction and purpose they need to appeal to their market and start serving more guests. 

Included is a professionally designed, customizable version of the template on Google Docs. Restaurants can download the template below, make a copy and tailor it to their specific concept. For design inspiration, download our free eBook here . 

Restaurant Marketing Plan Template

Download the free restaurant marketing plan template from BentoBox

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How to write a comprehensive restaurant marketing plan

The success of your marketing strategy starts with a strong restaurant marketing plan. Whether you’re running a well-established business or just about to open a new restaurant , having a well-crafted marketing plan can make a difference in your marketing efforts. A written plan serves as a guide when pitching to investors, as it helps visualise how you plan to achieve your business goals during a pitch. It is also a compass for restaurant owners to guide their marketing decisions along the way.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to write a comprehensive marketing plan for your restaurant. Read on to learn what a marketing plan is, what it should include, and how you can quickly write one that works for you.

Quick links What is a restaurant marketing plan? Steps to writing a marketing plan Defining the restaurant’s mission Researching the market Specifying the customer target SWOT analysis Setting marketing goals Developing marketing tactics Selecting marketing channels Defining your marketing budget Marketing plan resources

What is a restaurant marketing plan, and why does your restaurant need one?

A restaurant marketing plan does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a document that outlines your marketing strategy and the marketing activities you plan to carry out in your restaurant, to reach your business goals.

A comprehensive marketing plan can help you gain insight into your competition and understand your market. Additionally, it can help you identify your target customers. Finally, it can help you decide which marketing tactics will work for your restaurant.

Steps to writing an effective marketing plan for your restaurant

Writing a restaurant marketing plan from scratch can seem daunting at first. Follow these steps to get started and you’ll see that it gets easier as you develop your vision.

1. Define your restaurant’s mission

Your restaurant’s mission is why your business exists. You can summarise it in a mission statement. It’s a clear, brief, and memorable description of your restaurant’s mission in just a few words. A mission statement is the foundation of your marketing efforts and provides a clear direction for your restaurant’s marketing strategy.

For example, if your focus is sustainability, your restaurant’s mission statement could be: “Our mission is to serve healthy and delicious food to sustainability-minded consumers in the local community, using only locally sourced and fresh ingredients.”

Here’s a template you can use to write your own restaurant mission statement:

We’re on a mission to [your restaurant’s reason why] for [your target audience] by [what / how you do it].

2. Develop your restaurant brand identity

Once you’ve written your mission statement, use this to develop a brand identity that reflects what your restaurant stands for. Your brand identity comprises all the visual aspects that make up your restaurant’s image. In this case, looks matter. It’s important that your restaurant’s image reflects your mission so your customers have the right perception of your brand. Do your restaurant’s sign, logo, interior design, menu , and website align with its mission?

3. Research your market

Your market research should include demographic information about the market: age, occupation, geographic location, and dining preferences. You can start collecting market insights simply through observation: check out other spots and observe the types of clientele they have, and how they interact with the space and people around them. Try to take notes of the tiny details, sometimes this is what makes the difference in providing a superior experience.

Beyond observing your customers, you can gather information from external websites and resources on your market. This is a fundamental step as you’d want to choose your target segment also based on reliable data.

A good starting tool is YouGov.co.uk , where you can explore data and insights on different consumer trends across several industries. You can also get a pulse of the restaurant industry and shifting diner preferences from OpenTable’s quarterly diner survey .

4. Specify your restaurant’s customer segment

Once you’ve researched and segmented your customers, it’s time to pick your target. Narrowing your focus on a segment of your market rather than trying to cater to every single customer might be a smart choice. Keep in mind, your restaurant has a specific mission. Your target market should also reflect your mission.

5. Complete a SWOT analysis on your restaurant

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. A SWOT analysis can help you paint the picture of where your restaurant stands in the market. It allows you to reflect on your restaurant’s strengths and weaknesses.

Think of these questions when conducting a SWOT analysis on your restaurant:

• Strengths: What makes your restaurant unique? What makes diners want to book a table at your spot, and what keeps them coming back? List your business’s successful attributes and think about how you can leverage them against your competition.
• Weaknesses: What problems are currently limiting your restaurant’s growth potential? How can you overcome these challenges and what are your solutions? For example, your restaurant space is limited so you only have a few tables, and you need to think of ways you can optimise your table turnover rate .
• Opportunities: What are the external market opportunities to boost your business? Are there any industry trends that you can tap into? For example, if there aren’t many vegan restaurants in your area, can you adapt your menu to appeal to these customers? Find a gap in the market and try to offer something unique to fill it.
• Threats: What external factors or situations could impact your restaurant business? With the pandemic being a vivid memory, write down the possible shifts in the economic or political environment which could affect your business. Make sure you have a plan of action to counterbalance the risks and stay ahead of your competitors.

6. Set your restaurant marketing goals

A marketing goal outlines how you plan to achieve your restaurant’s business goals through marketing tactics. Marketing goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant to your business, and Time-bound). Using this technique can help many restaurant owners establish and implement practical and achievable marketing goals.

Think about your SWOT analysis and what areas of your business require the most attention and improvement. Then focus on these aspects by implementing marketing goals. For example, a SMART restaurant marketing goal could be to increase covers by 20% during lunch shifts or to sell 15% more appetisers to your customers. Ensure you also quantify your goals and include figures or dates to help you focus on measurable outcomes.

Then, pick one or two marketing goals at a time, and use these to guide your marketing strategy and tactics.

7. Develop your restaurant marketing tactics

Now it’s time to develop your restaurant marketing tactics, in line with your marketing goals. Think of all the marketing activities you could implement to help you work towards your goal and the channels you could leverage. Evaluate which ones are relevant to your restaurant business and require reasonable effort, both in terms of budget, staff resources, and time. Write them down so you can have a list of the activities you’re going to carry out.

Marketing goal: Increase covers by 20% during lunch shifts Marketing tactics: Introduce a prix-fixe lunch menu Promote your lunch menu on social media Offer discounted lunch options to employees working in nearby offices and shops

8. Select your marketing channels

A complete restaurant marketing plan must outline the appropriate channels to reach your target audiences. Use your marketing plan to outline your presence across marketing channels and consider how you plan to use these to achieve your marketing goals.

Here are the top ideas to think about:

Restaurant social media A social media presence is key for restaurants, but this doesn’t necessarily mean you should be on all social channels. Your marketing plan outlines which social media platforms are more relevant to your restaurant, and how you plan to use these to achieve your marketing goals.

Are your customers on TikTok? Do they still use Facebook? Think of these factors to help you decide. Consider whether you want to use influencers to promote your restaurant, and make this known in your marketing plan.

On Instagram, I will regularly post pictures of the lunch options available in my restaurant to promote the lunch menu. I will also reach out to local influencers and invite them to my restaurant to create buzz around my new lunch menu.

Email marketing An email marketing strategy can be effective both for new restaurants looking to increase their customer base or for more-established businesses to foster loyalty. In this section, think of your marketing goal and where your restaurant stands, and decide if it makes sense for you to focus your efforts on emails. Then, write down how you plan to achieve your goal with your email strategy and how the restaurant will benefit from the outcome.

I will target past visitors from my CRM database with tailored email messages to showcase my new lunch offer

Paid marketing Paid marketing campaigns can boost your restaurant’s visibility or help you fill more seats during key moments. First, consider how and if you want to incorporate a paid campaign strategy into your marketing plan. You can then decide how much of your budget you’d like to allocate to this, depending on your business goals.

I will leverage Facebook location ads to promote my business and direct customers close-by to my restaurant location.

9. Set a restaurant marketing budget

It’s time to define how much of your budget you plan to allocate to your restaurant marketing. A well-defined budget breakdown will help keep your marketing efforts on track, optimise costs, and maximise your resources.

There’s no rule of thumb as to how much you should spend on restaurant marketing. This depends on how big or small your business is, and what goals you’re trying to achieve. Allocate a percentage of your sales to your marketing budget, and make sure to break it down further by marketing channel. This will help you decide how much you can spend on a given marketing activity.

Helpful tools to design a restaurant marketing plan

Creating an effective restaurant marketing plan is important to help your business develop. While it’s a good exercise to assess your restaurant brand and its potential, it can seem intimidating when you’re first writing your marketing plan. Here, we’ve compiled more restaurant marketing plan ideas and free restaurant marketing templates you can use:

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• Marketing budget templates

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How to Create a Restaurant Marketing Plan: A Step-By-Step Guide

Published by know content team on november 1, 2022 november 1, 2022.

If you’re a restaurant owner or manager, you know that a successful marketing plan is essential to driving sales and profits. But what goes into a good marketing plan? And how do you create one from scratch?

In this blog post, we’ll walk you through the steps of creating a restaurant marketing plan that will help you boost your business. We’ll cover everything from setting objectives and goals to developing strategies and tactics. So whether you’re a marketing veteran or a beginner, this guide will give you everything you need to create a winning restaurant marketing plan.

