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The complete guide to restaurant marketing strategies

Restaurant marketing attracts new customers, keeps regulars coming back, and sets one restaurant apart from the crowd. It’s more important than ever to make savvy marketing central to your business. In this complete guide to restaurant marketing, we’ll cover everything you need to know to take your restaurant to a new level of success.

Quick links What is restaurant marketing? Why is restaurant marketing so important? How to develop a restaurant marketing plan What is the right restaurant marketing budget? How to use social media for restaurant marketing How to use paid advertising for restaurant marketing How to use email marketing

What is restaurant marketing?

Nobody got into this business for the love of marketing, so restaurateurs can be forgiven if they lack expertise and interest in this part of the work.

Let’s start with the absolute basics: Restaurant marketing refers to the strategies and tactics that restaurant owners use to promote their business and attract customers.

In the competitive landscape of 2023, effective marketing is a key driver of growth for restaurants and all other businesses. Ignore it at your peril.

There are tons of types of restaurant marketing these days. You’ve got the old ways: traditional advertising methods such as signs and billboards as well as print and radio ads. Then there are the newer ways: digital marketing tools like social media , email marketing , and search engine optimization (SEO). And the quest to land media coverage on TV, in print, and online, also known as “ earned media ,” is eternal.

The good news is that you don’t have to do every kind of marketing under the sun. The secret sauce of successful restaurant marketing is to pick the strategies that work best for your specific restaurant, guests, and goals.

Why is restaurant marketing so important?

Today, restaurant marketing is essential for success. This is just as true for independent mom-and-pop restaurants as it is for large chains. The restaurant industry has been evolving at warp speed and so have the wants and needs of guests.

It’s vital to have a thoughtfully planned and expertly executed marketing strategy to magnetize the right people. Regularly brainstorming restaurant marketing ideas should be built into your workflow.

Not only does marketing put butts in seats directly, it also builds your brand identity and reputation as you continually get the message about your restaurant out there over time. Through marketing, people can get to know you, your menu, the kinds of events you host, and even your team before they ever step foot in the restaurant.

Social media platforms, an OpenTable profile page, email marketing, and paid advertising can all be used to entice potential guests through the door and drive traffic to the restaurant’s online presence.

But even when guests aren’t dining with you, marketing helps you stay top of mind between visits, driving repeat visits and creating loyal customers. By staying in touch with guests in their inboxes, through social media posts, and elsewhere online, restaurants nurture relationships that keep their brand relevant.

How has restaurant marketing changed over the years?

Pre-Internet, old-fashioned marketing methods such as print ads, radio ads, direct mail, and billboards were the best ways for restaurants to promote themselves. The rise of social media has completely remade this marketing landscape.

Today, there’s a staggering variety of digital marketing tools at your disposal: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, email, Google ads, Boost campaigns , and Bonus Points campaigns to name a few. These tools let restaurants target guests in amazingly specific and effective ways.

All this tech has also made it easier for restaurants to collect data about guest preferences and behavior, allowing them to create highly personalized marketing campaigns and tailor their offers to the needs and wants of specific groups.

In a way, digital marketing has leveled the playing field in the industry and given small and independent restaurants a chance at competing with larger chains. It’s clear that those who prioritize digital restaurant marketing strategies and stay up-to-date on the latest trends are more likely to see sustainable success in the years ahead.

How to develop a restaurant marketing plan

The first step to uplevel your restaurant marketing is to create a marketing plan. In a nutshell, a marketing plan is a blueprint that outlines your marketing efforts for a specific time period.

It spells out your marketing objectives and actions as well as the results you want to achieve. It takes some effort to put a plan like this together, but it will save time in the long run.

A simple but strategic marketing plan can help you identify your ideal guests, set concrete goals, allocate resources wisely, and create campaigns that get results.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to create your marketing plan:

Do some market research Start with a clear-eyed look at your competition. This will help you identify your target audience, understand their wants, and create marketing messages that resonate authentically with them.

Set clear goals Describe your desired outcome in specific terms. These might include target sales numbers and guest loyalty benchmarks.

Set your budget Allocate a realistic and specific amount of money for your marketing plans. This will help you prioritize your marketing efforts and ensure you get the best ROI .

Choose your channels Determine which marketing channels are the most effective for reaching your desired guests, such as organic social media, email marketing, or paid advertising.

Sketch out a content calendar Plan out your marketing activities for the month or the quarter and decide when you’ll do them.

Who is your ideal guest avatar and how to create one?

The ideal guest avatar can be like a decoder ring for your whole marketing strategy. Simply put, an ideal guest avatar is a fictional representation of your restaurant’s ideal regular. It’s a profile that includes demographic information, interests, behaviors, and pain points.

By creating an ideal guest avatar, you can better understand your guests and send marketing messages that feel like you’re talking personally to them.

4 steps to creating your ideal guest avatar

• Gather and review information about your guests. Use tools like surveys, customer feedback, guest notes, and social media analytics to learn more about their preferences and behaviors.
• Create a profile that includes details such as average age, gender, income, occupation, hobbies, and preferred dining occasions for some imaginary person who would be your dream regular.
• Give your ideal guest avatar a name and a backstory. This will help you imagine them as a real person with specific needs and motivations. Think about the challenges they face when dining out. Consider how your restaurant can solve these problems and provide a special dining experience that exceeds their expectations.
• Use your ideal guest avatar to guide your marketing efforts. Create content and creative promotions that speak directly to their interests. Customize your messaging and advertising to appeal to your ideal guest avatar and use social media platforms they frequent.

By creating a strong connection with your ideal guest avatar, you can build a loyal customer base and increase your restaurant’s revenue. It’s counterintuitive that marketing to a single imaginary guest can help you draw a lot of new people to your restaurant, but it’s a time-tested marketing strategy that gets results.

What is the right restaurant marketing budget?

Finding the sweet spot in terms of how much to spend on marketing is notoriously tricky. You want to get as much out of those dollars as possible. Overspending and underspending are both real risks.

The first step to determining the right marketing spend for your restaurant is to set a budget that feels comfortably within your means. Determine how much you can really afford to spend on marketing each month or quarter, and stick to that budget.

Next, decide on your channels, such as social media, email, paid search, etc. These options all come with different price tags and varying bang for the buck. Once you’ve chosen your channels, decide what you want to spend on each. Think through the potential reach and effectiveness of each channel.

Over time, you’ll be able to get granular about the ROI for various types of marketing and that will shape your plan and budget as you move forward.

If one particular marketing channel is performing very well, it’s time to increase the budget there. At the same time, keep your eyes peeled for underperforming channels so you can move that money into marketing that works.

How to build a strong restaurant brand

Branding can be an overlooked form of marketing because it’s less quantifiable than other strategies. Building a beloved restaurant brand requires showing up with clear and consistent messaging over time. It takes strong visuals, memorable dining experiences, and media savvy.

Following these tips to build a brand that wins fans:

Define your brand by your values

Start by laying out the restaurant’s values. This will help you create a clear and consistent message that resonates with your target guests. Many restaurants have core values of community, fun, or social justice.

If things like sustainability and community service matter to you, shout it out. Many customers are drawn to restaurants that prioritize values they share. Highlight your efforts in these areas to build a strong brand that resonates with people.

Hone a visual identity

Your visual identity includes everything from your logo and color choices to the look of your menu and website. Make sure all visual elements are consistent and reflect your chosen vibe.

Focus on the guest experience

The experience your guests have at your restaurant makes or breaks a brand. Make sure your service is friendly and welcoming, your food is high-quality and consistent, and your atmosphere is warm, memorable, and preferably Instagrammable.

Engage on social

Social media marketing is a powerful tool for building your brand and engaging with guests when they aren’t in the dining room. Show off your food, people, and events—anything that brings your restaurant’s personality to life. If you come across a negative review online, respond and try to make it right if possible.

How to optimize your website for SEO

As more and more customers are turning to online sources to pick restaurants and make reservations, you’ve got to have a strong online presence. You want your restaurant’s website to be optimized for search engines (SEO) .

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Use words on your website that you think potential guests will search for. Place these keywords throughout your website, especially on your menu items description and about page.

A website’s structure and navigation also play a role in SEO. Make sure it’s easy for visitors to find the information they’re looking for , such as the menu, hours of operation, and contact information. Also, check that the website is mobile-friendly. Most people will be looking at it on their phones.

Overall, optimizing your restaurant’s website for SEO can boost online visibility and drive more guests through your doors.

How to use social media for restaurant marketing

Social media has become an essential tool for marketing in all industries. With billions of active users, it’s a powerful way to engage guests and potential guests.

If you aren’t already active on social media, start with one platform where you know your guests spend time. Post the best photos and videos you can. Don’t forget to keep the “social” in social media by actually having conversations with followers. When people comment on a post, reply. Pose questions, ask for suggestions, and repost things your guests share about you.

Using social media for restaurant marketing can help increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, and ultimately boost sales, both on-premise and through online ordering . Remember to track your results to refine your approach over time.

How to use paid advertising for restaurant marketing

Paid advertising, also known as paid media , can be a powerful tool for restaurant owners looking to build brand awareness and attract new guests. On the flip side, the world of paid advertising can be confusing and expensive.

If you’re going to invest in paid ads, spend some time investigating which are the right advertising channels for your restaurant. Google ads and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) ads are popular choices, but they’re far from the only ones. Research the different options and choose the channels that best fit your restaurant’s goals.

When investing in ads, you want to make sure you have the most effective ad copy and visuals as possible. It may be worth the money to enlist a professional to create the kind of polished ads most likely to get results.

Setting and sticking to a budget is also crucial for successful paid advertising. Start with a smaller budget and test different strategies to find what works best for your restaurant. And always track your metrics and know your ROI. That way you can adjust your strategy to maximize the benefits and minimize the risk of wasting money.

How to use email marketing

In the digital age, email marketing is an essential tool for any business to reach customers.

For restaurant owners, email marketing can be especially beneficial. Here are just a few reasons why your restaurant should be using email marketing:

Drive repeat visits

Send personalized messages to your guests that invite them to come back to your restaurant, especially when you haven’t seen them in a while. This can be in the form of special offers (such as buy one get one free), loyalty rewards, or even just a friendly reminder that you’re open. Repeat customers, aka regulars, can make or break a restaurant.

Compared to most other marketing channels, email marketing is relatively cheap. It allows you to reach a large number of people at a low cost. Email can provide a significant return on investment.

Track results

Email marketing campaigns can be easily tracked, allowing you to see how effective your campaigns are and make changes accordingly.

Effective restaurant marketing drives growth and sets your restaurant up for success. By developing a strategic marketing plan and making the most of select channels you can win a steady stream of new guests and foster loyalty in your customer base.

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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!

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Diving Deep Into Marketing for Restaurants (My Takeaways)

Updated: May 01, 2024

Published: January 30, 2024

I’m fortunate to live in a city that has a thriving restaurant scene (it’s most known for its barbecue and Tex-Mex, if that gives you any hint). And while I don’t consider myself a food connoisseur by any means, I was a food journalist in a past life, so I continue to stay on top of the latest stories and trends surrounding the restaurant industry.

To do this, I follow a lot of restaurants on social media. I also subscribe to their newsletters, attend their special events, enter their giveaways, and sign up for their rewards programs.

And because my marketing brain never shuts off, I can’t help but be curious about these restaurant marketing strategies . How well do they work? Which channels do these restaurants perform best on? How do established restaurants maintain interest after the grand opening buzz wears down?

To figure out the answers to these questions, I’m digging deep into restaurant marketing ideas, strategies, and real-life campaigns.

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Restaurant Marketing Strategies That Work

I wanted to get more insight into the world of restaurant marketing, so I spoke with Rachel Ayotte, the founder and CEO of Bread and Butter , a communications agency that works with hospitality clients.

Why do restaurants of all sizes need a marketing strategy? What does an effective campaign look like these days?

“In New York City alone, there are over 25,000 restaurants, which would take the average person 22 years to try,” shares Ayotte.

She adds, “With a huge inventory of options and a relatively short time to succeed, people must know your restaurant not only exists but is also someplace they want to go.”

This is why having a restaurant marketing strategy is essential.

If you want to stand out online and bring more people into your restaurant, here are examples of successful restaurant marketing strategies and campaigns to take inspiration from.

Customer-First Content

An essential restaurant marketing strategy is to focus on your customers. This applies not only to the way you market your restaurant but also to the menu items and products you create.

One creative example of this is Chipotle’s limited edition Napkin Holder, which is inspired by its customers.

Using nostalgia in marketing has been a popular strategy in recent years as many businesses' target audiences are growing up. If you’re an established restaurant, don’t be afraid to rehash the past.

This could mean bringing back an old menu item, selling merchandise with retro branding, or even sharing flashbacks from throughout your restaurant’s history.

Nostalgic marketing works not only because it taps into people’s memories and emotions but also because it serves as a reminder of how long you’ve been around.

Social-Driven Content

In my experience, restaurants that prioritize social media in their marketing strategy tend to generate a lot of online buzz.

An example of a restaurant that creates social-driven content is Austin-based El Arroyo . Even though El Arroyo is a Mexican restaurant, you won’t find any pictures of food on its Instagram.

With almost 700K followers, the restaurant is instead known for its real-life marquee sign that displays cheeky jokes and thoughts, often submitted by fans.

The account shares a picture of its sign with a new message every day on Instagram.

Pink is splashed across its brand imagery, making it unmissable online and in social media feeds. The color pink often evokes a feeling of playfulness, optimism, and femininity, which are all words I’d use to describe Taquero Mucho.

Creating a strong brand is a great way to make your restaurant memorable, as a signature brand essentially markets your restaurant for you.

Brand Partnerships

“One of our favorite and most effective marketing ideas for restaurants to maximize awareness is a partnership with a like-minded brand to tap into their audience,” shares Ayotte.

Ayotte says this is a low-lift way to draw on what you already have — a great restaurant and a great menu. You can “leverage that through another brand that shares a similar ethos and has access to customers the restaurant might not,” she notes

An example of a successful partnership Ayotte’s team developed and executed was between the dessert brand, Lady M Confections , Netflix, and Pearl Studio in advance of the release of the highly anticipated musical Over the Moon.

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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!

Restaurant Business Plan: Step-by-Step Guide + examples

Dreaming of opening a 🍴 restaurant? Passion, creativity, and delicious food are key. But for long-term success, a business plan is essential too.

Maja Jankowska

Are you dreaming of owning your own restaurant? Picture the sizzle of a hot skillet, the laughter of satisfied guests, and the fulfillment of sharing your culinary creations with the world. But before you dive into this flavorful adventure, there’s a crucial ingredient you can’t overlook: a winning restaurant business plan.

What is a business plan for?

A business plan is a vital document for every restaurant owner. It provides a roadmap for success, helps secure funding, guides financial and operational decisions, mitigates risks, and facilitates effective communication. 

Just like any other business, a restaurant needs a well-crafted business plan to ensure its success and sustainability. Without a business plan, you risk operating in the dark, making decisions on a whim, and facing unexpected challenges that could have been avoided. 

Investing time and effort into creating a solid business plan sets your restaurant on the path to achieving your culinary dreams and exceeding customer expectations.

Create Restaurant’s Business Plan in these 9 steps:

✔️ 1. Start with an executive summary ✔️ 2. Describe your concept ✔️ 3. Conduct Market analysis ✔️ 4. Define your management and organization ✔️ 5. Give a sample “yummy”  Menu ✔️ 6. Create design and branding ✔️ 7. Provide a Location ✔️ 8. Establish Marketing plan ✔️ 9. Define Financial plan

1. Executive summary

The executive summary is like the appetizer of your restaurant business plan – it’s the first bite that leaves a lasting impression. Its purpose is to capture the essence of your entire plan and entice time-crunched reviewers, such as potential investors and lenders, to delve deeper into your vision. It’s worth noting that the executive summary should be the final section you write.

To craft a concise and captivating summary, it’s crucial to highlight key points, including your unique concept, target market, and financial projections. Additionally, bear in mind that the executive summary sets the tone for the rest of your plan, so it’s essential to make it irresistible and leave readers yearning for more.

When it comes to the executive summary of your restaurant business plan, brevity is key . You have only one page to capture the attention of readers, but don’t worry, it’s definitely doable. Here’s what your executive summary should include:

• Restaurant concept : What does your business do?
• Goals and vision : What does your business want to achieve?
• Restaurant differentiation : What makes your menu/concept different, and what sets you apart?
• Projected financial state : What revenue do you anticipate?
• The team : Who is involved in the business?

2. Describe your concept

In the world of restaurant business plans, there’s a section that holds immense importance. It’s the one that answers two fundamental questions: Who are you, and what do you plan to do?

This is the section where you fully introduce your company, and it deserves special attention. Share all the important details that paint a vivid picture of your unique business. Include the restaurant’s name, location, and contact information. Additionally, provide relevant details such as the chef’s background and what makes your restaurant stand out in the market.

Curious about concept creation? Watch our short video featuring a summary of an example restaurant concept below! 👇

Now is your opportunity to showcase your vision and establish a unique identity for your restaurant. Utilize this section to highlight what sets you apart and capture the reader’s imagination.

3. Market analysis

Market analysis helps you understand your potential customers, competition, and overall restaurant market trends. It’s like having a crystal ball to shape your restaurant’s success.

Target audience 

When it comes to your potential market, you want to know how many people are hungry for what you’re serving. Sounds exciting, right? To estimate this, you’ll gather data on your target customers, like their age group or preferences, and combine it with industry trends. It’s like finding the perfect recipe to satisfy their cravings.

Competition

Now, let’s tackle the competition. Every restaurant has rivals, even if they’re serving a unique dish. It’s crucial to identify direct or indirect competitors and understand what makes you stand out. Are you offering affordable prices, a one-of-a-kind experience, or catering to a specific niche? Highlight your “secret sauce” that sets you apart from the rest.

Market analysis for restaurant’s business plan

Market analysis also involves a SWOT analysis. Don’t let the jargon scare you. It simply means evaluating your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Think of it as a superhero assessment for your restaurant. Identify what you excel at, areas for improvement, potential market opportunities, and external factors that could impact your success.

Example of SWOT analysis for a restaurant

Remember, market analysis is like a compass guiding your restaurant’s journey. It helps you make informed decisions, attract investors, and stay ahead of the game. So, embrace the power of market analysis, and let it shape the destiny of your delicious dining destination.

4. Management and organization

Effective management and organization are critical for success in the restaurant sector. This section of your business plan introduces the talented individuals who will lead your restaurant to new heights.

Outline your legal structure, whether it’s an S corporation, limited partnership, or sole proprietorship, providing key information for stakeholders.

Showcase your management team using an organizational chart to highlight their roles, responsibilities, and contributions. Their expertise and guidance are crucial for seamless operations and exceptional customer experiences.

With a strong management team in place, your restaurant is poised for success. They are the driving force behind your journey to greatness. Let’s meet the key players who will make it happen!

Streamline your operations and optimize your financial performance With resOs , you can efficiently manage reservations, track inventory, analyze sales data, and streamline your overall workflow. Get your FREE plan

5. Sample “yummy” Menu 

In the restaurant industry, your menu plays a main role as the core product. Include a section in your business plan that highlights key details about your menu offerings to engage readers.

If you offer a diverse range of dishes, provide a brief overview of each category. Alternatively, if your menu focuses on specific specialties or signature dishes, provide more detailed descriptions for each item.

You can also mention any upcoming menu additions or unique culinary creations that will enhance profitability and attract customers.

6. Design and branding 

When it comes to starting a restaurant, don’t underestimate the power of design and branding. They’re the secret ingredients that can make your establishment truly stand out. Think about it – when customers walk through your front door, what do they see? The right design and branding can instantly captivate their attention and make them feel right at home.

So, take some time to envision the overall aesthetic and mood you want to create.

Do you imagine a cozy and rustic setting or a sleek and modern vibe?

Let your creativity shine through! Include captivating photos of similar restaurants that inspire you and give potential investors a glimpse of your vision.

And don’t forget about your logo! If you’ve already designed one, proudly showcase it in your business plan. It’s the visual representation of your restaurant’s personality and will help establish brand recognition.

resOS’ customizable interface for your booking system

Stand out in the competitive restaurant industry with resOS’ customizable booking management system . Personalize every aspect of the interface to reflect your restaurant’s unique brand identity. Seamlessly integrate your logo, colors, and visual elements, creating a cohesive and immersive experience for your guests. With resOS, you have the power to revolutionize your restaurant’s image and leave a lasting impression.

Details matter too! Share your plans for specific design elements , from the choice of furniture to the color palette that will adorn your space. The more you paint a vivid picture, the more investors and customers will be enticed by your unique ambiance.

7. Location

For a restaurant, location can make or break the business. Occasionally, a restaurant concept is so good that people go out of their way to find it. But, more realistically, your location needs to be convenient for your target market. If it’s hard for your customers to get to you, hard for them to park, and not something they notice as they drive by, they’re unlikely to check your restaurant out.

In your business plan, make sure to discuss the potential locations that you hope to occupy, assuming you haven’t already secured the location. Explain why the location is ideal for your target market and how the location will help attract customers.

Unlock the potential of your restaurant’s location and streamline reservations with resOS. Our platform offers seamless integration with Reserve With Google , allowing customers to easily discover and book tables directly from Google search results and maps. By enabling this feature, you’ll maximize your restaurant’s visibility and attract more diners with just a few clicks. Experience the power of location-based reservations with resOS .

Be sure to explain the complete costs of your location and what kinds of renovations will be necessary to open your restaurant.

8. Marketing plan

In today’s competitive restaurant industry, it’s important to showcase your marketing strategy to investors. They want to know how you’ll create buzz and keep it going before and after your grand opening.

Create a winning business plan with a strong marketing focus. Our Restaurant Business Plan Steps Graphic (👆 see above) is your visual guide, including key marketing strategies. Download or save for later and plan your path to success.

Whether you’ve enlisted a top-notch Marketing company or have a solid ready-to-go marketing plan, highlight your chosen path. Discuss the unique strengths of your selected agency and why they stand out, including their notable clients. Alternatively, showcase your in-house plan, leveraging social media, your website, and valuable media connections.

A well-crafted marketing plan holds the key to differentiating your restaurant and attracting customers. Prepare to tantalize taste buds and offer an exceptional dining experience. Stay in tune with the latest restaurant industry trends, leverage effective marketing tools, and optimize your online presence. 

Lastly, integrate a robust restaurant booking system to streamline reservations and enhance the overall customer experience. With these strategic elements in place, success is within your reach.

9. Financial Plan

Financial analysis is a crucial part of your restaurant’s business plan. It helps investors assess the profitability of your concept and whether it’s a worthwhile investment. In this section, you’ll outline how you plan to allocate your funds in the first year and provide projections for costs and revenues.

Here are the 🔑 key components to include:

Investment Plan: Explain the initial investment costs, such as kitchen equipment, furniture, employee wages, legal fees, marketing expenses, and working capital. This shows how you’ll use your funds effectively.

Profit and Loss Projection: Estimate your restaurant’s costs and sales figures in the profit and loss statement. Consider factors like the size of your establishment, your target market, and the existing competition in your chosen location.

Break-Even Analysis: Show investors the monthly revenue you need to achieve to cover all your expenses and reach profitability. This analysis considers overhead costs, operational expenses, and factors that may affect revenue fluctuations throughout the year.

Claim your FREE plan on resOS today! Ready to revolutionize your business management? Join resos.com for FREE and take control of your operations. ✅ Seamless calendar integration ✅ Customizable booking forms ✅ Automated reminders ✅ Real-time availability updates Don’t miss out! Sign up now at resos.com and experience stress-free scheduling. Your time is valuable, so claim your FREE plan today!

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•  / Resources / 

22 Restaurant Marketing Strategies In 2024

• integration
• Menu Engineering
• Procurement
• January 12, 2024

Introduction

The restaurant business is more competitive than ever, which is why restaurants must find innovative ways to differentiate themselves amongst the crowd. Restaurant Marketing has become a significant part of a restaurant business’s operations, and with an increasing number of consumers ordering online, nailing your restaurant marketing strategy is key to gaining new customers and ensuring that your regular ones keep coming back.

This article covers the restaurant marketing strategies you need to know about to succeed. We’ll cover the different restaurant marketing tactics adapted to every type of goal, type of restaurant, and type of audience. 

Table Of Contents

• Build A Strong Brand Identity
• Build A Website
• Take Great Pictures
• Optimize Your Online Menu
• Be On Google Maps
• Get On Delivery Apps
• Create Your Own App
• Use Restaurant Reservation Apps
• Be On Social Media
• Boost Your Following With A Contest or Giveaway
• Leverage User Generated Content & Influencers
• Use Email Marketing 
• Send Special Offers For A Customer’s Birthday !
• Celebrate Special Days
• Create A Loyalty Program 
• Advertise Through Wifi Marketing
• Advertise Through SMS Marketing
• Appear In Food Truck Events 
• Send Direct Mail
• Invest In Press
• Push Ads Locally
• Give Back To The Community

1. Build A Strong Brand Identity

• You could go with personal preferences, and go with what you believe would be common sense : For example, think of earth colors – such as brown, dark green, deep red, deep orange, as your starting pattern if you operate healthy food restaurants. 

Time to choose a name and a logo! You could either choose a name that is in line with your business, such as “Rachel’s Vegan Kitchen”, or a name that you think sounds nice. You can use popular free logo maker, such as Looka.com to create one. 

Once you’ve built a solid brand identity, make sure that the rest of your assets adopt the same tone of voice, color scheme, and look and feel – from your menu to your ads and social media pages.

Keep in mind, having a memorable brand is not limited to just colors and fonts! 

Building a great customer experience, and promoting word of mouth, is one of the best ways you can market your business. 

2. Build A Website

It is common behavior to check a restaurant’s website and menu before deciding to pay it a visit, or ordering from it. This is why having a clean, clear, easy to navigate website is important. By not being online, restaurant owners lose reach and exposure, meaning they lose potential business.

Also, with mobile phones becoming the primary device for searching the internet , make sure your website is performant – meaning it loads quickly – and is mobile-friendly.

Here’s how you could build your own website with little resources : 

1- Start with research : look at the websites of restaurants similar to your type, and see if you find any interesting ideas! These can be related to the navigation and the look and feel.

2- Choose a code-free website builder, such as Wix.com or Squarespace.com . These platforms help you get a website going without any code, nor professional design. You can get a head start by using one of their pre-existing templates and customizing it.

3- Look for technological partners, such as reservation software, if you would like to integrate those, and make sure that they have an integration with the website host you’ll be opting for (wix, wordpress, or others).

4- Upload your assets, such as menu, pictures, an About Us page, locations, and contact info.

5- Click on publish and start receiving calls and bookings !

3. Take Great Photos

• Avoid flash! Try to capture your dishes with a soft light that still showcases the details of your item. 
• Every detail matters : ensure that your cutlery, table cloths, plating, are on point : no dirt, dust, finger prints, or crease should be seen. 
• Choose fresh ingredients : Choose parsley that looks fresh and not closing on itself. Avoid using vegetables that are wrinkly. Think about what the customer would like to see when looking at a picture of a salad for example : fresh lettuce with drops of water, which showcases freshness and cleanliness. 
• Keep the main focus on your dish. If there’s a lot going on in the background, either change the setting, or try to dim it down : reduce background light before shooting, or during editing. For daylight shoots, you can blur the background slightly. 
• Add decorative garnish : beautify your dish by adding decoration elements, such as droplets of sauce, garnish, herbs, and such.
• Experiment with your photography : each dish will have a good angle. Pizza can look good on the side with a slice being pulled out, while a sandwich might look better with a close up, showing the sandwich’s content. 

4. Optimize Your Online Menu

With a majority of customers looking at a restaurant’s menu before ordering or visiting your branch, it is key to create a menu that is clear, appetizing, and easily accessible from your website. 