Let’s get started!

Define Your Target Market

The first step in creating your restaurant marketing plan is to define your target market. This can be tricky, especially if your restaurant appeals to a wide range of people. But it’s important to narrow down your focus so you can more effectively reach your potential customers.

Think about who your ideal customers are and what they want from your restaurant. What are their age, gender, income level, and location? What are their dining habits and preferences? Once you have a good understanding of your target market, you can begin developing your marketing strategy.

Find Your Niche

To make your restaurant stand out in a competitive market, it is important to find your niche. This means focusing on a certain type of customer or giving them a unique dining experience they can’t get anywhere else. Once you have found your niche, you can focus on marketing your restaurant to this target audience.

Do some research on what similar businesses are doing and find out what their customers want. By surveying your target market and getting feedback, you can determine what makes your restaurant unique and use that to your advantage in marketing.

Some examples of finding a niche for your restaurant could be specializing in organic food, catering to families with young children, or being the only restaurant in town that serves a certain cuisine. 

Develop Your Marketing Strategy

Now that you know who your target market is, it’s time to develop your marketing strategy.

Your marketing strategy should address how you will reach your target market and what message you will send them. There are a variety of marketing channels you can use to reach your customers, including print, radio, television, online, and word-of-mouth. And within each channel, there are a number of different tactics you can use to get your message across.

Some common marketing tactics include advertising, public relations, special events, and promotions. It’s important to mix and match different tactics to find what works best for your restaurant. And don’t be afraid to get creative! There are endless possibilities when it comes to marketing your restaurant .

Once you’ve developed your marketing strategy, it’s time to set some goals and objectives. 

Set goals and objectives

What do you hope to achieve with your marketing plan? Do you want to increase awareness of your restaurant? Drive traffic to your website? Increase sales? Be specific with your goals so you can more effectively measure your success.

Set your marketing budget

After you’ve set your goals, it’s time to create a budget. The first thing you’ll need to do is determine how much money you have to spend on marketing activities. How much are you willing to spend overall?

While it’s tempting to plan big and go all out, you need to consider the cost of materials ( print advertising costs money); production (radio or TV spots are expensive too); and labor (any special events will require someone to organize them). Make sure you have a realistic estimate of what you can afford to spend. It’s better to start small and scale up than plan big and run out of money before you’ve achieved your goals.

Implement your plan

Now it’s time to implement your plan! This is where the rubber meets the road and all of your hard work comes together. Start by putting together a timeline of when each activity will take place. Then start executing each tactic according to plan. Keep an eye on how things are going and make adjustments as needed.

Track, measure, and adjust your plan

As you carry out your restaurant’s marketing plan, it’s crucial to gauge your progress and adapt as necessary. Keep tabs on your sales and footfall, and tweak your tactics as required. Then, assess your accomplishments. Did you reach your targets? If not, why not? What was successful and what bombed? Use this feedback to refine your method and make adjustments for next time.

How to Make Your Restaurant Stand Out from the Rest?

The competition in the restaurant industry is fierce, and to stay afloat, it’s imperative to have an unforgettable brand that sets you above the rest. So, how do you create a brand that is both unforgettable and unique? By delivering an unforgettable dining experience. A memorable brand increases your customer lifetime value and keeps your patrons coming back for more.

Here are a few tips that will help you provide an unforgettable dining experience that enhances your brand:

Creating a Memorable Brand

• Have a clear and unique identity. What makes your restaurant special? What are its core values and goals? Be sure everyone on staff knows and communicates them well to customers.
• Create an emotional connection with your customers. Your customers’ shouldn’t just like your food – they should feel positively when they think of your restaurant. Make them feel like they’re part of a larger community.
• Be consistent in everything you do. From the food you serve to how you treat your customers, consistency is key to building a strong brand name.
• Keep your promises. If you make a promise to your customers, be sure to deliver on it. This will build trust and loyalty, which are essential for any successful brand.
• Stay true to yourself. Don’t try to be something you’re not – it will only backfire in the long run. Be authentic, and let your unique personality shine through in everything you do!

Delivering Exceptional Service

• Always aim to exceed expectations. Go above and beyond what your guests are expecting and give them a reason to come back. Don’t forget that it’s not just about how many new guests you get, it’s about how many returning guests you keep.
• Focus on the little details. It’s the small things that often make the biggest difference. Be sure to pay close attention to your guest’s needs and wants and cater to them accordingly. Being attentive to the guests and offering them what they need is a great way to leave a lasting impression.
• Create a warm and inviting atmosphere. When people walk through your doors, you want them to feel comfortable and welcomed. To do that well, you need to ensure your staff is friendly, well-informed and customer service oriented. Your restaurant’s physical environment is also important. Ensure your space is clean and well-maintained, with comfortable seating and clean bathrooms.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Restaurant Marketing

When it comes to marketing your restaurant , you’re probably overwhelmed with all the available strategies and tips out there. To help you navigate the world of restaurant marketing, we’ve put together a list of dos and don’ts to keep in mind.

• Define your target market
• Understand your competition
• Create a unique selling proposition
• Develop a comprehensive marketing plan
• Focus on building a strong online presence
• Invest in quality photography and video
• Use social media wisely
• Implement effective SEO strategies
• Underestimate the power of word-of-mouth marketing
• Neglect your website
• Overlook the importance of mobile optimization
• Ignore online reviews
• Fail to track your results
• Give up too soon

Final Thoughts

Creating a restaurant marketing plan is an important step in ensuring the success of your restaurant. By taking the time to define your target market and develop a comprehensive marketing strategy, you’ll be well on your way to attracting new customers and growing your business.

Adopting the Right Digital Tools to transform your restaurant operations

If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you need to digitize your restaurant operations. This will not only make things easier for your staff, but it can also help you save money in the long run. With a digital system in place, you can streamline your daily processes like creating duty rosters, managing opening and closing checklists, and tracking food safety audits. You’ll also have access to data that can help you make informed decisions about your business.

If you’re searching for the right tool to run your restaurants, look for an enterprise-grade solution that is designed specifically for restaurants. This type of software or app will enable you to streamline all of your operations, communication, and reporting. KNOW solves all of this and more! So what are you waiting for? Get started today !

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How to create a restaurant marketing plan

You make delicious food, designed your restaurant to be comfortable and pleasant, and trained your staff to provide a great experience to patrons. But in the competitive world of restaurants, that’s not always enough on its own. Before a customer can experience how amazing your restaurant is, they first have to learn that you exist and decide you’re worth a try.

To get customers through the door (or onto your website) to begin with, you need a strong restaurant marketing plan.

What is a restaurant marketing plan?

A restaurant marketing plan is the strategy you develop to promote your business, convince potential customers to try your food, and keep them coming back once you’ve won them over.

A good marketing strategy for a restaurant will:

• Clearly establish your restaurant’s brand and positioning (what you want to be known for and what makes you special)
• Identify the specific marketing channels you intend to pursue
• Include a marketing calendar to keep you on track with your plan
• State clear goals you want to meet and metrics to track your progress against those goals

Creating (and sticking with) a restaurant marketing plan requires an investment in time and money. But it’s worth it. A smart marketing strategy for your restaurant is the best way to bring in new customers and stay top of mind for those who already like you.

5 potential benefits of creating a restaurant marketing plan

All the work you’ve put into crafting the perfect menu and making delicious dishes can only pay off if you have customers to feed. Here are 5 main reasons why a restaurant marketing plan is a crucial ingredient in winning over the people your business depends on:

1. It helps you better define your business positioning

What makes your restaurant special? Plenty of restaurants make good food—that part’s expected. Branding involves thinking about what sets your restaurant apart from all the other options available to your patrons. Making that an early part of your marketing plan will help you build your business on stronger footing as you move forward.

2. It makes your business easier to find

When someone’s hungry and considering what to eat, you want your restaurant to be one of the first options they encounter in their search. A smart restaurant marketing plan will help you ensure that your business shows up in the main places hungry customers look when deciding what to order.

3. It helps you attract new customers

When you’re easy to discover, more people know to give you a try. That leads to the most direct benefit of a restaurant marketing plan: new customers. Once someone takes the step of trying your food once, you have the chance to win them over to become a regular customer.

4. It encourages loyalty and increases customer lifetime value

The best restaurant marketing plans aren’t just about reaching new customers. You also want to entice the patrons who already know about you to keep coming back. Including tactics to inspire loyalty can help make sure those new customers you earn pay off in repeat business for years to come.

5. It keeps you organized and on track

The first 4 benefits point to the value of doing restaurant marketing. The benefit of having a plan is that it helps you do it well. A scattershot marketing approach won’t accomplish as much. But with a clear plan, all your ideas will be organized based on the specific goals you want to meet, the channels to use to accomplish them, and the timeline for pulling them off. A well-thought-out plan leads to better, more consistent results.