Recommended Reading

Menu Engineering : Key Steps To Build A Profitable Menu

You should, however, keep a few things in mind : 

• Depending on the type of restaurant you operate, you may offer several menus : Lunch, Brunch, Dinner, and Weekend. It is key that the customer understands when and where each menu applies, in order not to disappoint. Set create descriptions, including the days and hours during which each menu applies. 
• Optimize your menu for increased sales : Numerous tactics can be used to build a menu that performs. From the way you describe your dishes, to how you place your prices, every small detail can have an impact on your sales, and therefore profits. Do not underestimate this. 
• Consider having a PDF and on-site menu : with Google needing to crawl your website, you may need to be aware that a PDF file cannot be read by Google. If your restaurant is known for a specialty dish (for example, Chili’s Molten Chocolate Cake), you may want to either have that item on a on-site menu, or improve your website to have those keywords in for your website to be found. 

5. Be On Google Maps

Consumers often look for places near them, or for highly rated places they’d like to discover during the weekend. This is where being on Google Maps comes into play.

6. Get On Delivery Apps

With more consumers ordering online than ever, and the food delivery market surging to hundreds of billions ( $221 billion in 2022 in the US alone ), being present – and promoting – your business in delivery apps is crucial.

7. Create Your Own App

Having your own app would enable you to create your own world, and talk to customers through your brand, in a way that suits you. Having an app enables you to also publicize your business on App Platforms such as Google Play or Apple App Store, thus increasing your reach. An app also enables you to track information on your users, such as their preferences when ordering online. This allows you to then personalize the content you push towards them, such as special discounts on their favorite dish.

8. Use Restaurant & Table Reservation Apps

9. be on social media.

Social media should be a key channel to have in your marketing strategy. A lot of a restaurant’s marketing strategy revolves around raising awareness about their business and acquiring new customers through pictures and videos of their dishes, events, behind the scenes, and more. 

The power of social media revolves around the potential for virality and reach. Burger28 is an example of a restaurant whose social media presence exploded through their informative and appetizing videos. 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Supy (@supy.io)

Although each restaurant will have its own way of showcasing their dish and communicating their identity through social media, there are a few rules that you should abide by to maximize your chances of being found : 

• Post on a regular basis : social media algorithms reward accounts that are constantly active. Your customers also need to have you at the top of their mind, which is why it is recommended to post about 2 or 3 times a week.
• Use high-quality images : social media platforms are all about visuals. For each channel that you decide to be active on, you must look into the ideal shooting settings for optimum upload quality. 
• Don’t forget hashtags to help the algorithm categorize your post, and help customers interested in certain topics find you.

It is also key to be in touch with your customers on these platforms. If they have questions regarding your menu or locations, answer them ! If you’re trying a new dish, or are revamping your menu, take their advice !

10. Boost Your Following With A Contest or Giveaway

11. leverage user generated content & influencers.

• Do your research in terms of the best food influencers in your region. Follow their pages, see what type of content they post, and what type of audience follows them. Do you enjoy their content, and would you trust them in filming your location in an essence that you think is representative of your brand? Make sure their values and brand also stand with yours, as the best type of content is one that feels organic, rather than “bought”.
• Reach out to the influencers that you would enjoy working with, and whose impact you believe in. Reach out with a proposal, such as coming to have a meal for free, in exchange for a post. 
• You can also organize a private event specifically for influencers.

12. Email Marketing

Email Marketing is one of the most efficient ways to market your business. In fact, 59% of people say that an email can influence where they decide to eat. 

Sending emails isn’t as scary as it sounds, however, there are several steps you should follow in order to avoid going into spam, or having your spam score be incredibly high.

• Opt for an email address, and warm it up. Email warm up tools, such as instantly.ai , helps you build sending volume. If you were to send hundreds or thousands of emails from day 1, you may be flagged as a spamming entity. This is why it is key to start with a small volume, and build from there.
• Opt for an email marketing tool. Gmail is not a tool to use for mass sending. Opt for tools such as MailChimp, Sendinblue, or SendGrid, which’s sending platforms are not only aware that their customers need to send thousands of emails at once, but also give you the email design tools you need to build beautiful newsletters. 
• Start building your subscriber’s list : set up a pop up on your website and offer a significant discount to the next order, if they sign up to your newsletter, for example. You can also add a QR code to your leaflets or menu, to advertise it. 
• Start sending out emails ! This applies to special offers, events, updates on a new location… the sky’s the limit !

13. Send Special Offers For A Customer’s Birthday !

If you have your customers’ birthday registered in your CRM, this can be a great opportunity for you to build an emotional connection with them. Send them a personalized email offering them a discount for their birthday. You could send them such a message weeks in advance, in order to give them sufficient time to organize themselves and decide what options are available to them and their party.

14. Celebrate Special Days

From Christmas to New Year’s Eve, to Easter and Valentine’s Day, advertise special deals for these special days. Numerous customers are looking for a special place to spend these special days with their loved ones. These days are also a chance for you to charge a premium, without much resistance from customers. The offer you propose, however, must be up to their expectations. 

15. Create A Loyalty Program

16. advertise through wifi marketing.

There are plenty of WiFi marketing providers, such as Social Wifi , who provide you with the tools you need to measure the efficiency of your wifi marketing campaigns. Typically, these tools include a campaign manager and reporting features.

17. Advertise Through SMS Marketing

• Ensure your customers have agreed to be marketed to, through an opt-in process. Their number can be collected from several sources, namely from directly opting for promotions, or through their Wifi sign up process. 
• Add clear calls to action, such as “Order Now” or “Book Now”
• Write with efficiency in mind : SMS is made for short texts. Be straight to the point and try to showcase the value of your message (event, offers…) as soon as possible, within the first few words. 

18. Appear In Food Truck Events

Appearing at a Food Truck event, namely in festivals, could be a great way of marketing your restaurant to a new audience who wouldn’t usually visit your restaurant. You could rent a food truck for a day, make noise amongst a crowd, and then see them come back! Don’t miss out on the chance of asking them to follow you on social media, sign up to your newsletter, or take a loyalty card so that they can get a discount the next time they visit your place.

19. Send Direct Mail !

What used to be old, is now gold ! With more restaurants marketing themselves online, stand out by sending leaflets to your customers. This involves leaving leaflets in front of their doors, but also distributing leaflets with a promotion on, in the streets.

Consider your leaflet as a chance to attract customers through a different channel and with better propositions, such as free delivery and lower prices if they order directly from you, and not from a delivery app. This is a great deal for many customers who’d rather pay less, even if it means leaving aside the smoothless experience from a delivery app, where their card details and address are already registered. 

20. Invest In Press

Top 10 Best lists are created and updated every day, and customers are always looking for the best and hottest new places to visit. Reach out to the magazines (online or physical) that you read or are influential, and propose them to write a piece about you. This kind of press showcases credibility, but can also help you connect on an emotional level with your audience. People always enjoy reading “feel good” stories!

21. Push Ads Locally !

Paid ads are an easy and great way to capture customers, especially locally. Google offers an easy-to-use ad platform with several options at your disposal, from Paid Search (so that people typing “Burger” find your link first), to being ranking you at the top of the page on searches done on Google Maps.

22. Give Back To The Community

23. Conclusion

24. about supy.

Supy is a data-driven restaurant inventory management software built to help multi-chain restaurants cut costs. Our recipe management software, inventory management software, menu engineering software, and the rest of our suite of products are built to enable the free flow of data throughout your back of house operations. This enables decision-makers to make informed decisions any time, from anywhere.

Related Resources

• Podcast: Building A Timeless Restaurant (Couqley Dubai)
• Restaurant Expansion : When & How To Expand Your Restaurant Business
• Podcast: Launching & Operating A Fast Food Chain In The UAE (Burger28)
• Menu Engineering: How To Build A Profitable Menu
• What Is a Cloud Kitchen & How To Run One Successfully

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How to Write a Restaurant Business Plan (+ Examples)

Learn how to create a restaurant business plan with the best format that outlines your concept, and financials. Get examples and templates to get started.

10 minute read

helped business professionals at:

Short answer

What is a business plan for a restaurant?

A business plan for a restaurant is a document that outlines the restaurant's concept, strategies, and financial forecasts. It serves as a roadmap for launching and growing the establishment successfully.

Don't just focus on profit margins, ensure your business plan is well-presented

In the competitive world of the restaurant industry, where low-profit margins are a well-known hurdle, there emerges a critical, yet often overlooked, factor pivotal to success: the design of the business plan.

As we enter 2024, it's becoming increasingly clear that the traditional overlook of business plan design can no longer be afforded.

This isn't just about financial projections or market analysis; it's about crafting a blueprint that encapsulates the essence of your restaurant, compellingly communicates its value, and sets a solid foundation for growth.

By focusing on the design of your business plan, you stand to gain not just the attention of potential investors but also a clearer roadmap to navigate the challenges ahead.

What makes an effective business plan?

Embarking on the restaurant business journey requires more than just a passion for food-it demands a comprehensive plan that lays out every aspect of your venture with precision and foresight.

Let's delve into what constitutes an effective restaurant business plan, ensuring it's not just another document, but a roadmap to success.

6 key components of a winning restaurant business plan:

1. Vision and concept clarity

Start with a crystal-clear articulation of your restaurant's concept. Whether it's a cozy vegan cafe or a high-end steakhouse, the essence of your establishment should leap off the page.

This clarity helps potential investors and partners instantly grasp what you're aiming to create.

Beyond the concept, delineate your restaurant's values, mission, and the unique selling points that set you apart in a crowded market.

2. Comprehensive market analysis

A deep dive into market analysis cannot be overstated. Here, you're not just identifying who your customers are but also understanding the competitive landscape.

What are the prevailing trends in the dining sector? Who are your direct and indirect competitors, and how do you plan to differentiate yourself? This section should reflect a meticulous research process, showcasing insights that guide your strategy.

3. Robust financial planning

In any successful business plan, sound financial management is key.

Essential elements include:

Realistic financial projections: Your forecasts should be realistic, and built on data-backed assumptions.

Detailed profit and loss forecasts

Cash flow predictions

Break-even analysis

Contingency planning: Preparing for unforeseen challenges is crucial.

Develop a well-thought-out contingency plan to navigate the industry's unpredictable nature.

Identify potential risks and solutions, including supplier issues, staffing shortages, and changes in consumer behavior, to ensure business resilience.

4. Operational strategies

Operational excellence underpins a restaurant's success. Detail your plans for day-to-day operations, from sourcing ingredients to managing inventory and staffing.

Highlight your commitment to quality and efficiency in every aspect of the operation, from the kitchen to customer service.

Also, outline the technology and systems you'll implement to streamline processes and enhance the dining experience.

5. Marketing and branding

In today's digital age, a savvy marketing and branding strategy is crucial.

Describe how you'll create a strong brand identity and the channels you'll use to reach your target audience.

From social media campaigns to community engagement initiatives, your plan should reflect a keen understanding of how to connect with potential customers and build a loyal following.

Discover how to create a marketing deck to align your strategy with your business objectives, target audience needs, and market trends.

6. Customer experience focus

Exceptional customer service is the lifeblood of any successful restaurant. Detail the steps you'll take to ensure every guest feels valued and satisfied.

From the ambiance and menu design to staff training programs, every element should contribute to a memorable dining experience.

Feedback mechanisms and how you'll adapt to customer preferences are also vital components of this section.

What should be included in a restaurant business plan?

Creating a restaurant business plan is a foundational step toward launching a successful dining establishment.

It outlines your vision, strategy, and the specific actions you plan to take to make your restaurant a success.

Below, we break down the essential components that should be included in your restaurant business plan, ensuring clarity, comprehensiveness, and appeal to potential investors.

8 essential sections of a restaurant business plan:

1. Executive summary

A compelling overview of the restaurant, showcasing its unique concept, mission, and strategic objectives that guide its operations.

Overview: Present a succinct snapshot of your restaurant, including its concept, mission, key goals, and ownership structure.

Purpose: Highlight what you aim to achieve with the restaurant and the appeal it has to potential investors or lenders.

2. Business description

An in-depth look at the restaurant's theme, location, and how these elements combine to create a distinctive dining experience.

Concept and theme: Describe the unique aspects of your restaurant's concept, from the cuisine and menu items to the design and ambiance.

Location analysis: Analyze the chosen location, discussing demographics, foot traffic, and how these factors make it an ideal spot for your target market.

3. Market analysis

An insightful examination of dining trends, target demographics, and customer needs to inform strategic positioning.

Trends: Examine current trends in the dining industry and how they influence your restaurant's positioning.

Target demographic: Identify your target customers, detailing their preferences, dining habits, and how your restaurant will meet their needs.

Needs and preferences: Focus on understanding and catering to what your target market seeks in a dining experience.

4. Competitive analysis

A detailed evaluation of competitors, focusing on differentiation and strategies for establishing a market edge.

Competitors: List direct and indirect competitors, analyzing their strengths, weaknesses, and how you'll differentiate your restaurant.

Differentiation: Explain the unique selling points that will set your restaurant apart in the competitive landscape.

5. Menu and product offering

Overview of menu design, ingredient sourcing, and special services that enhance the restaurant's appeal.

Menu design: Discuss the inspiration behind your menu, including how it reflects the theme and caters to your target demographic. Outline your pricing strategy and item selection.

Sourcing and suppliers: Detail your approach to sourcing high-quality ingredients, including partnerships with local suppliers and commitments to sustainability.

Special offerings: Highlight any additional services your restaurant offers, such as catering, special events, or exclusive seasonal menus, to draw in a wider audience and generate extra revenue.

6. Marketing and sales strategy

A summary of branding efforts, promotional tactics, and sales projections designed to attract and retain customers.

Branding: Detail your restaurant's brand identity, including name, logo, and how it communicates your restaurant's values and mission.

Marketing tactics: Outline the strategies you will employ to attract and retain customers, such as social media marketing, local advertising, partnerships, and loyalty programs.

Sales forecasts: Provide realistic sales forecasts, explaining the rationale behind these projections and how you plan to achieve them.

7. Operating plan

Description of daily operations, facility management, and health safety protocols to ensure smooth and compliant restaurant functionality.

Daily operations: Describe the operational flow of the restaurant, including hours of operation, staffing requirements, and customer service policies.

Facility management: Discuss the layout and design of your restaurant, kitchen equipment needs, and any other facility-related details that will ensure efficient operation.

Health and safety: Outline the health and safety measures you will implement to comply with local regulations and ensure the well-being of both employees and guests.

8. Management and organization

An outline of the restaurant's organizational structure, key personnel, and staffing strategies for operational excellence.

Ownership structure: Specify the ownership structure of the restaurant, including key stakeholders and their roles.

Team composition: Introduce the management team, chefs, and other critical staff, highlighting their experience and how it contributes to the restaurant's success.

Staffing plans: Discuss your plans for hiring staff, including numbers, positions, and the qualities you seek in employees to maintain high standards of service.

How to create a business plan for a restaurant?

Creating a standout business plan for your restaurant involves focusing on key components that blend your vision with practical strategies.

6 actionable steps to distill your restaurant business plan:

Define your concept clearly: Begin by articulating your restaurant's concept, ambiance, and what sets it apart. This clarity lays the groundwork for the entire business plan.

Conduct thorough market analysis: Dive deep into your target market and competitors. This research will guide your menu design, pricing strategy, and marketing efforts, ensuring you carve out a unique space in the marketplace.

Craft a compelling menu: Ensure your menu reflects your brand identity and appeals to your target audience, all while considering cost-effectiveness and supply chain realities. Aim for a balance between innovation and simplicity.

Develop realistic financial projections: Detail initial costs, revenue expectations, and a break-even point. Importantly, predict potential hurdles with ready contingency plans.

Outline operational strategies: Describe your daily management approach, including sourcing, staffing, and customer service. Efficient operations are crucial for a seamless experience and streamlined processes.

Implement strategic marketing: Choose the most effective ways to connect with your audience. Building a strong brand narrative and engaging actively with customers can help turn first-time visitors into regulars.

7 restaurant business plan examples for winning partners and investors

When it comes to crafting a business plan for a restaurant, the type of establishment you're planning significantly influences the structure and content of the document.

Each kind of restaurant from fast-casual and fine dining to food trucks and bistros-caters to different market segments and operational models.

Here's a look at how these differences manifest in their respective business plans:

1) Fine dining restaurant business plan

Market focus: Targets higher-income clientele seeking a premium dining experience. The plan should highlight exceptional service, high-quality ingredients, and unique culinary offerings.

Operational model: Detailed attention to the ambiance, chef expertise, and a higher staff-to-guest ratio. Wine lists and bar offerings also play a significant role.

Financial projections: Emphasizes higher check averages with a focus on profitability per guest rather than volume. The cost structure will detail higher initial investment in decor, kitchen equipment, and inventory.

Here’s an example of a fine-dining restaurant business plan:

2) Bar restaurant business plan

Market focus: Targets a diverse clientele, from young professionals to social groups, seeking a blend of dining and socializing.

Operational model: Balances innovative cuisine with an extensive beverage selection in a space designed for both eating and lounging, including live entertainment options.

Financial projections: Outlines dual revenue streams from food and drinks, emphasizing beverage sales' higher profit margins and detailing licensing, entertainment, and insurance costs.

Here’s an example of a bar restaurant pitch deck:

3) Bistro restaurant business plan

Market focus: Caters to locals and tourists seeking a casual yet refined dining experience, positioning itself as a cozy neighborhood spot.

Operational model: Highlights a selective menu that adapts seasonally, emphasizing a warm ambiance and personal service.

Financial projections: Projects moderate earnings with a strong local following, noting initial investments in location and ambiance to create a distinctive setting.

Here’s an example of a bistro restaurant pitch deck:

4) Food truck business plan

Market focus: Appeals to urban professionals, millennials, and foodies looking for unique, high-quality food options on the go.

Operational model: Mobility is key. The plan must address location strategy, permits and regulations, and adaptability to different events and seasons.

Financial projections: Lower startup costs compared to brick-and-mortar establishments but include considerations for vehicle maintenance, fuel, and parking permits.

5) Coffee restaurant business plan

Market focus: Appeals to a varied audience with a unique theme or specialty cuisine, standing out from conventional coffee shops.

Operational model: Details the influence of theme or cuisine on menu design, decor, and guest experience, aiming to make the restaurant a destination.

Financial projections: Anticipates varied financial outcomes based on concept uniqueness, with thorough market research guiding pricing and marketing strategies.

6) Italian, Mexican, Asian, etc., cuisine restaurant business plan

Market focus: Focuses on providing authentic dining experiences to both expatriates and locals interested in specific cuisines.

Operational model: Requires sourcing authentic ingredients and skilled chefs familiar with the cuisine. The business plan should address menu authenticity, culinary training, and potential partnerships for ingredient import.

Financial projections: Depending on the positioning (casual vs. fine dining), financials would reflect the cost of unique ingredients and the expected dining experience level.

Here’s an example of an Italian restaurant business plan proposal:

7) Fast food restaurant business plan

Market focus: These plans emphasize speed, efficiency, and affordability. The target market typically includes busy professionals, families looking for convenient meal options, and younger demographics.

Operational model: The business plan must detail quick service operations, including streamlined kitchen layouts, supply chain logistics for fast-moving inventory, and technology for order taking (e.g., apps, and kiosks).

Financial projections: Focus on volume sales, low to moderate check averages, and strategies for high turnover rates.

How to design a restaurant business plan?

Designing a restaurant business plan is much like crafting a compelling game pitch deck, it's all about presenting your concept in a way that's as irresistible as the dining experience you're proposing.

8 restaurant business plan design tips:

1. Embrace scrollytelling

Use narrative scrolling to take your audience through the journey of your restaurant's concept, from the inspiration behind your dishes to the ambiance you plan to create.

This dynamic presentation style keeps readers engaged, turning your business plan into an immersive experience.

Here's an example of scroll-based design:

2. Incorporate interactivity and multimedia

Go beyond static pages by embedding interactive elements like sample menu walkthroughs, virtual tours of the restaurant layout, or clips from cooking demos.

These elements not only highlight your restaurant's unique offerings but also keep potential investors or partners engaged throughout your presentation.

And here's what a static presentation looks like compared to an interactive one:

Static PowerPoint

Interactive Storydoc

3. Use data visualization

Present market research, target demographics, and financial projections through clear, compelling visuals.

Transform complex data into easy-to-understand graphs, charts, and infographics, making your business strategy both visually appealing and straightforward to grasp.

Here's an example of a presentation with dataviz elements:

4. Personalize your deck

Leverage software that allows for customization, such as incorporating the viewer's name or tailoring content to specific investor interests.

A personalized approach demonstrates meticulous attention to detail and can forge a stronger connection with your audience.

5. Use cohesive branding

Ensure your business plan reflects your restaurant's identity through consistent use of colors, fonts, and imagery that align with your branding.

This not only enhances the visual appeal of your plan but also immerses your audience in the atmosphere you aim to create.

6. Ensure mobile-responsive

Given the variety of devices stakeholders might use to view your plan, ensuring a mobile-responsive design is essential.

This ensures that your business plan is accessible and engaging, whether it's being viewed on a smartphone or a desktop computer.

7. Highlight key information

Design your business plan to draw attention to critical information.

Techniques such as strategic content placement and highlighting can guide the reader's focus, ensuring that essential points stand out without overwhelming the viewer with too much information at once.

8. Segment content in tabs

Organize your business plan into sections or tabs that cater to different aspects of your restaurant concept and business strategy.

This not only makes your plan more navigable but also allows readers to easily find the information most relevant to their interests or concerns.

Here's an example of a tabs slide:

Restaurant business plan templates

Kicking off your restaurant business plan is a daunting task, especially when you aim to capture the essence of your dining concept in a document.

Interactive restaurant business plan templates are designed to simplify this process. They provide a structured framework that incorporates interactive and multimedia elements, essential for presenting your restaurant in a vibrant and dynamic manner.

These templates not only save you precious time but also guarantee that your business plan conveys a polished and compelling story.

Snag one today!

I am a Marketing Specialist at Storydoc, I research, analyze and write on our core topics of business presentations, sales, and fundraising. I love talking to clients about their successes and failures so I can get a rounded understanding of their world.

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Home » Restaurant Marketing Trends and Ideas for 2024

Restaurant Marketing in 2024: 27 Ideas and Trends

Restaurant marketing techniques to grow your restaurant business in 2024.

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27 Restaurant Marketing Ideas, Tips, and Trends for 2024

Here at Bloom Intelligence, we know that restaurants face unprecedented challenges in establishing their distinct identity in a landscape saturated with dining options.

Economic hurdles further intensify this struggle, underscoring the pivotal role of cost-effective marketing as the key to overcoming these obstacles.

The essence of innovative restaurant marketing extends beyond attracting new guests. It hinges on maximizing the impact of every marketing dollar spent.

In times of economic uncertainty, restaurant marketing tools and technology emerge as the linchpins, capable of reducing costs, unlocking guest insights, and enabling you to establish owned communication channels that drive revenue as efficiently as online companies.

At the same time, successful restaurant marketing strategies demand constant evolution to align with the ever-changing landscape of restaurants and shifting consumer preferences.

While traditional marketing methods maintain their relevance, the evolution of restaurant marketing requires marketers to craft new, data-driven campaigns that actively engage guests.

These points create unique opportunities and challenges for CEOs, COOs, CTOs, and restaurant marketers that may sometimes seem overwhelming.

Restaurant Marketing Infographic

Restaurant marketing techniques in 2024 range from AI and guest WiFi to customer data platforms, online ordering, websites, review sites, Google My Business, email, SMS, and advertising—innovation is not just a choice but a necessity.

This article’s goal is to provide a list of restaurant marketing ideas and technologies that will help you elevate and automate your restaurant marketing in 2024 and beyond.

From fast-casual marketing to fine-dining marketing , as you branch out into various marketing channels, it is important to keep a consistent brand voice and personality.

Likewise, aim to keep your look and feel as consistent as possible, including imagery across all digital marketing channels and customer touchpoints.

1. Invest in a CDP

A restaurant customer data platform (CDP) is a tool that allows restaurant operators to easily aggregate, clean, and centralize the collection of guest data and behavior from various sources into one platform. 

Types of integrations or guest data pipelines into your CDP include but are not limited to: guest WiFi, websites, social media, POS systems, review sites, reservation systems, loyalty programs, and online ordering platforms.

A CDP then allows restaurant operators and marketers to discover and visualize guest insights and group similar guests into lists. These lists, or segments, can be used to increase the ROI of your restaurant’s marketing and advertising efforts.

Restaurant CDPs give restaurateurs a full 360-degree view into their guests’ behaviors, orders, contact information, geographic locations, and demographics across all your channels and at your physical locations.

A 360-degree view of your guest is also known as a  single customer view (SCV) . A CDP like Bloom Intelligence will give you an SCV to make smarter, data-driven marketing and operations decisions.

All data collected becomes your first-party opt-in customer data. With the elimination of cookie-based targeting expected soon, having your own  first-party data is the only way to remarket to your guests and create lookalike campaigns (for example, of your high-value guests) on platforms like Google and Facebook Ads.

All you have to do is segment your guests in your CDP to create a list of your high-value guests and then import them into these online advertising and social media platforms to create look-a-like campaigns to drive brand-new high-value guests to your restaurants.

Using owned channels such as email, SMS, or push notifications to engage your guests will give you the ability to increase guest frequency, personalize your guests’ dining experience, win back lost guests , find new customers, and improve your online ratings at a fraction of the cost of what it would cost your organization to pay for advertising or access to other platforms.

How to Get Value From Your CDP

Using a CDP, you can group your guests into various segments based on their behavior and demographic data.

Segmentation allows restaurants to create personalized marketing messages that speak individually to each guest in the group. It boosts engagement and can significantly improve marketing ROI over sending out a single message to your entire database.

A report from SmarterHQ indicated that 72% of consumers only engage with marketing messages tailored to their interests, highlighting the significance of segmentation in delivering personalized content.

A CDP does not only provide a way to understand which guests are regulars, which are high value, and which are low value to your operation but also provides insights to make better marketing and operating decisions.

Now that you have an accurate single-guest view. You can create messaging that will resonate with your potential and existing guests and turn all your guests into regulars.

A CDP will allow you to increase repeat business, personalize your guest experiences, automate marketing, improve online ratings, and much more.

2. Use WiFi Marketing and Analytics

In today’s competitive food & beverage industry, knowing who your guests are and how they behave is crucial for executing an effective marketing strategy.

Having first-party guest data enables you to personalize and segment your marketing campaigns for better engagement and a much higher ROI.

But how do you collect customer data when your time is so limited?

Simple. Use WiFi marketing .

Using your WiFi access points, your patrons can be tracked individually by their device’s WiFi signal, whether they log into WiFi or not.

You’ll have immediate access to behavior data such as:

• Daily traffic
• Customer dwell times
• Dwell times by the hour
• First-time customers
• Repeat customers and repeat rates
• First-time customer repeat rates
• Popular days and times

When guests log in to your WiFi, you can collect even more data about them, such as:

• Customer age and gender
• Postal code and income distribution
• Visit behavior data (visit days, times, and durations)
• Phone number

Then, you can use this data to segment your customer list and market to each segment with messaging that they will more likely engage with. This increases not only engagement but ROI.

Plus, you’ll be able to track attribution all the way down to a customer walking back into your door and/or redeeming an offer.

One of the fastest-growing marketing strategies in the restaurant industry is WiFi marketing and analytics.

A WiFi marketing and analytics platform like Bloom Intelligence can quite literally help fuel every strategy on this page.

When deciding how to market a restaurant, WiFi marketing should be at the top of your mind.

Utilizing your existing WiFi access points, the platform will be able to sense every visitor who enters your place of business with a smart device. This will be a very large percentage of your guests.

You’ll have real-time (and be building historical) footfall metrics like dwell times and repeat visits. This is even if they don’t log into your WiFi.

If they do log into your WiFi, a detailed customer profile will be built containing the guest’s data and behavior.

This data includes contact information, demographic data, and all of their past behavior data.

Over time you’ll build a customer list of thousands or even millions of your actual guests.  The list can be sorted, filtered, and analyzed to discover who your ideal customer is and identify your best guests.

You can then send targeted, automated marketing messages to these segmented lists, increasing ROI while decreasing costs.