What should be included in your marketing plan?

If your expertise falls more on the food side of things versus the marketing side, you may have no idea where to start on a marketing strategy for your restaurant. Here’s a rundown of the typical steps you’ll want to take in building a restaurant marketing plan:

Define your restaurant’s brand identity

A good marketing strategy for a restaurant starts by thinking through your branding. That includes defining your unique positioning: what sets your restaurant apart from other options. To work that out, consider what you most want to be known for. Then proceed to think through what you want the look and feel of your brand to be. You’ll want to work out a visual style, including a brand color scheme and logo. You can hire a good graphic designer to help with this process or look into free online design options that let you do it yourself.

To help you visualize what this all looks like in practice, we’ll create some restaurant marketing plan examples based on a fictional pizza place called Pizza Finzione. For their unique positioning, the restaurant team emphasizes creating Neapolitan-style pizza that uses only the best ingredients. Their visual branding incorporates the colors of the Naples flag (red and yellow), as well as images and stock photos associated with Naples, Italy. All of that helps communicate what the brand does and what makes it special.

Research your closest competitors

No restaurant works in a vacuum. Your customers will often be deciding among several options in the area when choosing what to eat, and you want to understand where you fit in with them. That doesn’t mean you have to research every single restaurant in your city—for businesses in a big city, that would be a nearly impossible task. Instead, focus on those that are similar to you.

For example, Pizza Finzione would want to learn what other pizza and Italian restaurants are doing nearby to position their business to customers. Its team may want to further identify the restaurants selling food at a similar price point within a couple of miles.

Once you’ve identified your top competitors, research their marketing:

• What does their website look like? Can you tell what keywords they’re targeting for SEO (search engine optimization)?
• Can you tell what their unique positioning is?
• What marketing channels do they use? For example, do they have a presence on multiple social media channels or third-party apps? Do they have an email list? Can you see any promotions they’re running?
• What do their reviews look like? What do customers praise and criticize?

By seeing what’s working for your competitors, you can learn what your audience might respond to. You don’t want to copy them, but you do want to take what insights you can from their results. For instance, the social media sites where they get a lot of engagement may be those where your audience is most active and therefore worth your time.

Decide which channels to invest in

Your restaurant has limited resources, so you want to focus on the marketing channels likely to provide the best results. These are some of the main channels to consider for restaurant marketing:

A website is arguably the most important online marketing channel for your restaurant. When people are researching which restaurant to choose, they often turn to the internet for more information. If they don’t see you show up in the search engine results, they may not know to consider you at all. If they can’t pull up the menu on your website to review, they might move on to the next option in their search.

You probably already understand how important it is to have a restaurant website. But you also want to invest in making sure it provides the information your patrons need and is easy for them to find. That includes investing in SEO and potentially running search engine ads as well. If you haven’t already, you may also want to set up online ordering on your website. That makes it that much easier for customers to place orders with you—and can lead to increased sales as a result.

Social media

There are a lot of social media platforms these days, so you’ll probably want to focus on a couple of main ones. Concentrate on platforms you’re confident your target audience uses and that you have the creative resources to stick with. For a restaurant, an image-based site like Instagram makes sense, since taking photos of delicious-looking food is relatively easy and can be enticing for customers. Facebook’s large user base means you can likely connect with many of your customers there. And if you feel comfortable making videos, YouTube or TikTok might be worth trying out.

Once you’ve chosen your channels, develop a social media strategy that makes sense for the platform formats. Your Instagram strategy, for instance, could be a mix of photos you take of delectable food dishes, pictures of your employees at work, and images of customers enjoying their meals (with their permission, of course).

Online apps and directories

Some hungry people deciding where to eat go straight to the search engines; others have favorite go-to apps or review sites. Making sure your restaurant shows up in all the main online directories and apps where people find restaurants is a smart way to reach more customers. By claiming your restaurant profile on each of these, you can provide accurate information that better promotes your business.

Make sure your profile is fully filled out on each site or app and that information like hours and menu are up to date. Bonus: providing consistent information about your restaurant across websites and directories is also good for local SEO.

Paid ads and promotions

Usually the fastest way to get results in marketing is to pay for ads. You can run paid ads on search engines, social media websites, third-party delivery platforms you use, and even more traditional channels like your local paper or radio stations. Ads give you a way to reach a large audience quickly, which can bring in new customers fast. But it costs more up front than many other marketing activities, so you want to be strategic about how many ads you run and where.

Email marketing

Email is a great way to maintain contact with customers who already like you and signed up to receive emails from you—and to stay top of mind with them. You can send emails to encourage more visits with promotions, share content you create, and alert the list to notable restaurant updates.

Consider encouraging customers to sign up to receive emails from you by providing an incentive, such as a discount on their next order or a free appetizer the next time they come in. You can also further build loyalty by sending exclusive deals to your email list, like a coupon for a free dessert on their birthday.

Content marketing

Content marketing involves creating valuable content on topics your audience is interested in, as a way to build brand awareness and trust. Adding a blog to your website is one of the most common forms content marketing takes, but it can also mean investing in informative videos or creating audio content like podcasts. Blogging is an especially popular option because it can be great for SEO, which makes your website easier to find in the search engines.

This tactic does require regular, ongoing work to create high-quality content that provides useful or interesting information to your followers. As an example: a restaurant like Pizza Finzione might build a YouTube channel around videos that show their chefs tossing pizza dough, along with short educational videos with fun facts about the history of Neapolitan pizza. That would give the restaurant a chance to show the knowledge behind their craft, further solidifying their brand identity.

Loyalty programs

Loyalty programs are a great way to convince the customers you’ve already won over to keep coming back for more. By offering incentives for choosing your restaurant more often, you give customers an extra reason to return. Being rewarded for loyalty makes customers feel good, and it earns you more repeat business.

A common restaurant loyalty program is the punch card: buy 5 slices of pizza, get your card punched each time, then the 6th slice is free. But now you also have the option of using digital tools to provide more sophisticated loyalty programs. That could mean creating a points system, where customers can trade in points they’ve earned for benefits, or creating tiers that patrons can aspire to that earn better rewards based on number of visits.

Create a marketing calendar

With marketing, it’s easy to have big ambitions when you’re in the planning stage. It’s harder to follow through on them consistently over the long term. But that's what it takes for a restaurant marketing plan to get the kind of results you want. One of the most important tools for helping you stick to your plan is a marketing calendar.

Once you have your marketing channels selected, devise a strategy for what you intend to do on each and how often. For example, Pizza Finzione may decide to release a video to YouTube twice a month, publish blog posts weekly, post on Instagram 3 times a week, and send emails to their list once a month.

Keep this realistic. You probably won’t be able to publish a blog post or video every day on top of all your other responsibilities, but a couple times a month may be feasible.

Start entering your promotion and content ideas into your calendar, so every initiative has a clear timeline. Break down each item into clear steps. For instance, a blog post will require a written draft, a review process, and an image to publish with it. Assign responsibility and a deadline for each step—even if you’re doing a lot of the tasks yourself. That will help you better visualize how much time each action will take and keep the schedule realistic.

Work to keep those deadlines and stay on top of your calendar. You may need to update the plan over time as you realize how long certain things take. It’s OK to switch from daily Instagram posts to 2 a week, if you find that’s the pace you’ll realistically maintain. What you want to avoid most is letting your marketing plan end the moment things get busy.

Set measurable goals and track results

With the investment marketing requires, you want to make sure your work is paying off. Set clear goals as part of your restaurant marketing plan. This can include high-level goals like growing brand awareness, gaining new customers, and increasing overall sales. It should also include channel-specific goals for each of the channels you choose to pursue, such as social media followers, email open rates, and loyalty program signups.

Marketing requires a lot of guesswork early on, but tracking metrics is how you refine your strategies based on data. If your blog posts draw more traffic to the website, which contributes to an uptick in online orders, then you know that channel is paying off for you. If you devote hours to creating TikTok content, only to see low engagement on the platform, then shift that time back to one of the channels getting better results.

No marketing plan should be set in stone. Learn what works as you go, and be willing to branch out and try new things based on changing trends. Over time, you’ll gain more data and feedback on what kinds of marketing work best for your audience and brand, which will let you improve results as you go.

Market your restaurant with Uber Eats

For restaurants that use Uber Eats, you have access to a range of tools that help you market your business. Just by joining the platform, you make your restaurant easier for hungry patrons to find whenever they open the Uber Eats app. But you can further boost your visibility by running ads on the platform . You can also offer promotions , like $0 Delivery Fee, to entice first-time customers to give you a try.

In addition, to help you understand how well those marketing tactics are paying off, Uber Eats also offers intuitive reporting capabilities . You can take advantage of in-app tools that measure the ROI (return on investment) for every campaign you launch on the platform. Plus, the app’s automated analytics offer valuable insights for your business, such as your top-selling items and customer feedback .