3. Online Ordering Marketing

There’s a lot of competition in the restaurant industry. It can be tough to attract customers and get them to come back for more.

But there is one way to help ensure more consistent business – taking orders online.

Online ordering for restaurants  saves your guests time, but it also makes your life easier as a restaurant owner too. You don’t have to worry about hiring extra staff to take phone calls or wait on people at the counter.

Restaurant online ordering has become very popular over the last several years, and it shows no signs of slowing down. The pandemic has only fueled this immense growth.

By integrating your online ordering system with a CRM database platform like Bloom Intelligence, you can collect and store the data you collect in individual guest profiles.

Then, you can segment your profiles into similar personas and send laser-targeted marketing messages to each group that will engage them much more effectively.

You can also automate these messages based on “triggers.” These include when they place an online order, leave your location, or make a review.

Since 2014, online food ordering has grown 300% faster than dine-in. If you’re not offering online ordering to your guests, now is the time to generate additional revenue and capture and collect guest data to supercharge your restaurant marketing.

All in all, this is one strategy that could have a big impact on your restaurant business.

4. Restaurant Email Marketing

Email marketing  is a powerful tool for restaurants and other food establishments and one of the most powerful restaurant marketing strategies. It’s the most cost-effective marketing method because it doesn’t require any overhead or upfront costs, and can be done on your own time.

Restaurants have been using email marketing strategies to improve their business through digital communication with customers for years.

The following are just a few ways that you can use email marketing as part of your restaurant strategy:

• Create an e-newsletter to send out monthly specials or updates about upcoming events at the restaurant.
• Send out promotions such as “buy one get one free” deals.
• Announce new menu items by sending out announcements and coupons via email.
• Update existing patrons about your new menu or upcoming events that are coming up.
• Send out thank you notes to loyal customers, and ask them how they enjoyed their experience at your restaurant.

The main point is to keep your customers engaged and to keep your restaurant top-of-mind with your local consumers.

Don’t forget to keep your email marketing strategy relevant by offering coupons for favorite foods, special discounts for returning customers, or prizes for frequent diners.

If you’re not building a customer list with contact information, you’re simply leaving money on the table.

Place a form on your website that allows guests and potential guests to sign up for a newsletter and special offers. This combined with collecting emails from your online ordering, WiFi registrations, and reservations, allows you to build a large customer database quickly.

Then, send out an email newsletter, messages, or offers consistently with relevant, compelling content.

Some restaurants will include coupons or specials in the newsletter to entice readers to visit.

Newsletters are a very effective form of  restaurant email marketing .

It is important to remain consistent. If you choose to send emails monthly, make sure they are sent out on the same day every month.

Try to gain as many email marketing subscribers as possible.

So, consider adding an incentive, such as a free dessert, to all new subscribers.

Also, make sure the sign-up form is displayed as prominently as possible on every website page or guest interaction point.

5. Use Social Media for Restaurant Marketing

Social media is a necessary part of running any business today.

Even if you do not have pages on any of the popular social media channels like Facebook and Instagram, you can bet that your guests are out there posting, tweeting, and Instagramming things about your restaurant.

You can also bet that potential guests are reading it.

The more engaged you are with your clientele, the more loyal they become, and the more they’ll spread the word with user generated content.

A well-developed social media marketing plan can bring a large percentage of business through your door.

6. Facebook

From making improvements to driving sales, customer engagement is imperative when you market a restaurant.

But what if you do not have a social media audience? There are many ways to engage fans over social media. Here are some tips for boosting your Facebook followers:

• If you do not have a Facebook group, consider making one. If you have a Facebook group but do not participate, start. This engagement gives you a built-in audience to respond to the content you share.
• When you need people to like your page or join your group, you could host a contest. To get 100,000 likes on their Facebook page, Qwertee gave away 1,000 free shirts in a week. This approach works when you have multiple platforms to expand your content. Create graphics, videos, blog posts, and more that people can share to spread the word. 35% of fans on Facebook will like a page so that they can enter contests.
• Videos that are less than a minute can have significant results. The best length for Facebook engagement is around 1 minute and 30 seconds. Facebook users watch 100 million hours of video each day. Your videos could be about anything from promotional content, to food and drink items, to a behind-the-scenes look at your restaurant.
• People like sharing their opinion, especially if sharing is easy and fun. Before you start innovating, you could have fun polls. You might ask people to decide between your two most popular desserts. For one option, people could like the post. For the other, they could share it.

7. Instagram

Photos and videos are a win-win for social media, especially Instagram.

Obviously, you should use them on your networks, but try these tricks for a bonus:

• Attract guests with shareable photos and videos on your  WiFi landing page . It’s the first thing they see, so make it worth the sign-in.
• Make your splash page social-friendly with like, share, pin, and tweet buttons.
• Spread the word by asking guests to check in with social sites when they sign into your WiFi.
• Engage guests with shareable deals, customized for each social media site so their friends can share, too.

All of these capabilities are native features in the Bloom Intelligence platform, and they help build positive connections between your guests and the members of  their  social networks.

Twitter is another great platform for restaurant marketing. It allows you to post images and text, so you can share a quick message with any image you’d like to share.

Twitter gives you the opportunity to engage with your guests using quick, simple messages.

If you’re short on time and want to get started, Twitter is a great option.

9. Restaurant Paid Advertising

This is more of an advanced strategy and one that will require an investment.

Paid advertising is most often done using Google (Google Ads) and Facebook (Facebook Ads).

These can be quite powerful, as they can be configured with unique targeting features, personalized ads, and a thorough dashboard to monitor and analyze results.

You can even tell them the type of person you want the ads to be displayed to based on their internet browsing history or their demographic information.

10. Google Ads

Google Ads is the most used and most popular online paid advertising platform to market a restaurant.

When you do a search in Google, many times, you will see advertisements at the very top and/or the very bottom of the results page. These are Google Ads, and you can advertise your restaurant in this space.

Google allows you to configure where you want your ads to be seen, meaning you can display your ads only to searchers who are within a specific distance of your restaurant(s).

Once you’ve created your ads, you can tell the system which searches you’d like your ads to appear on.

There is no limit to the number of search phrases you can enter. When someone searches for any of the phrases, your ad will appear.

Then, you set a budget cap. You’ll never pay more than the monthly cap you set, and you can adjust it or pause the campaign anytime.

Ads are displayed in order using a Google algorithm which considers the relevancy to the search term and the maximum bid per click you have set in the system.

As mentioned above, this is an advanced strategy for most restaurateurs.

It is necessary to keep a constant eye on the performance of your account. You’ll want to tailor your settings to be as high on the search page as possible without spending too much per click.

Results can be powerful using Google Ads, but if attention is not paid to the account, your monthly budget cap can be spent with very minimal ROI.

11. Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads is very similar to Google Ads. Configuration can be as simple or as complex as you’d like it to be.

With more than  2 billion people  using Facebook every month, it is entirely possible to narrow down your desired audience to the specific type of guest you want the ads to appear to.

Facebook Ads are generally less expensive than Google ads. However, Google Ads can reach a much larger audience.

You Must Know Your Audience

With any type of marketing campaign, knowing your audience is crucial. The best campaigns start and end with the audience in mind.

Since paid advertising takes a bite out of your marketing budget, you obviously want to make sure you gain the highest ROI possible.

To do this, you need accurate, reliable, and comprehensive data about your ideal customer profile.

Since a restaurant CDP allows you to get a single view of your guests across all platforms that they interact with, you have the ability to use advanced segmentation to create lists of guests that meet your ideal customer profile.

Then take these lists, export them, and then import them into Google or Facebook to either retarget existing customers or create look-a-like campaigns to find new guests.

12. Restaurant Reputation Management

Bloom Intelligence is directly integrated with Google, Facebook, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. Anytime a guest makes a review on these platforms or through a direct review request, these reviews are all pulled into the platform for easy management of reviews along with detailed reporting.

The ability to respond to reviews, generate automated reports, and see guest sentiment trends using Bloom artificial intelligence will save you hours of work per location per month.

Automated Review Responses

Have you ever contemplated how much time you could reclaim if someone else managed your review responses?

Bloom takes care of this task for you, freeing up 15-20 hours weekly to concentrate on other vital aspects of your business operations.

Identifying the amount of time required to respond to reviews consistently, we’ve created a groundbreaking solution tailored for restaurants.

Using templates that you create, Bloom will monitor and respond to your reviews automatically. This tool empowers restaurants to address guest feedback more efficiently and consistently.

By automating the response process, you’ll not only conserve precious time and resources but also boost guest engagement and cultivate brand loyalty.

Learn more about restaurant review response automation here.

Use AI to Suggest Meaningful Responses

When responding to reviews, sometimes it can become tedious to navigate several different websites and respond efficiently to every new review that you find.

Bloom Intelligence aggregates your ratings and reviews from Google, Facebook, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. This allows you to monitor and respond to all of these reviews from within a single platform – updated in real time.

When responding to these reviews manually, you will see an icon above the response field. When you click on the icon, several AI-generated responses will become available for you to choose from.

You simply choose the response that works best, edit if you wish, and click Reply.

The AI-powered system analyzes each review and suggests a personalized response based on the context and sentiment. You can either accept the suggested response or modify it to better suit your needs.

Better yet, over time the system will learn from any edits you make and continue providing responses that are more to your liking.

Learn more about AI-generated review responses  here.

Showcase Your Social Proof

Bloom can also generate a small piece of code that you can place on your website that will display an unobtrusive pop-up to show your website visitors your aggregate rating on Google, Facebook, Bloom, or any combination of the three.

This is a great way to show social proof to your website visitors, driving more net new business and helping to improve your restaurant marketing results.

13. Restaurant Ratings and Reviews Websites

In today’s digital age, reviews on sites like Google, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Facebook are available instantaneously to anyone with an internet connection.

In fact, when searching for a restaurant or hotel online, customer reviews on these popular sites are among the first to pop up in the search results.

Because of this, many potential guests make up their minds about the quality of an establishment as soon as they see the highlighted rating appear on their screen before they’ve seen any marketing materials, visited the location’s website, or even visited the location itself.

TripAdvisor tallies up a staggering 390 million unique visits a month, with 435 million available reviews on nearly seven million restaurants, accommodations, and attractions.

Yelp, though not at quite the same level, still attracts an impressive user total, about 174 million monthly mobile and desktop visits, with about 115 million posted reviews.

The popularity of these sites speaks clearly of their importance for your restaurant to find new guests.

Given these numbers, it is obviously important to stay on top of your ratings and reviews on these powerful websites.

So, whenever you see a bad rating or review, respond with  T.A.C.T.  And whenever you see a great rating, respond in  T.I.M.E.

14. Use Your Website

Your company website is the digital epicenter of your brand.

When considering your restaurant, most guests will look to your website to see your menu, look for testimonials (social proof), or get a feel for the overall guest experience before they even consider visiting your restaurant.

Consumers go online to see your menu, order take-out, discover upcoming specials and events, and more.

Your website should also be the source of your brand identity in terms of look, feel, and personality. This branding should then be consistent across all online and offline customer touchpoints.

15. Implement Proper SEO

You can maximize website traffic and gain new guests by focusing on website rankings.

The process of improving website rankings is known as search engine optimization (SEO).

Providing original, educational, entertaining, and compelling value focused content for your guests is crucial.

Make sure to include keyword phrases that your guests would be searching for, such as  Italian Restaurant in Atlanta . Ensure the keyphrase flows naturally in a sentence and doesn’t sound forced.

Just write naturally, and you should be fine.

It is also important that other websites are linking to yours. Find local directories and other websites to link to yours.

A smart way to think about SEO link building is that if you publish entertaining, educational, compelling content, others will naturally link back to it.

16. Google My Business

Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use  tool for businesses  and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps.

It offers more control over your company’s information, which can help you attract customers by making it easier for them to find you.

It allows you to manage your information, which will appear when someone searches for your brand name or your Google Maps location (see image).

Once set up, Google will add your details to their search results when users search for your restaurant online. Likewise, your restaurant may also appear when users search for your type of cuisine or atmosphere (sports bars near me, Italian restaurants in New York, etc).

If you already have a GMB account set up, consider using their reservations option so your customers can make reservations online. Some restaurants see a 20% increase in online reservations when they do this simple technique.

Plus, businesses that verify their information with Google My Business are  twice as likely  to be considered reputable by consumers.

All you need to do is create a free Google account (if you don’t have one already), log in and claim your business.

You’ll immediately be able to enter all of your company information. You can even create events and posts that will appear in your search results.

You can also post your menu, use Google’s free online ordering for pick up or delivery, or even schedule reservations.

If you are going to market a restaurant, this is an integral part of your marketing strategy. This strategy is also great for attracting new guests.

17. Restaurant Surveys and Feedback Loops

Using Bloom Intelligence’s advanced automated marketing suite of tools, it becomes quick and easy to create a restaurant survey with an automated feedback loop.

Bloom users create the initial survey that is sent to their guests. This message will typically thank them for a recent visit and ask them to rate a specific part of their experience – from one-half star to five stars with the ability to leave a comment.

Here you can find some of the restaurant survey questions you could configure.

The message can be configured to be sent after a specific amount of visits to your restaurant or after an online order so they do not get the message after every visit.

Then, a rating threshold is configured for which a follow-up message will be sent.

For instance, if the threshold is set at 2 ½ stars, then if the guest gives a rating of 2 ½ stars or less, a follow-up message can automatically be sent.

In this case, the follow-up message would offer an apology for providing anything less than stellar service. It can include an incentive to get them back through your door for that valuable second chance.

The Marketing Payoff

The idea is to grab the guest’s attention and offer some kind of resolution to their issue  before  they get to an online rating website.

If they know their issue is being addressed in a friendly and positive manner, they will most likely refrain from complaining online.

Over time, this will mitigate many negative reviews that would have been sitting online – damaging your reputation – for years to come.

Likewise, if the guest gives a good rating in the initial message, you can follow up with a message thanking your guest and ask them to refer a friend.

Over time, this will greatly increase the number of positive ratings and reviews you have online. As a result, you’ll see more new guests coming through your doors.