Using the marketing tools available on Uber Eats is a smart way to make your restaurant marketing plan go further, with relatively little extra work.

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• Restaurant Marketing Plan: Ideas & Strategies

Restaurant Marketing Plan: Ideas & Strategies

In the last section, we described how to use your website, social media, PR, and campaigns to promote your soft opening and your grand opening. In this section, we’ll show you how to create a restaurant marketing plan with ideas and strategies to keep up the momentum and promote your restaurant well after it opens its doors.

While restaurant marketing is a big topic, there are some general principles and mechanisms you can employ to focus your efforts on strategies that will yield results.

Depending on your budget, you’ll want to test a few of the restaurant marketing strategies we mention here and repeat them if they’re effective. Not all restaurant marketing ideas will be a slam dunk, but you’ll need to take some leaps to find out what does and doesn’t work for your concept, target market, and location.

You’ll walk away from this section with:

• The knowledge you need to write a restaurant marketing plan
• Restaurant marketing strategies for your website, social media, email, SMS, review sites, and more
• Traditional restaurant marketing strategies for direct mail, contests, and events
• A list of festivals and events for your restaurant

When you read through this section, have your business plan, budget, and priorities close at hand. Note which restaurant marketing strategies you think will resonate the most based on the research you’ve already done on your target market and concept.

How to Write a Restaurant Marketing Plan

So when it comes to drafting your restaurant marketing plan, there’s good news: you’ve sort of already done it with your business plan .

For your restaurant marketing plan, you’ll just need to pull together relevant pieces from your business plan in a way that will translate into a succinct, actionable restaurant marketing plan. Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Solidify your brand.

Before you begin brainstorming marketing activities, revisit your brand’s mission statement, vision statement, value propositions, and positioning statement. These should already be in your business plan, but it’s important to revisit them with a restaurant marketing lens. Here’s a reminder of what these components should look like.

Mission statement: A mission statement is the reason your restaurant exists. Mission statements are usually one to three sentences and approximately 50 words. They should:

• Describe your restaurant’s value
• Inspire your customers, staff, and stakeholders
• Be plausible and realistic
• Be specific and to the point

Vision statement: Your vision statement should answer the question, “What does your restaurant hope to create in the future?” Make it inspirational and motivational. Announce your goals and how you intend to impact your customers and the restaurant industry in the future. Use the future tense.

Value propositions: In one sentence, describe the unique value your restaurant provides to customers. Feel free to break down this sentence further into three or four value propositions that are unique to your restaurant. You will use these statements to describe how your restaurant stands out from your competition.

Positioning statement: In one sentence, describe how you want competitors, customers, and the rest of the marketplace to perceive you.

Step 2: Remind yourself of your target audience.

Your target audience was defined based on the demographics, psychographics, and behaviours of your customer segments. All restaurant marketing strategies you develop should speak to one or more segment of your target market .

Run through the following questions for each customer segment:

• Do they communicate on social media or review sites?
• What do they do before choosing to dine at a restaurant?
• Do they prefer to dine in or take out?
• What kind of events do they enjoy?
• Are they influenced by coupons or discounts?

Feel free to add any concept-specific questions that address the behaviours of your customer segments. You’ll want to determine the motivations behind choosing one restaurant over another, so that you can properly speak to your target audiences in ways that will resonate with them.

Step 3: Perform a SWOT analysis on your competitors.

Refer back to the competitor analysis you completed based on How To Do A Restaurant Competitor Analysis . Choose your top three to five local competitors.

For each competitor, perform a SWOT analysis:

• Strengths: What are your competitors doing right? By understanding what your competitors are doing right, you can do it better.
• Weaknesses: What could the competitor do better? Learn from your competitors’ mistakes by identifying holes in their operations.
• Opportunities: How can you exploit your competitors’ weaknesses and do better?
• Threats: Do your competitors offer something unique that you can’t?

Check your competitors’ website for the most current promotions and campaigns. Log coupons or freebies, deals, and daily recurring specials. Note special events like live music, karaoke, games night, etc.

Visit your competitors’ Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and blog. Evaluate their follower numbers and content

Step 4: Define your market differentiators.

Repeat the SWOT process on your own restaurant, and define your market differentiator in a single statement. This statement should describe your advantage over the competition.

Examples of a unique selling point are: lower pricing, unique location, speciality dishes, more engaging service, the atmosphere at your restaurant, or the culture you’re creating.

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Step 5: Craft your elevator pitch.

An elevator pitch is how you would describe your restaurant to a stranger in 60 seconds or less. It’s important to keep this in mind as you craft the messaging behind promotions later.

In your elevator pitch, state:

• Your restaurant’s name and concept
• The type of cuisine you offer
• What you do for your target audience
• How you do it uniquely

Example: The Burger Bank is a gourmet burger fast casual restaurant. Our burgers fuse traditional flavours from around the world. Located in the heart of New York’s financial district, Wall Street professionals choose us to satisfy their quick service needs, without sacrificing gourmet taste or breaking the bank.

Step 6: Define and prioritise your restaurant marketing objectives.

Your restaurant marketing priorities at the beginning of your restaurant’s life will change as you develop. In general, however, all restaurant marketing initiatives will serve at least one of these three purposes:

Your brand precedes you. It’s your reputation – and you want to have a good one. Your brand will be reflected in everything you do as a business, including your marketing materials, decor, etc. Promoting your brand is vital to capturing the attention of your target audience and sticking out in their memory when they’re deciding where to eat.

Example initiatives: social media, PR, events, blogs, partnerships

• Customer acquisition

This is your obvious objective: to fill seats, fill bellies, swipe credits cards, and collect cash. These are the marketing campaigns that will get customers in the door.

Example initiatives: promotions, coupons, advertisements

• Customer retention

Customer retention campaigns are the marketing efforts you use to secure return business. Customer retention strategies involve capturing customer information and mixing branding and acquisition strategies. Customer retention initiatives make sure you can easily lure customers back in with incentives.

Example initiatives: social media, email marketing, loyalty programmes

Step 7: Choose your promotional strategies.

Based on your budget, target audience, and goals, choose a few of these strategies to implement first (see below for detailed descriptions of each):

Digital restaurant marketing strategies

• Website and SEO
• Content marketing
• Social media
• Email marketing
• SMS text messaging
• Review sites
• Loyalty programmes

Traditional restaurant marketing strategies

• Direct mail
• Contests and giveaways
• Leagues and events

When you’ve chosen your strategies, define the following for each:

• Roles and responsibilities
• Quantifiable goal
• Campaign details
• How you’ll measure success

Digital Restaurant Marketing Strategies

Now that you know how to write a restaurant marketing plan, it’s time to start filling it in with restaurant marketing ideas and campaigns.

Digital restaurant marketing refers to all marketing initiatives that you perform online. Traditional restaurant marketing refers to all the marketing initiatives that involve hard copy promotional materials. There will be crossover between the two, and there will be times when you’ll execute traditional and digital marketing in isolation of one another. A well-rounded marketing strategy includes elements of both.

Here’s what you need to know about digital restaurant marketing strategies.

Restaurant Marketing: Website & SEO

In When to Start Promoting Your Restaurant , we explained the basics of search engine optimisation (SEO) and how to optimise your website for search engines.

To recap, SEO is the practice of optimising your website for search engine results, particularly Google. Your goal is to rank the highest on search engine page results (SERPs) when people use search terms that are relevant to your restaurant’s concept, type of food, and location.

There are several ways you can develop your website so that it’s optimised for Google’s indexing algorithm. Here are some basic best practices when you’re thinking about SEO.

Content : Don’t plagiarise content because Google will know . Use original copy on your website that keeps people browsing. As you develop the content on your site after you open, post relevant videos, images, and links to reputable websites to improve your SEO ranking.

Keywords : Research keywords that are relevant to your restaurant. Use Google Keyword Planner to get started. Enter your city and the term “restaurant”, click on your product category, and browse the results. Once you’ve researched relevant keywords, use them (naturally) into your web copy.

Title tags : In the backend of your website, you’ll see a field for title tags. Title tags are what appear in Google search results, and they should be between 20 and 60 characters long. Be as straightforward as you can when using title tags. For your restaurant’s homepage, for example, use your restaurant’s name and your location for your title tag.

Meta descriptions:Your meta description is the brief description of text below the title tag displayed in search results. In your meta description, summarise your page in 150 characters or less. Use relevant keywords within your description.

Backlinks to your website : Note that when a “high authority” website links to your website, your SEO ranking improves. So if you can get media coverage, blog coverage, etc. from other websites that Google has already ranked highly, your website’s ranking will also improve.

Now that you know the basics of SEO, here are two common best practices to follow when building your website.

Responsive design: A website is “responsive” when its design adjusts for smartphones, tablets, and desktops. Responsive design allows users to comfortably view and navigate a webpage on any device, without compromising the page’s text or functions. Most website templates and providers now use responsive design tactics. When you’re choosing a template for your website, make sure it supports responsive design.

Your website as a hub: Your digital restaurant marketing efforts should drive traffic to your website, and your neighbouring should include links to all your digital promotional assets. Make sure you include the following assets on your website:

• A e-newsletter submission form to capture visitors’ email addresses
• Social media pages
• Take-out and delivery apps
• Reservation apps

Restaurant Marketing: Content

Content marketing uses blog posts, videos, images, and SEO to:

• Improve your search ranking
• Reinforce your brand
• Remind your followers you exist
• Establish your restaurant as an authority on your concept

Your main tool for a healthy content marketing strategy will be a blog. If you enjoy writing, have a great story to tell, or your concept is interesting enough to explore in a blog, content marketing may be a crucial part of your overall marketing strategy.

Here’s how to create and maintain a great restaurant blog.

Host your blog on your website : Hosting your blog on your website can increase your SEO ranking because you’re producing more material for search engines to crawl and generate links.

Build a content calendar : An ideal posting cadence is three times per week, but we understand this is a lofty goal for a busy restaurateur. The most important thing is to create a content calendar so you can plan content and stick to a regular schedule that you can manage.

Generate content that is easy to create : Here are some restaurant marketing ideas for content to get you started:

• New menu items
• List articles (ex. 8 Ways to Serve Beer-Roasted Chicken)
• How-to articles
• Interviews with your staff
• History of your cuisine
• Special events
• Customer profiles

Hack the news : If something in the news relates back to your restaurant, feel free to write about it in your own words. Since the topic is trending, news hacking has the potential to bring more traffic to your site.

Distribute the workload : Ask staff and your business partners to write guest blogs, and feature a variety of subject matter experts.

Use keywords : Produce content that people are searching for in the first place. Use Google Keyword Planner to plan content, and use keywords in your blog post’s title, the opening line, and throughout the body of the post.

Proofread your content : Re-read your content (out loud helps). Check for spelling and grammatical errors.

Repurpose content : Make sure you’re featuring your blog content across multiple platforms. For example, if you created a video of your chef explaining how to braise beef, write a blog post about it and post a shorter version on social media.

Cross-promote : Share all blog posts social media pages, in your e-newsletter, etc.

Restaurant Marketing: Social Media

While there are multiple social media platforms you can sign up for, here we’ll focus on the big three: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Use it for: maintaining customer relationships, announcing new items, promoting events and specials, customer service, marketing incentives, and attracting new customers.

Post a maximum of two times per day to avoid inundating your audience. Here are some ideas for content to post to Facebook:

• Special dishes and menus
• Promotions and coupons
• Job postings
• Event photos
• Partner content
• Media coverage

When you post something to Facebook, you’ve created an organic post. You should know that organic posts by businesses are not served up to followers as much as they were in the past. If you really want to increase reach and engagement on Facebook, you’ll need to pay for Facebook advertising.

Facebook advertising allows you to:

• Boost your posts
• Promote your whole page
• Advertise an offer
• Send people to your website

Here are some campaigns you can run on Facebook based on which goals you’re trying to meet.

Brand awareness: Showcase your Facebook ad to as many people as possible. Use an awareness campaign for content that teaches people about your brand or area of expertise. Use this type of campaign for foundational, high-level marketing pieces like a brand video.

Store visits: Focus on acquiring customers to your location. Facebook uses your location to target appropriate users.

Local awareness: Create brand awareness based on your location. If you’re creating high-level content that speaks to your neighbourhood, for instance, you may want to use this campaign.

Website conversions: Get traffic to your website and encourage people to take an action. Use this campaign to promote subscriptions to your e-newsletter, event attendance, or promo sign up.

Clicks to website: Drive more traffic to your website through a content piece. Or use this campaign to direct users to a third-party review, for instance.

Event ads: If you’ve created an event through your page, promote the ad to users beyond your network.

Offer claim ads: Customise a call-to-action that sends users to a sign up form on your website where they can claim a discount code.

Form fill ads: Facebook enables you to create a form for users to fill out without making them leave Facebook. The user clicks the ad and is brought to a pop-up. They can then submit the form and redeem their offer, while you get the information they fill out.

Page likes: Get more users to like your page. This is especially useful if you’re regularly posting content to Facebook and want to generate more reach.

Post engagement: Showcase content to broader audiences by expanding the reach of a single post. This ad serves the dual purpose of generating more activity (likes and comments) on your posts and exposing your page to new likes.

When you run a Facebook ad, you’ll need to create an “ad set” – a target audience – based on a set of criteria. Use the target audience you’ve identified in your marketing plan as a guide to creating your ad sets.

When creating ad sets, Facebook gives you the following criteria to filter:

• Location down to the street, neighbourhood, city, and country level. Drop a pin, presumably your restaurant’s location, to determine the amount of Facebook users you’d like to target within that vicinity. You can target as close as a kilometre from your restaurant.
• Interests (competitor restaurants, cuisine type, menu items, etc.)

You can also exclude certain interest groups and narrow your search by including “must-have” interests.

Use it for: showcasing mouth-watering menu items, cross-promoting content, spreading awareness of your brand and culture, promoting contests and engagement.

Instagram is where restaurants shine, with mouth-watering pictures of food. Feel free to post at least once or twice a day to Instagram. Here are some ideas for content to post to Instagram:

• Images of food (professionally taken)
• Timelapses (plating meals, creating drinks, the front door on a busy night)
• Behind the scenes pictures
• Customer and partner profiles
• Snippets from blog posts

Here are some tips to posting high-quality Instagram content.

Post great photos: Use professionally curated images or ones that you’ve taken yourself under great lighting. Download an easy-to-use photo editing app to your phone, such as Snapseed , A Color Story , or VSCO .

Share more than food: Feature content about your customers and partners, share community news about your restaurant, and feature images of local entertainment that will be playing at your restaurant.

Always respond to comments: The more you engage with your audience, the more Instagram’s algorithms will believe your content is relevant. When Instagram perceives your content as relevant, your posts will appear in more feeds.

Engage with customers and partners: Don’t wait for them to comment on your posts. Stay top of mind by commenting on their posts first.

Use Instagram Stories: Instagram allows you to post 15-second videos and photos that are visible to audiences for 24 hours. Feel free to post non-professional, in-the-moment material.

Use unique hashtags: Create a hashtag based on the name of your restaurant, a contest, campaign, or promotion. Use the # sign and add the theme or campaign name. By creating a unique hashtag, you’re creating a conversation thread that tracks any post using that hashtag.

Use niche hashtags: Use hashtags that already exist. They might be geographical, industry related, or event driven. Niche hashtags allow you to join in on a conversation so that potential customers can find you when they search the hashtag. Search #WingWednesday on Instagram to see how niche hashtags work.

Use geo-tags: Always geo-tag to your content by tagging the location of your restaurant or the city you’re in. Geo-tagged content has a better chance of being featured because Instagram indexes this information when suggesting promoting relevant content to their users.

Similar to Facebook, you can create ads on Instagram. Instagram advertising allows you to:

Create ads through Facebook: Facebook owns Instagram, therefore the platforms are linked. Create an Instagram Ad at the same time as a Facebook ad. Do this to cross-promote a campaign and increase its impact on multiple social media platforms. Before you place the order for your Facebook Ad through the Ad Manager, check off Instagram in the “Ad Preview” section.

Create Instagram Story ads: Using Facebook’s ad manager, upload one photo or a 15-second video. Facebook will serve your Instagram Story ad to relevant audiences in between stories. Note that you can only use 9×16 vertical images and video for Story Ads.

Promote a post quickly: Sponsor posts on-the-fly using the Instagram app. Simply click the “Promote” button and select an eligible post that you’ve already published. Then determine your audience, budget, and the ad duration.

Use it for: Promotions, moment-to-moment updates, customer relationships, and customer service

Post to Twitter as much as you’d like! But three or more times daily is a common standard.

Note that marketers have been questioning the value of Twitter. With that in mind, we suggest prioritising other social media platforms over Twitter, especially as you’re starting out and you’re short on time.

Here are some best practices to posting to Twitter:

• Post links to blog posts, videos, events, and websites
• Engage by retweeting your partners
• Search hashtags to participate in conversations
• Limit hashtags to two hashtags per tweet

Restaurant Marketing: Email Marketing

Email marketing is an effective way to:

• Deliver educational information and great stories to people who are interested in you
• Entice an engaged audience with promotions
• Promote special events
• Encourage customer loyalty

To get you started, here are a few email platforms you can use to create attracted and effective emails:

• Constant Contact

Here are some ideas for the types of content you can send via email.

Newsletter: Send a monthly newsletter with new menu items, special menus, and upcoming events. Include successful blog posts, videos, and any contests. Offer incentives to your email list to get return business, whether that’s a coupon or a promo code.