Worried that raising prices will make your loyal customers leave and not come back? Set up a survey to automatically go out to your guests two hours after they leave. If they give you a negative response, incentivize your guest with an offer to bring them back.

18. Customer Loyalty Programs

Customer loyalty programs are enormously popular in restaurants all over the world.

Owners and operators know this guest-engaging marketing strategy has a potent capability to expand their customer base and extend the overall average lifetime value of their guests.

When executed properly, a loyalty program can turn your occasional guests into frequent patrons, increase your per-person average, and elevate your bottom line.

The audience may be smaller in terms of your overall marketing efforts, but that shouldn’t discourage you. These participants have opted in and can have the largest impact on your bottom line.

As a result, they expect and are ready to receive your offers, updates, coupons, and messages. These guests want to interact with your brand.

Are you currently offering a customer loyalty program? Is it truly working for your establishment? Are you seeing a positive ROI? Do you have the means to collect and measure the data that can tell you these things?

Bloom’s restaurant marketing and customer data platform can act as your loyalty program. For instance, Bloom can track your guest visits and online orders for you and can trigger an automatic message with an offer or rating based on individual guest behavior.

You can send them an automated message once they reach your predetermined visit count, for instance. You literally set it and forget it, and Bloom will handle the rest.

When a guest redeems the offer, Bloom will track that data too. This allows you to measure the tangible ROI you need to manage your loyalty program effectively.

19. Local Media, Magazines, and Newspapers

By taking your marketing efforts offline, you are covering all your bases, so to speak.

Publishing in newspapers and local magazines can sometimes be pricey. So you want to make sure your advertisement gets in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

The best days to have your ad run are Sundays and Fridays.

On Sundays, coupons are the main attraction, so you might consider adding a coupon or special in the Sunday paper.

Likewise, Fridays are the days when local events and happenings are published. So, you might think about Friday as another option.

Pro-tip, targeting your ideal customer profile is important. Use your CDP to identify the demographics and behavior of your guests so that you advertise in magazines or newspapers whose readership matches your ideal customer profile.

This will save you money and increase the likelihood that these readers will patronize your restaurant.

20. Restaurant Marketing Attribution

Restaurant marketing attribution  is the term used for assigning credit to individual marketing tactics and messages and then applying ROI to them.

When done correctly, it allows marketers to apply more focus on tactics and messaging that are working well.

Likewise, it will identify where less focus is warranted.

According to Gartner, the typical outcome of implementing attribution is a 20-30% gain in media efficiency and corresponding increases in ROI.

It only makes sense to apply marketing attribution to your marketing campaigns. But you’ll need accurate, reliable, and comprehensive guest data that is updated in real-time.

A WiFi restaurant marketing platform can do this for you, tracking attribution all the way down to a guest walking back through your door or online order down to actual transactions.

21. Artificial Intelligence as a Force Multiplier

The utilization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in restaurant marketing has become an increasingly popular tool for restaurants to gain a competitive edge.

AI can help restaurants better understand guest behavior, analyze guest data, and create highly-targeted campaigns that are tailored to their individual needs and preferences.

AI can be used to automate tasks like marketing automation, content personalization, and customer segmentation.

In addition, AI can also be used to analyze guest data and make recommendations for new products or services, help restaurants target the right audience with their messaging, and more accurately predict guest behavior.

By using AI in restaurant marketing, businesses can save time, money, and resources while better understanding their guests and creating more effective campaigns.

Additionally, AI can help create more meaningful guest interactions and experiences by providing them with personalized content and marketing communications.

As this technology evolves and becomes more advanced, restaurant marketing efforts will become even more effective in targeting potential customers and delivering personalized messages.

With your cost of doing business going up and your margins shrinking, it is smart to consolidate your guest data and marketing stacks into one AI-assisted platform to save time and money.

Then use these insights and marketing automation on your owned first-party channels, such as email marketing, to build your guest loyalty and increase your guest lifetime values.

Learn how Bloom Intelligence can help you save time and money, and increase your guest lifetime values.

22. Create a Seamless, Touchless Experience

In today’s post-Covid society, consumers are more aware than ever of the dangers of cross-contamination and how viruses are transmitted through touch.

Fortunately, technology has made it possible for diners to have a completely touchless experience, from online reservations to touchless menus, to touchless payments, and more.

We have already discussed online reservations, but in the touchless experience, this can be a huge plus.

If you are on a wait time, visitors will not have to stand in a crowd of people. Likewise, they will not have to touch a pager or worry about interacting with a host or hostess.

Once at their table, visitors can scan a QR code, or connect to WiFi to see a digital menu. You can create a QR code using a  New Window dynamic QR code generator available online. Then, they can use your online app or a tabletop monitor to order their meal.

Once their dining experience is complete, they can pay their bill through an online app using Apple Pay or Google Pay, or a similar service.

Creating a touchless experience for your guests can streamline their dining experience and save you time and money while decreasing overall table turn times.

23. Implement Targeted Remarketing and Lookalike Campaigns

With your own first-party data, you will have the ability to remarket to those customers using Google Ads or Facebook/Instagram.

These platforms allow you to upload your guest names and email addresses into their system and create ads that will be shown to them when on Google or Facebook/Instagram.

This is known as  remarketing , and it is a great way to keep current customers coming back.

Likewise, you can create “lookalike” campaigns. When you upload your customer list – just as you would for a remarketing campaign – you can tell Google and/or Facebook to analyze your list and only serve ads to people who have similar characteristics and demographics as those on your list.

By knowing your target audience like this, and allowing lookalike ads to be sent to them, you can find new customers faster, without spending money on mass advertising campaigns.

24. Identify and Bring Back Lost Guests

Bloom Intelligence uses machine learning to identify when a guest is potentially churning (at risk of not coming back).

Once they are identified, the system will fire off an email to the guest with a message and, if you like, an incentive to get customers back through your door. Bloom users have seen up to 38% of lost guests return, giving them a huge boost to their bottom line.

Saving lost guests is much less expensive than finding new patrons, so this is a very powerful restaurant marketing strategy in today’s competitive landscape.

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25. Use Customer Sentiment Analysis to Improve Your Guest Experience

Using ratings and reviews is a great way to measure customer sentiment. They allow you to identify specific issues and spot trends over time and apply them to your restaurant marketing strategies.

Then, you can use that data to improve your business.

For instance, you may see a consistent flow of reviews saying that the lighting in your dining room is too dim during dinner service. So, you can try more lighting and then watch future reviews to see if the issue is resolved and your customers’ experiences have improved.

This is just one example of using customer sentiment to improve your business. The opportunities are truly endless.

The issue is that it can be very time-consuming to study all of your reviews on a consistent basis.

Bloom uses artificial intelligence to measure customer sentiment using all of your Google, Facebook, and Bloom reviews. It displays them in an easy-to-understand word cloud.

Positive sentiment is in green, neutral in grey, and negative in red. The larger the word or phrase, the more it appeared in your customer reviews.

This makes it super simple to measure customer sentiment and improve your business over time.

26. Enhance Restaurant Marketing with Reservation System Guest Data

In today’s digitally-driven landscape, restaurants must leverage the power of data to improve their marketing efforts.

One underutilized resource in this regard is reservation system guest data.

This rich source of information, when analyzed and applied effectively, can offer unparalleled insights into customer behavior and preferences, enabling restaurants to design more personalized, impactful marketing campaigns.

When guests go online to create a reservation, systems like OpenTable will require the guest to enter certain information in order to complete their reservation.

You will automatically collect guest data which is added to a guest’s customer profile in your guest database.

Then, these customer profiles can be easily segmented into various groups, or segments, based on behavior, demographics, or reservation/visit history.

At that time, you can begin triggering targeted, automated marketing campaigns to guests when they make an online reservation.

Send surveys asking about their reservation experience, or wait until after they have visited your restaurant and ask how their overall experience was. Send promotions, newsletters, and announcements to engage your guests to increase loyalty, and keep your restaurant top-of-mind.

Integrating reservation system guest data into your restaurant marketing strategy offers a goldmine of opportunities to deliver personalized customer experiences, optimize operations, and maximize marketing ROI.

It’s not just about being tech-savvy; it’s about being customer-centric, creating meaningful connections, and staying competitive in today’s evolving industry.

27. Influencer Marketing to Boost Your Restaurant’s Visibility

In today’s social media-driven world, partnering with influential figures can be a powerful way for restaurants to reach a highly engaged audience.

By collaborating with personalities who resonate with your target diners, you can amplify your brand’s reach, build trust, and drive more customers to your establishment.

The secret to successful influencer marketing lies in finding the right influencers whose values and offerings truly match your restaurant’s.

Food bloggers, local celebs, and Instagram foodies with a big following in your area can make great partners. Look into their content, engagement levels, and audience details to ensure they’re a perfect fit.

After finding influe­ncers, make exciting offe­rs to them. They can truly promote your key se­lling points. Invite them for free­ tastings. Have them share re­al thoughts with photos and reviews. Or, sponsor giveaways on the­ir sites. Give discounts and dining deals to the­ir fans.

Being ope­n and honest matters in influence­r marketing. You and the influence­r should make it obvious you partnered up. This way, the­ audience trusts you more and thinks you’re­ credible.

Provide influencers with accurate information about your restaurant, menu highlights, and any special offerings to ensure their content accurately represents your brand.

Effective influencer marketing campaigns can significantly boost your restaurant’s visibility, attract new customers, and foster a loyal community of brand advocates.

By strategically leveraging the power of influential voices, you can elevate your restaurant’s marketing efforts and stand out in a crowded culinary landscape.

Other Online Restaurant Marketing Ideas

If you or a member of your team have a knack for writing, try finding an online food blogger who accepts written work from other authors.

This is a great way to get exposure for your restaurant while also demonstrating your love for food and great customer service.

While you will most likely not be permitted to promote your restaurant directly, you will likely be able to provide an author bio that will be published on the page. That is where you can let the world know how great your restaurant is.

Plus, you’ll be able to add a link to your restaurant’s website. This can increase your website traffic through direct visitors from your link.

Also, it can provide a boost to your website’s search engine rankings since they will see a link from an authoritative website pointing to your website.

Finally, get your restaurant listed in local directories and on food apps. This may require some legwork.

Find apps that list local restaurants and make sure you are in their database. Also, find online directories for your area and create listings for your restaurant.

Curious how Bloom Intelligence can elevate your guest experience and restaurant marketing? Click Here for a Free Demo.

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What our happy customers are saying

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“Working with Bloom Intelligence has been amazing. They assist you every step of the way and work with you hand in hand to make sure you are optimizing your advertising potential. We are excited to use this tool to help learn more about our customers so that we can personally engage with them and understand our strengths/weaknesses.”

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How to Market a Restaurant: FAQs

What is the best marketing strategy for restaurants?

Of all the restaurant marketing strategies, perhaps the most effective strategy is using a WiFi marketing and analytics platform. It allows you to collect customer contact information, segment your customer list, create targeted, personalized messaging, and remarket to them for maximum results.

What is restaurant remarketing?

Restaurant remarketing is a powerful way to connect with visitors to your website or customers who have logged into your WiFi. It allows you to send targeted advertising, and behavior-driven promotions to those people through online advertising or email marketing. It’s a key marketing concept that should be a primary focus of restaurant owners and marketers.

What is restaurant marketing segmentation?

Restaurant customer segmentation refers to the process of subdividing a customer base into specific groups based on similar demographics, psychographics, and/or various behavior data points. This information can guide restaurant marketing professionals when developing new marketing campaigns for each group or optimizing existing ones to personalize the customer experience online or at their physical locations.

How do you use smart coupons to market a restaurant?

The best way to implement a digital smart coupon program is to use a WiFi marketing and analytics platform like Bloom. The platform allows you to easily create and send customers a unique, one-time-use code that they can redeem on their next visit. The coupon is stored on their mobile device.

The Power of Restaurant Marketing with Bloom

Optimize retail & business operations

Track attribution of customer campaigns

Trigger marketing campaigns based on marketing presence

Measure the health of corporate & franchisee locations

Compare locations or group of locations to quickly identify opportunities or threats

Are you ready to grow your restaurant business with Bloom?

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How to Write a Restaurant Business Plan

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When starting a business—no matter what type of business that may be—a business plan is essential to map out your intentions and direction. That’s the same for a restaurant business plan, which will help you figure out where you fit in the landscape, how you’re going to differ from other establishments around you, how you’ll market your business, and even what you’re going to serve. A business plan for your restaurant can also help you later if you choose to apply for a business loan .

While opening a restaurant isn’t as risky as you’ve likely heard, you still want to ensure that you’re putting thought and research into your business venture to set it up for success. And that’s where a restaurant business plan comes in.

We’ll go through how to create a business plan for a restaurant and a few reasons why it’s so important. After you review the categories and the restaurant business plan examples, you can use the categories to make a restaurant business plan template and start your journey.

Why you shouldn’t skip a restaurant business plan

First-time restaurateurs and industry veterans alike all need to create a business plan when opening a new restaurant . That’s because, even if you deeply understand your business and its nuances (say, seasonal menu planning or how to order correct quantities), a restaurant is more than its operations. There’s marketing, financing, the competitive landscape, and more—and each of these things is unique to each door you open.

That’s why it’s so crucial to understand how to create a business plan for a restaurant. All of these things and more will be addressed in the document—which should run about 20 or 30 pages—so you’ll not only have a go-to-market strategy, but you’ll also likely figure out some things about your business that you haven’t even thought of yet.

Additionally, if you’re planning to apply for business funding down the line, some loans—including the highly desirable SBA loan —actually require you to submit your business plan to gain approval. In other words: Don’t skip this step!

How much do you need?

with Fundera by NerdWallet

We’ll start with a brief questionnaire to better understand the unique needs of your business.

Once we uncover your personalized matches, our team will consult you on the process moving forward.

How to write a restaurant business plan: Step by step

There’s no absolute format for a restaurant business plan that you can’t stray from—some of these sections might be more important than others, for example, or you might find that there’s a logical order that makes more sense than the one in the restaurant business plan example below. However, this business plan outline will serve as a good foundation, and you can use it as a restaurant business plan template for when you write your own.