Dedicated email blasts: Send a dedicated, follow-up email to the emails you collected during a contest or event. Do this within a week of receiving their email. Capture their attention – and hopefully their business – while the event or contest is still fresh in their mind.

Here are some best practices for email marketing.

Build up your email database.

• Run contests that require entrants to submit an email address.
• Include an email address submission form on your website.
• Provide an e-newsletter sign up sheet at all events.

Follow your country’s opt-in requirements.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Recipients must opt-in to email communications and give express consent before you can send promotional emails to them. You must maintain a record of consented addresses. Emails must clearly identify your restaurant as the sender. They must contain an unsubscribe link, postal address, and your contact information.

Know your ideal email frequency.

• Send an email once a month at minimum and once a week at maximum.
• A monthly newsletter is a great way to share your most valuable content. If you oversend content or sent pointless content, you’ll risk losing the attention of your recipients.

Measure your success.

• Open rate: the percentage of recipients who opened the email based on the total number of emails sent
• Clickthrough rate: the percentage of people who clicked on a link in the email
• Soft bounce: The number of recipients who did not receive the email due to an out-of-office or full inbox
• Hard bounce: The number of recipients who did not receive the email because their email no longer exists or there is an error in the address
• Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of recipients who unsubscribed from your email list after they received the email

According to MailChimp’s Email Marketing Benchmarks , here are the average numbers for the restaurant industry.

Restaurant Marketing: Text Messaging

SMS/MMS text message marketing sends a text directly to someone’s phone. Text message marketing has a higher open rate than emails, but note that the practice is still new and may feel invasive to some people.

Here are some providers you can look to if you’re considering SMS text message marketing.

• SimpleTexting

Here are some ideas for content you can send via SMS:

• Offers and promotions
• Waitlist notifications with opt-in asks

Here are some SMS marketing best practices.

Keep it short: Text messages are limited to 160 characters. Keep your text short.

Include a clear call-to-action: Tell customers exactly what you want them to do, whether that’s to redeem an offer code or visit your website.

Identify your restaurant: Recipients are easily put off by a text from an unknown number. Make it clear that the text is coming from your restaurant.

Opt-in messages: Both U.S. and Canadian companies need to obtain permission to send marketing messages. You can do so with an initial text message or a web-based form-fill. It’s also a best practice to set expectations by telling contacts the type of material you intend to send them and the frequency.

Opt-out messages: Notify the recipient of the ways they can opt-out of communications. It’s better to have a contact opt-out before they start receiving messages, rather than send materials that could provoke a negative response toward your brand.

Restaurant Marketing: Review Sites

You may think of review sites as a place to manage customer complaints, gather intelligence, and showcase your menu. But review sites are also incredibly effective advertising platforms. In fact, review sites have optimised their platforms to give restaurants an opportunity to tap into the diners who are looking at reviews.

You’ll want to start by claiming your page on all review sites. Once you claim your business page, you should:

Add photos: Optimise your page by adding professionally curated photos of favourite dishes and your space.

Update information: Update any contact information and ensure your location information is accurate. The majority of people on review sites are looking for contact information.

Manage feedback: Both positive and negative reviews require a response. Think of your response as good customer service, so make sure you’re cordial when responding to negative reviews. And invite guests who have had a positive experience to leave a review – more reviews mean a higher ranking in results. But don’t pay or offer incentives for reviews. You could get suspended from the site if you’re found out.

Each review site has marketing tools for restaurant owners. Here are some of the most common review site marketing platforms.

Yelp for Business Owners

Yelp Ads feature your restaurant in Yelp search rankings. Target local audiences and place an ad on competitors’ business pages. You can also:

• Restrict competitors from advertising on your page
• Add a slideshow to your page
• Use Yelp to take reservations
• Access a call-to-action button to highlight a promotion
• Receive account management support
• Gain access to a videographer who can create a video promo for your Yelp page

FourSquare for Business

Foursquare uses consumer behaviour, preferences, and location to advertise your business to the correct target audience. Foursquare ads feature your restaurant at the top of their search page. The ad itself is free, but you pay when a user clicks on your ad.

TripAdvisor Premium for Restaurants

TripAdvisor comes with three tools beyond its free business page:

• Storyboard: A tool that combines your best photos, reviews, and tags into a preview of your restaurant. Here’s an example .
• Top 3 Reasons to Eat Here: This feature adds a layer to your TripAdvisor restaurant listing. The layer enables you to showcase your differentiator using photos, reviews, and your own words.
• Spotlight Favourite Reviews: Pin your best review to the top of your review page, so that the review is the first thing guests see.

Zomato for Business

Zomato has two advertising models. You can use customised banners on Zomato’s website and mobile platform, or you can advertise within the collection of restaurants where you’re already featured.

Zomato also has widgets you can add to your website. These widgets prompt users to rate your restaurant on Zomato or order from your restaurant on Zomato.

OpenTable for Business

OpenTable ads: Like other review sites, OpenTable ads make your listing show up higher in search results, across all mobile and web platforms. OpenTable follows a pay per click model, so you only pay when diners take action on your ad. The cost is £5 per seat cover.

Gifts: You have the option of sell gift cards through OpenTable.

Bonus points: On OpenTable, users can collect points and get rewards when they book a table through the platform. OpenTable enables you to hijack this feature. Offer bonus points during slow times to incentivise diners to choose your restaurant over others.

Private dining: OpenTable’s Private Dining pages are essentially premium pages. They promise to increase your Google SEO and have more space for visuals and lengthy descriptions. OpenTable also actively promotes restaurants with private dining pages in their seasonal emails.

Restaurant Marketing: Loyalty Program

The goal of loyalty programmes is to generate repeat business using incentives and gamification.

The benefits of loyalty programmes include:

• Higher average sale size
• Customer referrals
• Better customer communication

Here are types of loyalty programmes to explore for your restaurant.

Punch cards: The concept is simple. When a customer purchases a menu item, they receive a stamp. After they have acquired a specific amount of stamps, they earn a free meal. Apps, however, have made it possible for customers to collect points digitally.

EPOS loyalty programmes : A EPOS system allocates points to guests based on the amount of money they spend or the items they choose. The system can distribute discounts based on the customer’s activity. Usually the customer is working towards a points goal that results in a free or discounted meal.

Referral programmes: Referral programmes are a great way to get satisfied customers to engage their networks. When a customer refers a friend to your restaurant, you reward them based on the new business they send you.

Food Delivery and Ordering Apps

A 2016 statista study found that 26% of people order food online at least once a week, and another 24% order food online three times a week.

By having a presence on take-out and delivery sites, you get your brand and your menu in front of a larger audience. Here are some food delivery and ordering apps you should consider being a part of.

GrubHub / Eat24 (Yelp)

• Services: Pick-up and delivery
• Where: Available across major U.K. cities and in London GrubHub is used by 55,000 restaurants.
• What they do for you: GrubHub lists your menu items, processes orders, accepts payments from customers and delivers your food using a delivery driver. Eat24 does the same, except you’re responsible for food delivery.
• Where: Available in areas across the country
• What they do for you: List your menu items, process orders, and take card payments from customers.
• Services: Delivery
• Where: An ever-increasing list of towns and cities.
• What they do for you: List your menu items, process orders, accept card payments from customers, and deliver your food using a delivery driver.
• Where: Available all over the UK

Traditional Restaurant Marketing Strategies

While digital marketing efforts have become the cornerstone of most marketing plans, the power of traditional marketing should not be overlooked.

Face-to-face interaction, word of mouth, and endorsements are tried-and-true marketing tactics that still work. Be sure to bolster your digital marketing efforts with traditional marketing as well. This dual strategy makes for well-rounded marketing that leaves no stone unturned.

Restaurant  Marketing: Contests

Contests are an effective way to engage your audience and tap into their networks. They offer entrants a reward in exchange for their submission. Entrants are more willing to give up their contact information and share the contest because they want free stuff.

The key to a successful contest is making sure the reward is worth the steps to enter, whether that’s giving their email address or tagging friends.

There are three subcategories of contests:

• A skills contest: You choose a winner based on skill or merit. There’s no random draw; instead the entrants must submit something that can be judged. For example: a photo contest would require guests to submit pictures for judging.
• A sweepstakes: You choose a winner at random. Entrants participate for free.
• A lottery: Entrants must pay a fee in order to participate in the contest.

To run a contest, you’re responsible for putting together rules and guidelines. These should include:

• Your restaurant’s name
• Your restaurant’s website
• Your restaurant’s address
• Contest start and end dates
• How to enter
• Who qualifies as a winner (minimum age, eligible towns/cities)
• How many times entrants can enter
• Disqualification rules
• How a winner will be chosen
• When and how you’ll notify the winner that they won
• Prize and price value
• The date the prize must be claimed

Also be aware of Facebook and Instagram contest rules. You’re responsible for “the lawful operation of that promotion” including:

• The official rules
• Offer terms and eligibility requirements
• Compliance with applicable rules and regulations governing the promotion and all prizes offered
• A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant
• Acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook or Instagram

Both sites have some substantial differences in their guidelines.