Executive summary

Your executive summary is one to two pages that kick off your business plan and explain your vision. Even though this might seem like an introduction that no one will read, that isn’t the case. In fact, some investors only ask for the executive summary. So, you’ll want to spend a lot of time perfecting it.

Your restaurant business plan executive summary should include information on:

Mission statement: Your goals and objectives

General company information: Include your founding date, team roles (i.e. executive chef, sous chefs, sommeliers), and locations

Category and offerings: What category your restaurant fits into, what you’re planning to serve (i.e. farm-to-table or Korean), and why

Context for success: Any past success you’ve had, or any current financial data that’ll support that you are on the path to success

Financial requests: If you’re searching for investment or financing, include your plans and goals here and any financing you’ve raised or borrowed thus far

Future plans: Your vision for where you’re going in the next year, three years, and five years

When you’re done with your executive summary, you should feel like you’ve provided a bird’s eye view of your entire business plan. In fact, even though this section is first, you will likely write it last so you can take the highlights from each of the subsequent sections.

And once you’re done, read it on its own: Does it give a comprehensive, high-level overview of your restaurant, its current state, and your vision for the future? Remember, this may be the only part of your business plan potential investors or partners will read, so it should be able to stand on its own and be interesting enough to make them want to read the rest of your plan.

Company overview

This is where you’ll dive into the specifics of your company, detailing the kind of restaurant you’re looking to create, who’s helping you do it, and how you’re prepared to accomplish it.

Your restaurant business plan company overview should include:

Purpose: The type of restaurant you’re opening (fine dining, fast-casual, pop-up, etc.), type of food you’re serving, goals you have, and the niche you hope to fill in the market

Area: Information on the area in which you’re opening

Customers: Whom you’re hoping to target, their demographic information

Legal structure: Your business entity (i.e. LLC, LLP, etc.) and how many owners you have

Similar to your executive summary, you won’t be going into major detail here as the sections below will get into the nitty-gritty. You’ll want to look at this as an extended tear sheet that gives someone a good grip on your restaurant or concept, where it fits into the market, and why you’re starting it.

Team and management

Barely anything is as important for a restaurant as the team that runs it. You’ll want to create a section dedicated to the members of your staff—even the ones that aren’t yet hired. This will provide a sense of who is taking care of what, and how you need to structure and build out the team to get your restaurant operating at full steam.

Your restaurant business plan team and management section should have:

Management overview: Who is running the restaurant, what their experience and qualifications are, and what duties they’ll be responsible for

Staff: Other employees you’ve brought on and their bios, as well as other spots you anticipate needing to hire for

Ownership percentage: Which individuals own what percentage of the restaurant, or if you are an employee-owned establishment

Be sure to update this section with more information as your business changes and you continue to share this business plan—especially because who is on your team will change both your business and the way people look at it.

Sample menu

You’ll also want to include a sample menu in your restaurant business plan so readers have a sense of what they can expect from your operations, as well as what your diners can expect from you when they sit down. This will also force you to consider exactly what you want to serve your diners and how your menu will stand out from similar restaurants in the area. Although a sample menu is in some ways self-explanatory, consider the following:

Service : If your brunch is as important as your dinner, provide both menus; you also might want to consider including both a-la-carte and prix fixe menus if you plan to offer them.

Beverage/wine service: If you’ll have an emphasis on specialty beverages or wine, a separate drinks list could be important.

Seasonality: If you’re a highly seasonal restaurant, you might want to consider providing menus for multiple seasons to demonstrate how your dishes (and subsequent purchasing) will change.

Market analysis

This is where you’ll begin to dive deeper. Although you’ve likely mentioned your market and the whitespace you hope to address, the market analysis section will enable you to prove your hypotheses.

Your restaurant business plan market analysis should include:

Industry information: Include a description of the restaurant industry, its size, growth trends, and other trends regarding things such as tastes, trends, demographics, structures, etc.

Target market: Zoom in on the area and neighborhood in which you’re opening your restaurant as well as the type of cuisine you’re serving.

Target market characteristics: Describe your customers and their needs, how/if their needs are currently being served, other important pieces about your specific location and customers.

Target market size and growth: Include a data-driven section on the size of your market, trends in its growth, how your target market fits into the industry as a whole, projected growth of your market, etc.

Market share potential: Share how much potential there is in the market, how much your presence will change the market, and how much your specific restaurant or restaurant locations can own of the open market; also touch on any barriers to growth or entry you might see.

Market pricing: Explain how you’ll be pricing your menu and where you’ll fall relative to your competitors or other restaurants in the market.

Competitive research: Include research on your closest competitors, how they are both succeeding and failing, how customers view them, etc.

If this section seems like it might be long, it should—it’s going to outline one of the most important parts of your strategy, and should feel comprehensive. Lack of demand is the number one reason why new businesses fail, so the goal of this section should be to prove that there is demand for your restaurant and show how you’ll capitalize on it.

Additionally, if market research isn’t your forte, don’t be shy to reach out to market research experts to help you compile the data, or at least read deeply on how to conduct effective research.

Marketing and sales

Your marketing and sales section should feel like a logical extension of your market analysis section, since all of the decisions you’ll make in this section should follow the data of the prior section.

The marketing and sales sections of your restaurant business plan should include:

Positioning: How you’ll describe your restaurant to potential customers, the brand identity and visuals you’ll use to do it, and how you’ll stand out in the market based on the brand you’re building

Promotion: The tools, tactics, and platforms you’ll use to market your business

Sales: How you’ll convert on certain items, and who/how you will facilitate any additional revenue streams (i.e. catering)

It’s likely that you’ll only have concepts for some of these elements, especially if you’re not yet open. Still, get to paper all of the ideas you have, and you can (and should) always update them later as your restaurant business becomes more fully formed.

Business operations

The business operations section should get to the heart of how you plan to run your business. It will highlight both internal factors as well as external forces that will dictate how you run the ship.

The business operations section should include:

Management team: Your management structure and hierarchy, and who is responsible for what

Hours: Your hours and days of operation

Location: What’s special about your location that will get people through the door

Relationships: Any advantageous relationships you have with fellow restaurateurs, places for sourcing and buying, business organizations, or consultants on your team

Add here anything you think could be helpful for illustrating how you’re going to do business and what will affect it.

Here, you’ll detail the current state of your business finances and project where you hope to be in a year, three years, and five years. You’ll want to detail what you’ve spent, what you will spend, where you’ll get the money, costs you might incur, and returns you’ll hope to see—including when you can expect to break even and turn a profit.

Financial statements: If you’ve been in business for any amount of time, include existing financial statements (i.e. profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, etc.)

Budget: Your current budget or a general startup budget

Projections: Include revenue, cash flow, projected profit and loss, and other costs

Debt: Include liabilities if the business has any outstanding debt or loans

Funding request: If you’re requesting a loan or an investment, lay out how much capital you’re looking for, your company’s valuation (if applicable), and the purpose of the funding

Above all, as you’re putting your financials together, be realistic—even conservative. You want to give any potential investors a realistic picture of your business.

Feel like there are other important components but they don't quite fit in any of the other categories (or make them run too long)? That’s what the restaurant business plan appendix section is for. And although in, say, a book, an appendix can feel like an afterthought, don’t ignore it—this is another opportunity for you to include crucial information that can give anyone reading your plan some context. You may include additional data, graphs, marketing collateral (like logo mockups), and more.

Start Your Dream Business

The bottom line

Whether you’re writing a restaurant business plan for investors, lenders, or simply for yourself and your team, the most important thing to do is make sure your document is comprehensive. A good business plan for a restaurant will take time—and maybe a little sweat—to complete fully and correctly.

One other crucial thing to remember: a business plan is not a document set in stone. You should often look to it to make sure you’re keeping your vision and mission on track, but you should also feel prepared to update its components as you learn more about your business and individual restaurant.

This article originally appeared on JustBusiness, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.

On a similar note...

Sales & Marketing Plan for a Restaurant (Example)

• December 29, 2023
• Business Plan , Sales & Marketing Strategy

Establishing and managing a thriving restaurant demands more than exceptional culinary expertise; it requires a well-thought-out marketing and sales strategy. This comprehensive guide aims to assist restaurant owners and managers in developing a tailored sales and marketing plan for the business plan of their restaurant .

It will highlight the need for thorough market analysis to understand competitors and identify potential diners’ needs. Following that, it will focus on building the restaurant’s brand identity and strategically positioning it within the market.

Finally, it will explore diverse marketing channels to engage potential patrons and examine various sales strategies to boost revenue generation. Let’s dive in!

Restaurant Business Plan

Fully editable 30+ slides Powerpoint presentation business plan template.

Download an expert-built 30+ slides Powerpoint business plan template

Market Analysis

Understanding the market is pivotal to positioning your restaurant strategically and effectively.

Competitive Analysis

• Identify Competitors : Begin by conducting thorough research on other restaurants in your area. Analyze their cuisines, menu pricing, customer reviews, and promotional strategies. By doing so, you’ll gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t and identify gaps or niches that your restaurant can fill.
• SWOT Analysis : Conduct a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) for your restaurant in comparison to your competitors. Assess your restaurant’s unique strengths that can be leveraged, pinpoint areas needing improvement, explore opportunities for growth, and identify potential threats that could affect your business.

Target Audience Profiling

• Demographics and Psychographics: Define your ideal customers based on various demographics such as age, income level, dining preferences, and lifestyle choices. This detailed profile will serve as the foundation for developing marketing strategies and creating a dining experience that resonates with your target audience .
• Customer Needs and Expectations: Determine what your target audience values most in a dining experience—whether it’s fine dining, casual ambiance, specific cuisines, dietary preferences, or family-friendly environments.

Branding and Positioning

Your restaurant’s brand identity plays a crucial role in attracting and retaining customers.

Brand Identity Development

• Unique Story and Values: Your restaurant’s story should highlight what inspired its inception, the culinary philosophies driving the menu, and the unique values and principles guiding your establishment. By sharing this narrative through various marketing channels, you establish a connection with your audience, fostering loyalty and differentiation from competitors.
• Visual Elements: Develop a consistent visual identity that reflects your brand’s personality. This includes designing a memorable logo, choosing a color scheme that complements your restaurant’s ambiance, and ensuring interior decor aligns with the brand’s ethos. These visual elements collectively contribute to a cohesive brand image that customers can recognize and connect with.

Market Positioning Strategy

• Define Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Identify what makes your restaurant special and what differentiates it from others. Whether it’s your commitment to locally sourced ingredients, an innovative fusion of cuisines, an immersive dining experience, or a dedication to sustainable practices, your USP should be prominent in all your marketing communications.
• Positioning Statement: Craft a positioning statement that succinctly conveys what your restaurant stands for and the unique value it offers. This statement should resonate with your target audience, influencing their perception of your restaurant and guiding their decision-making process when choosing where to dine.

Marketing Channels

Utilize various marketing channels to engage with your audience and attract new patrons.

Digital Marketing

• Social Media: Utilize social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok to showcase your restaurant’s ambiance, signature dishes, behind-the-scenes glimpses, chef profiles, and customer testimonials. Regularly engage with your audience by responding to comments, hosting interactive polls, or sharing user-generated content.
• Email Marketing: I mplement an email marketing strategy to build a loyal customer base. Offer incentives such as exclusive recipes, promotional offers, or early access to special events in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter. Regularly communicate with your subscribers, sharing updates, promotions, and stories that resonate with your brand.
• Website and SEO: Maintain an informative website showcasing your menu , chef profiles, reservation options, and reviews. Optimize it for local SEO to ensure visibility in searches related to your cuisine and location.

Local Advertising

• Printed Materials: Distribute well-designed flyers in nearby neighborhoods, advertise in local magazines, and collaborate with tourism centers or hotels for exposure.
• Community Engagement: Sponsor local events, collaborate with food bloggers or influencers, and participate in food festivals or charity events to increase brand visibility and community involvement.
• Partnerships: Forge partnerships with complementary businesses (such as wine shops or local farmers’ markets) for cross-promotions or collaborative events.

Promotional Activities

Engage potential customers through enticing offers and events.

• Special Offers: Launch promotions like ‘Chef’s Tasting Menu Nights’ or ‘Happy Hour Discounts’ to attract new diners and retain regulars.
• Loyalty Programs: Implement a loyalty system offering rewards for frequent visits or referrals, such as a free appetizer or dessert after a certain number of visits.
• Events and Special Occasions: Host themed nights, seasonal menus, or exclusive culinary events to create buzz and attract diverse audiences.

Sales Channels

Efficiently manage sales channels to maximize revenue and customer satisfaction.

In-Restaurant Upselling

• Menu Strategies: Highlight premium dishes or chef’s specials, offer wine pairings or dessert suggestions, and train staff to upsell without being pushy.
• Merchandising: Display branded merchandise, specialty sauces, or cookbooks for sale to complement the dining experience.

Online Ordering and Delivery

• Online Ordering Platform: I mplement an easy-to-use online ordering system for takeout or delivery orders. Offer exclusive online discounts or bundle deals.
• Delivery Partnerships: Collaborate with food delivery services or establish in-house delivery for customers’ convenience.

Reservation Management

• Reservation System: Utilize an efficient reservation platform to manage bookings. Offer incentives for off-peak reservations or special occasions.

Membership and VIP Programs

Developing membership and VIP programs can cultivate a loyal customer base and drive recurring revenue:

• VIP Memberships: Create exclusive membership tiers offering perks like priority reservations, chef’s table access, or private event invitations.
• Reward Programs: Develop a digital loyalty system where customers earn points for every dollar spent, redeemable for discounts, exclusive menu items, or special events.

Privacy Overview

• Individual restaurants
• Restaurant groups
• Hotel restaurants
• Bars, Pubs and Clubs
• Events, Weddings and Catering
• Membership Clubs

7 Easy Steps to Kickstart Your Restaurant's Email Marketing

As a restaurateur, you're always looking for ways to fill those tables and get mouths watering, right?

Maybe email marketing has popped up on your radar. 

After all, it's accessible for any budget and is a tried-and-true method to connect with your restaurant guests. 

But the thought of starting from scratch can feel overwhelming. 

What should you even say in those emails? How do you get people to actually sign up for your list? 

That's why we've created this guide! 