Facebook Promotion Guidelines

In essence, you cannot use any of Facebook’s features to host a contest. That means you can’t say “like/share/tag this post for a chance to win.” You’ll instead need to use a third-party app or link to an external page.

The legalities of Facebook contests can get murky really quickly. Third-party apps make it easier to navigate this process. As a bonus, they also provide you with a set of contest analytics.

Instagram lets you use content engagement for contests, but be aware that: “You must not inaccurately tag content or encourage users to inaccurately tag content (don’t encourage people to tag themselves in photos if they aren’t in the photo).”

Here are some contest ideas for Instagram.

• Photo contest: Ask entrants to take a photo at your restaurant and submit it for a chance to win.
• Submit a recipe: Feature the winner’s recipe on your menu or run it as a special.
• Nominate a winner: Ask entrants to post a picture of someone they think deserves an exclusive three-course meal and why. This would be a great contest to hold around Valentine’s day, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, when people are feeling sentimental about their loved ones.

Here are some contest best practices for Instagram.

• Be clear on your goals. If your goal is to get more followers, build a tag or follow request into your contest rules. If your goal is to collect email addresses for your mailing list, have participants submit a form. If your goal is engagement, require entrants to interact as a part of the contest rules.
• Announce your winner publicly. This shows entrants that you followed the contest rules and indeed chose a winner. It also gives the winner an extra little bit of praise.
• If applicable, showcase the winner receiving their winnings in your restaurant. If their prize was a dinner for two, ask permission to take their picture when they claim their prize. Post it to social media.

Restaurant Marketing: Direct Mail Campaigns

Direct mail campaigns use your post office’s business programme to send marketing materials to specific postal codes. While you can’t weed out recipients who don’t match your target market, you can market to people who may try your restaurant due to proximity alone.

To get the most out of your direct mail campaign, include an incentive for the recipient. In the design, make sure you’ve included your logo, address, phone number, links to social media pages, and your website.

• Flyers: a one-page, double-sided paper that features menu items
• Take-home menu: a printed version of your full menu
• Invitation: an invitation to an exclusive event for your neighbours
• Coupons: Deals, promotional codes and special offers

Use the following services to distribute your direct mail campaign:

• The Mailing People
• Washington Direct Mail (WDM)

Restaurant Marketing: Events

By becoming involved at local festivals, you have the opportunity to:

• Gain brand recognition
• Connect with local businesses
• Expose a large group of local consumers to your menu

While many events and festivals charge vendor fees, you may be able to make up your costs if you can successfully capture future business from the event. How do you do this? By providing incentives, making personal connections, and capturing festival-goers’ email information to ensure future correspondence.

You should also be aware of the risks. The success of outdoor events can be compromised by inclement weather. Some events might look enticing on paper, but in actuality fail to attract a relevant audience. With this in mind, approach the event with a clear goal in mind and a way to measure that goal.

Your goals could be any of the following:

• New customers
• Brand exposure
• Event revenue
• Number of meals sold
• Expanding your email database

Ways to measure success include:

• Use a promo code on coupons specifically designed for the event, to track conversions.
• Convert new event contacts in your email database to customers. Run an email campaign to that specific list of event attendees. Use a promo code to track conversions.
• Calculate the revenue made from the event against your vendor costs, food costs, labour costs, and equipment costs.

Tips for choosing and attending festivals:

• Ask the event coordinator about the expected number of attendees.
• Research past vendors and inquire about their experience. What return on investment did they get?
• Determine whether your target market will be present.
• Determine if you need to acquire permits. The festival should provide you with this information.
• Consult with an insurance broker to make sure you’re covered.
• Ask about the other vendors locations and determine an ideal placement.
• Create a custom menu using low food cost, high popularity items.
• Create an inventory list of all the items you’ll be selling and the number of orders you anticipate.
• Portable cooking equipment
• Promotional materials
• A banner for your booth and other signage with your logo on it
• A menu board
• An email sign up sheet

Or, if you don’t want to participate in a festival, you can always host your own event.

Special events take on many forms. You could celebrate the cultural holidays that match your restaurant’s cuisine. Or you could partner with a local charity to raise funds.

Especially when running in partnership with other businesses, events have the power to bring in new business. They allow you to interact with your local business community and tap into the network of your business partners.

Consider the following event types:

• Holidays and celebrations (e.g., everything from Mardis Gras to Thanksgiving)
• Fundraising for a local charity
• Silent auction (using auction items from neighbouring businesses)

Your event checklist:

• Determine the theme of your event and the date you will hold it.
• Double check that there are no conflicting events in your neighbourhood or city on that day.
• Pitch local partners to get involved.
• Choose a food item strategy: create hors-d’oeuvres, tapas, or a prix fixe menu.
• Create invitations: digital, print, or both.
• Create a registration page. Use a web form that includes a field for email. This way you can send guests specific information closer to the event day. You have the added benefit of obtaining their email information with their reservation.
• Update the event on your webpage.
• Create and distribute a press release.
• Create a blog post about the event.
• Invite local media and businesses.
• Include the event in your monthly newsletter.
• Send out an email dedicated to the event.
• Promote your event on your social media pages. If necessary, create an advertisement.
• Pass along promotional material for business partners to distribute to their networks.
• Create a Facebook event.
• Determine advertising platforms and budget.
• Create a swag bag for the event. Include a coupon or discount card as an incentive for event guests to return .

City-run events also have huge marketing potential. These events tend to draw large crowds because they’re backed by the city and local tourism boards. They also garner a lot of press and consumer attention. Thus, getting a piece of the local event pie can do wonders in getting exposure and generating new businesses for your restaurant.

Restaurant marketing is what you make of it – while you likely won’t be able to implement all of the suggested restaurant marketing strategies we have here, you should be able to choose a few that will be most likely to work for your concept. Restaurant marketing is a constant work in progress. You’ll try a few tactics, succeed and fail, and fine tune your overall strategy based on what you’ve learned.

The most important thing to remember about restaurant marketing is to prioritise properly for the budget you have. But don’t be afraid to take risks: you may just find that your restaurant shines after testing a marketing tactic that you didn’t think would work. Just be aware of your limits so you can take smart risks rather than breaking the bank.

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Restaurant Marketing Plan

Starting a restaurant may sound easy when you’re still gathering ideas. But from that moment on, the road to establishing your own food business only gets tougher. Before you even start purchasing raw materials, you first need to strategize on how to make it popular in the market. And that’s very important for every new restaurant or cafe business. For that, you’re going to need the help of our Restaurant Marketing Plan Examples . You can download them from this page.

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What Is a Restaurant Marketing Plan?

A restaurant marketing plan is a document that guides restaurant owners or managers in boosting their food businesses’ popularity and profitability. It shows detailed analytics of a local restaurant market. And that analysis serves as a basis for a restaurant’s marketing strategies and goals settings. This is the document you must prepare for your new restaurant business to start strong.

How to Create a Restaurant Marketing Plan

When creating a restaurant marketing plan, these are the steps you must follow. Take note that the marketing plan should solely focus on your restaurant’s sales and marketing aspects. It should also have a comprehensive breakdown of what it can offer to your local restaurant industry.

Step 1: Write the Executive Summary

The  executive summary  acts as your marketing plan’s overview. But take note that you cannot create an executive summary if you even haven’t completed your marketing plan. The executive summary should only be one to two pages of your entire marketing plan. It should focus on the general details of your plan.

Your executive summary may be brief, but don’t understate its importance. Most of the time, possible investors will look into it to see if your business has potential. If it shows promise, then they’ll continue reading your marketing plan. And the rest will follow. The same scenario happens for your restaurant business plan .

Step 2: Discuss Your Products and Services

Discussing your products and services is a must in creating a simple marketing plan . You cannot formulate the right strategies if you don’t define your products and services, in this case, your restaurant’s dishes.

These days, a delicious dish is not enough for the restaurant to attain high revenues. That said, you should try something new with your dishes. Make your restaurant menu unique from other restaurants. The build of your menu will play a crucial factor in determining your promotional tactics.

Step 3: Define Your Target Market

The target market pertains to the customers where you will be getting most of your revenues from. The target market accounts for around 70–80% of sales, with the remaining 20–30% accounting for customers outside of your target market.

Identifying the right target market is crucial if you want to achieve high revenues. For one, most customers will be having different preferences for your dishes. And that why you must define them. Doing so will help you serve them better. And it can also give you ideas on what you should add or remove from your food menu and drinks menu .

Step 4: Incorporate Your Market Analysis

Your analysis of the local restaurant market is very important. That’s because its results have a seismic effect on how your marketing strategies will look like. Your market analysis should include details about your direct competitors. You should know their strengths and weaknesses. That helps you determine how your restaurant will compete against them, or better yet, outperform them to make more profits.

How to attract more diners to my restaurant?

A Forbes article implies that 71% of customers are more likely to share a brand with others if that said brand is active and responsive on social media. That said, making your restaurant active on social media could bring in more diners. Social media is an effective marketing platform, which is why every business tries to establish their presence on it.

What makes a decent menu for my restaurant?

Here’s a list of what makes a decent restaurant menu:

• Right prices
• Versatile and diverse dishes
• Easy-to-prepare dishes
• Beloved common dishes, but with certain twists
• Not having too many choices
• Presentable dishes; in other words, Instagrammable

What are a marketing plan’s components?

These are the components of a marketing plan:

• Market analysis
• Target market description
• Competitor analysis
• Marketing strategies
• Action plan

Your restaurant business has a bright future. It might seem like a far-fetched outcome, but it’s an achievable feat. Achieving success is very possible in any business endeavor. All it takes is taking the right approaches. In your case, that right approach is your restaurant pre-opening marketing plan. So, gather your financial assets now to start planning your business. Search for fresh restaurant marketing ideas and trends. And don’t forget to download our Restaurant Marketing Plan Examples!

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The Best Restaurant Reservation Software of 2024

Restaurant Business , Restaurant Solutions

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Online Reservation Systems Have Become Essential to Running a Successful Restaurant. Here Are The Five Best Reservation Software of 2024

The restaurant industry is constantly evolving. As customer expectations and operational demands push the need for better efficiency and management solutions, finding the right tools to use in your tech stack is critical to your business’s success. Reservation software has become integral to streamlining operations, enhancing the dining experience for your guests, and boosting sales and revenue.

Each platform offers unique features and benefits that cater to different aspects of restaurant management, so finding the right one to fit your restaurant’s needs could take a little digging. Luckily, we did the research for you. Here are the industry’s top five reservation software.

With over 50,000 restaurants worldwide using its platform , OpenTable has proven its ability to seamlessly handle high volumes of reservations. You have ultimate control of your dining room’s flow, with the ability to maximize seatings with smart table assignments and current, up-to-date waitlist management to fill empty seats ASAP. 

In addition to offering reservation and waitlist management, OpenTable integrates with your POS to track revenue, provide order insights, and provide automatic table status updates. 

One of OpenTable’s standout features is its marketing capabilities. Restaurants listed on OpenTable gain exposure to millions of potential diners who use the platform to discover new dining experiences. This increased visibility can lead to higher foot traffic and revenue for participating restaurants.

OpenTable Pricing

• Basic: $149/month, plus a $1.50/network cover fee for bookings made through OpenTable and $0.25/cover for bookings made through your website (or a $49 flat fee for website covers). This package only includes OpenTable’s basic features like reservations, guest database tags, ticketed experiences, and credit card holds.
• Core: $299/month, plus a $1/network cover fee for all of OpenTable’s basic features and POS integration, premium messaging, smart assign, and table management features.
• Pro: $499/month, plus a $1/network cover fee for the whole shebang, including all the Basic and Core features, advanced relationship management, automated email campaigns, reporting, and robust marketing tools.

Known for its modern, user-friendly interface, Resy’s reservation management tool is straightforward for both restaurant workers and customers. 

Resy leverages advanced technology to offer dynamic pricing, two-way text communication, and robust customer relationship management. These tools help restaurants optimize their seating and enhance the overall dining experience by personalizing interactions based on customer preferences and their unique dining history. 

The reservation process also offers a few opportunities for guest customization by allowing them to select specific dining locations, such as the bar or patio seating. This personalization extends to providing “VIPs” exclusive reservation access during designated time frames, ensuring unique and memorable dining experiences.

Through its analytics dashboard, Resy provides valuable data-driven insights to make more informed decisions. Operators can easily track key metrics like table turnover rates, reservation trends, and customer demographics, which is crucial data needed to help optimize overall operations.

Resy Pricing

• Basic: $249/month for reservations, event marketing, table management, waitlist, and 24/7 support.
• Pro: $399/month for everything in the Basic plan, plus 1:1 onboarding and training, customizable guest messaging and surveys, advanced real-time analytics, and POS integration.
• Enterprise: $899/month for everything in the Pro plan, plus API access and unlimited custom reporting.

Tock sets itself apart by being an all-in-one platform that offers standard reservations, prepaid experiences, and ticketed events. This versatility allows restaurants to offer unique dining experiences and better manage special events.

Tock offers extensive customization options , allowing restaurants to tailor the platform to their specific needs. From configuring floor plans to setting up reservation rules and no-show policies—Tock provides the control needed to oversee reservations effectively and maintain a high level of service. 

Tock also seamlessly integrates with various POS systems, streamlining operations by ensuring that reservation and customer data are synchronized with the restaurant’s billing and order management processes. This integration enhances efficiency and reduces the risk of errors.

Tock Pricing 

• Base: $79/month for a 1-year plan with limited features, a 3% fee on all prepaid reservations, plus two-way SMS communications, and marketing tools. 
• Essential: $199/month, includes everything in basic, plus Experience essentials, reservation requests waitlist, and take-out capabilities. 
• Premium: $339/month, with a 2% fee on all prepaid reservations, API access and webhooks, free Squarespace website, chargeback protection, and high-touch support. 
• Premium Unlimited: $769/month for all the premium tools and support, and no fees for prepaid reservations.

Yelp Guest Manager

Sure, other reservation software may brag about their large customer base, but guests still need help finding those restaurants. Millions of potential diners already use Yelp to discover new restaurants, so this software is an easy add-on, especially if you have a maintained or popular Yelp profile. 

Yelp Guest Manager offers tools to better manage guest experiences, from reservations to waitlist maintenance and guest communication. The platform’s intuitive interface makes it easy for staff to track reservations, manage seating, and engage with guests in real-time.

Restaurants can also collect real-time feedback from guests, which is invaluable for improving service and addressing issues promptly. Integrating Yelp reviews also helps restaurants build their online reputation and attract new customers based on positive reviews.

Yelp Guest Manager Pricing

• Basic: $99/month, but it is limited to 500 booked monthly covers and has limited features.
• Plus: $299/month, no cover fees, guest check-in kiosk, complimentary iPad, social channel and POS integration, and $300/month free ad credit. 

Eat App is a cloud-based reservation system that offers flexibility and accessibility, allowing restaurant staff to manage reservations from any device, website, or social channel. This cloud-based approach ensures that data is always up-to-date and accessible, regardless of location.

Providing advanced analytics and reporting tools to help restaurant operators track key metrics such as reservation trends, no-show rates, and customer preferences. These insights can be paramount to making better data-driven decisions to help optimize operations for your business. 

Eat App supports reservation management from various sources, allowing restaurants to accept bookings from their website, social media, or third-party platforms. This multi-channel approach ensures that restaurants can maximize their reach to help get more butts in seats.

Eat App Pricing 

• Free: $0/month, limited to 30 covers a month.
• Starter: $49/month for limited features, a 300-cover limit, and shift reporting.
• Essential: $129/month for limited features but unlimited monthly covers and 100 monthly SMS messaging.
• Pro: $229/month for all features, unlimited month covers, all add-ons, and a dedicated success manager. 

TouchBistro

TouchBistro is a POS that offers a reservation system , streamlining operations by combining reservation management with order processing and billing. This integration reduces the need for multiple systems and simplifies your restaurant’s overall tech stack.

TouchBistro is easy to use, making it a breeze for restaurant staff to manage reservations, track guest information, and optimize table seating. The intuitive design minimizes training time and ensures staff can quickly get the hang of it.

TouchBistro provides comprehensive customer insights, including detailed profiles, dining preferences, and visit history. These insights enable your staff to personalize service and build stronger relationships with guests.

TouchBistro Pricing

• Reservations: $229/month, which includes access to a full suite of features, like waitlist management, POS integration, automated feedback surveys, and no cover charges.

Each platform offers unique strengths that make it the best reservation software in the industry. The hardest part is narrowing down to the best option for your business. 

Consider what’s important to you: 

• OpenTable’s market dominance and extensive features 
• Resy’s modern interface and data-driven insights 
• Tock’s flexible reservation options and integration capabilities 
• Yelp Guest Manager’s integration with Yelp’s ecosystem and real-time feedback 
• Eat App’s cloud-based flexibility and advanced analytics 
• TouchBistro’s integrated POS system collectively provides comprehensive solutions to meet the diverse needs of our industry. 

By leveraging these platforms, restaurants can efficiently enhance their operations, which will improve customer satisfaction and ultimately turn any diner into a regular.

About the author

Rebecca Gill began her love affair with restaurants at the ripe age of 16. Her dedication and hard work have directed her towards the administrative side of operations, where she helped train and educate team members. When not working, she enjoys cooking + eating, exploring, and cuddling her dog, Louie.

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