We'll break down seven easy-to-follow steps to get your restaurant's email marketing off the ground.

We'll cover everything from setting goals and building your list to crafting engaging emails and measuring their impact.

So, let's dive in.

1. Determine the Goals of Your Email Marketing Campaign

Before you even think about hitting "send" on a single email, you want to figure out what you actually want to achieve. 

Every restaurant is different, so your email marketing goals should reflect your unique needs and priorities. 

Without this, you’ll lack much-needed focus and direction in your marketing efforts. 

Whichever goal you decide to set, the   popular SMART framework   comes in handy, guiding you to write objectives that are:

With these guidelines, you can create ambitious but attainable goals, setting your   email marketing   on a clear path to success.

But, what kind of goals are we talking about? 

Well, some options are illustrated below.

Source:   Tablein

Say your restaurant is struggling with low occupancy on certain weekdays. 

You could set a specific goal to increase reservations by 15% on Tuesdays and Wednesdays within the next three months. 

Or, maybe you’re interested in what your guests have to say about your restaurant.

This is a worthy email marketing goal in itself, and there are many free email feedback templates, like the one shown below, to help you out.

Source:   Unlayer

As potential diners often   rely on online reviews to find places to eat , collecting and showcasing positive feedback can make a real impact. 

Plus, understanding what your guests enjoy can help you refine your offerings.

By defining your goals upfront, you create a roadmap that ensures your email marketing efforts are driving real, measurable results.

2. Choose an Email Marketing Platform

Now that you've outlined your goals, it's time to pick the right tool for the job. 

After all, sending marketing emails manually just isn't feasible once your mailing list grows beyond a handful of guests. 

Email marketing platforms simplify the whole process, letting you do things like the following:

• Create and send emails to hundreds of subscribers at once
• Track email performance metrics
• Build custom signup forms for your website or social media
• Use automation for things like sending welcome emails on sign-up

Let’s check out   Mailchimp , one of the most popular email marketing solutions out there.

Source:   Mailchimp

With Mailchimp, you get a robust platform with all of the benefits we listed above. 

Plus, you can use their user-friendly design tools to craft eye-catching emails even if you have no technical know-how. 

Some other popular platforms to consider include:

• Constant Contact
• ActiveCampaign

To really make the most out of your chosen platform, though, look for ones that integrate with r estaurant reservation systems . 

Tablein , for example, integrates with both   MailerLite   and   Mailchimp , and also has a   GDPR-compliant newsletter subscription module   built right in, so you can collect those email addresses worry-free.

The integration with these two email marketing platforms makes it easy to automatically add guests who opt-in to your email list directly to the platforms.

Plus, you can separate subscribers into specific lists, allowing you to tailor your messages accordingly. 

In a nutshell, an email marketing platform is your control center for reaching guests, building relationships, and tracking your results, so make sure to choose the best one for your restaurant.

3. Build Your Email List

Okay, you've got your goals in mind and the perfect platform at your fingertips. 

Now, it's time to build your email list.

Before we go any further, we urge you to never buy email lists. 

It's tempting to take a shortcut, but there are plenty of great ways to grow your list organically.

For example, you can use the online channels you are already on like your website and social media pages. 

The first step is simple—make it easy to sign up. 

A prominent button saying "Subscribe," or "Join Our Mailing List," should be on every page of your website, tucked into your social media bios, and even included in promotional posts.

Source:   Manhatta Restaurant

If guests enjoy your restaurant, they're going to be happy to hear from you! 

Especially if you make it clear what kinds of emails they can expect from you. 

If you plan on sending   exclusive email-only discounts , early access to events, or simply appealing content, you want to highlight these benefits of subscribing on your signup page and even in the   welcome emails you send .

And to sweeten the deal even more, give guests a treat for simply signing up. 

Take a look at how   Stan's Donuts   did just this with a simple, but effective offer.

Source:   Stan’s Donuts

That $5 discount is a small price to pay for a new subscriber who, if nurtured properly, could become a loyal customer for years to come.

The bottom line is: during this step, you want to make your sign-up options easy to find and tempting enough to get a large email list. 

4. Segment Your Email List

Let's now talk about the importance of segmentation.

Okay, let’s say you've successfully built a large email list that might look something like the following image.

Tempting as it might be to just hit "send" and blast the same message to every email on that list, resist the urge. 

You'll see far better results by segmenting your audience and tailoring your campaigns. 

Why? Because people respond to messages that feel relevant to them. 

By sending targeted emails, you'll increase open rates, clicks, and ultimately, conversions.

As a restaurant, you have several options for segmentation.

The most basic approach is   demographics . 

This is as straightforward as not promoting your new restaurant location to someone in a different part of the world and tailoring offers to different age groups or income levels to maximize appeal. 

Next, consider segmenting by   guest behavior . 

Are there guests new to your restaurant? Frequent visitors? Do you have a group of guests that only book for special occasions or events? 

By understanding these patterns, you can send promotions that are genuinely appealing.

Closely related is segmenting by   guest preferences . 

For example, a dedicated email about your gluten-free menu would be a hit with those diners who have pointed out having these specific dietary needs in the past.

You might notice that, while demographics are easy to get, collecting data on guest behavior and preferences can be tricky. 

But that's where   Tablein   comes to the rescue again.

With our software, guest data that is collected through everyday interactions is stored in a comprehensive database.

This database is easily searchable and sortable, meaning you can create highly targeted email segments in no time. 

For example, you could send an exclusive "We miss you" offer to guests who haven't visited in a while, or a special thank-you message to those who consistently leave glowing reviews.

In short, segmentation helps turn generic emails into personalized experiences that drive results.

5. Develop a Content Strategy

Okay, you've got the foundation in place. 

Now, let's get to the fun part and think about what kind of emails you are going to send.

There's no shortage of content ideas when it comes to restaurant email marketing. 

Check out this handy list below.

Remember, you don't have to pick just one type. 

A well-rounded strategy might include a monthly newsletter, weekly promotional emails to entice diners during slower times, and the occasional special announcement reserved for new menu launches or exciting events.

To keep everything organized and ensure you're sending the right message at the right time, consider creating a content calendar. 

Here's an   example   from SocialPilot.

Source:   Social Pilot

Notice how holidays and events are highlighted on this calendar? 

Those are opportunities you definitely don't want to miss. 

For example, let's say the 3rd of June, or World Cider Day, is approaching. 

You could use this opportunity to send out an email with an offer like the one below.

Source:   Harry’s Bar on Facebook

Get as creative as you want with your content calendar. 

Tie promotions to local events, sports games, or even pop culture references. 

The goal is to make your emails engaging and relevant to your audience.

Overall, you can think of your content strategy as crafting a menu—diverse, exciting, and always leaving your guests wanting more.

6. Start Sending Engaging Emails

This step is where the magic happens, or where it all falls apart. 

It's time to bring those email plans to life and send them out.

Even with the most carefully planned content calendar and targeted segments, a poorly designed email won't get you far. 

Luckily, the vast majority of guests actually want to hear from the businesses they support, and email is often their preferred way of staying in the loop.

Illustration:   Tablein   / Data:   Square

So, the good news is that your audience is ready and willing to hear about your latest offerings. 

Don't disappoint them with boring, spammy, or visually unappealing emails.

A winning restaurant email combines several key elements:

• Engaging Subject Line
• Personalized Content
• Appealing Visuals
• Enticing Food Photos
• Well-Placed Calls to Action

Let's start with that subject line. Keep it short, snappy, and intriguing. 

Sometimes, simplicity is key, as shown in these examples.

See how they're straight to the point? 

No fancy gimmicks, just clear messaging that gets the point across. 

If possible, try to personalize the subject line with your guest's name—a small touch that can make a big difference.

If your subject line is successful, the guest clicks, and now you want to wow them with the email's content. 

Check out this gem from   The Charter Oak restaurant .

Source:   The Charter Oak

See how those atmospheric images capture the restaurant’s ambiance? 

The fresh-looking food photo makes your stomach growl, and the different sections for holiday reservations and showcasing the cocktail menu cater to different interests. 

Importantly, each section has a clean call-to-action button, guiding the guest towards booking or exploring the offerings.

This is a perfect example of how to blend enticing visuals with clear calls to action. 

The email feels warm and inviting, encouraging guests to take that next step.

Remember, your emails are a direct reflection of your restaurant's personality and style. 

So craft them with care, and your guests will be eagerly awaiting your next update.

7. Keep Track of Your Results

Finally, let's talk data. 

Your email marketing efforts don't end once those emails are sent out into the world.

Just blindly firing off campaigns and hoping for the best isn't a recipe for success. 

To truly understand what's working (and what's not), you need to track those all-important performance metrics.

Think of it like a report card for your emails. 

By analyzing various metrics, you can pinpoint which tactics resonate with your guests and fine-tune your strategy for maximum impact.

Here are a few essential metrics to keep an eye on.

Start with open rates and click-through rates.

They tell you what percentage of recipients actually opened your email and how many of those openers clicked on a link within the email. 

A low open rate might mean your subject lines are not hitting the mark, while low click-through rates can point to unappealing content or underutilized calls to action.

But it doesn't stop there. 

You'll also want to keep tabs on your list growth rate and unsubscribe rate. 

This helps you gauge overall engagement and whether guests are enjoying your content and waiting for more.

Luckily, your email marketing platform should track all of this for you. 

Your job is to take this data and make use of it. 

For instance, it’s useful to compare your numbers to industry averages to see how you stack up. 

Check out   this data   on the average restaurant email open and click-through rates.

Illustration:   Tablein   / Data:   Mailchimp

If you find your metrics fail to meet the averages, it's time to experiment! 

Test out different subject lines, make them more catchy and appealing, play around with your email design, or try new types of calls to action. 

Refine your strategy based on what the data tells you, and don't be afraid to switch things up.

By consistently tracking your results, you'll transform your email marketing into a data-driven powerhouse that delivers great results for your restaurant.

And there you have it—seven actionable steps to kickstart your restaurant email marketing efforts! 

We've covered everything from setting achievable goals and growing your email list to segmenting your audience, sending out compelling campaigns, and tracking those all-important results.

Hopefully, you now have a comprehensive understanding of how to launch an email marketing strategy that not only reaches your guests but also drives engagement and boosts your bottom line. 

Armed with knowledge, it's time to take action! 

Start following these steps today, and watch as your restaurant's email campaigns become a valuable tool for connecting with diners and filling up those tables.

You may also like

Email Marketing for Restaurants: 7 Helpful Tips

10 Email Marketing Campaign Types for Your Restaurant

5 Email Marketing Mistakes Your Restaurant Should Avoid

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• Product management
• Marketing plans
• How to create a marketing plan

Marketing fuels growth. It is often the driver of a successful business, from increasing brand recognition to driving sales leads. But smart marketing is no accident. You need a well-crafted marketing plan that maps programs and activities to business and marketing goals.

Developing that plan requires upfront research. How do you know what goals are right for your team? Or what work you should do to achieve those goals? The answer depends on what you want to accomplish at the organizational level. To navigate these decisions, many marketing teams follow a top-down strategic planning process .

Deliver marketing plans using Aha! Roadmaps — free for 30 days.

What is strategic planning.

A strategic planning process refers to starting with your desired end state and defining the work needed to get there. The output of that process is your marketing plan. Some teams might create plans that extend as far as a few years while others create them quarterly. It all depends on when strategic planning takes place at the organizational level.

Strategic planning at the marketing function or team level (e.g., product marketing or digital marketing) should also be a top-down approach. Once you have determined clear objectives at the marketing level, you can align team plans accordingly.

You can also build marketing plans for specific campaigns or other large marketing efforts, such as support for a major product release. These plans still include strategic goals that the work needs to support, but are often more tactical in terms of the level of detail.

How to create a strategic marketing plan

Begin with your company's vision and goals. Then work backward to identify the marketing goals that will best help your organization achieve its objectives. Putting goals first will also help you weed out work that will not move you forward.

Whether you are creating an annual plan for the entire marketing team or defining a short-term campaign, the following steps will help you capture the essential details:

Identify business-level objectives

The first step is to identify business-level objectives. Maybe your company has a goal to double its revenue by the end of the year. Or perhaps your company wants to become the top-rated provider of a particular service. Capture these to inform the marketing work that will follow.

Set goals and initiatives

Marketing goals should directly support the company's objectives. If you are building a longer-term marketing plan, you may also want to create initiatives, which are broad themes of work required to achieve those goals.

Revisit buyer personas

Next, document the profile of your ideal potential customer. You need to know what matters most to them, what they already know about your company, where they conduct research, and more. This will help you decide how to best reach your intended audience and motivate them to take the desired action.

Know the alternatives

It is important to know what alternative solutions exist and identify opportunities to differentiate . You may want to do a SWOT analysis to ground yourself in where you stack up against alternatives on the market. This lets you effectively communicate what makes your company, product, or service unique.

Build a roadmap

Marketing teams are increasingly building roadmaps to visualize their plans. You can lay out the marketing activities that will best help you achieve your marketing and company goals. Linking organizational level strategy all the way down to the tactical work ensures that alignment holds strong.

Create a budget proposal

Now that you know what you want to deliver, you will need to propose how much you expect to spend. You may need to allocate money for advertising or work with an agency to produce creative assets. Once your budget is approved by executive leadership, you can then assign out the work.

Write a creative brief

Lastly, you may want to write a creative brief that aligns everyone around the important details of your marketing project. Your creative brief should include objectives, key messaging, audience, timing, and budget. Creative briefs are most often done at the campaign or program level and are especially useful if you work with agencies or other external partners.

Once you have created a marketing plan, revisit it often — track progress and identify any roadblocks. You may find that you need to adjust your plan over time to ensure that you are always delivering work that aligns with company objectives and delivers real value.

Tools marketing teams use to create strategic plans

Free planning templates can be a helpful place to start. But with siloed plans and visualizations, it is challenging to keep everything aligned and updated. That is why marketing teams use purpose-built software like Aha! to do strategic planning. You only need to enter your data once and you can easily visualize it in different formats and share it with the broader team.

Build marketing plans like you always wanted. Sign up for a free 30-day trial.

• What is a business model?
• What is customer experience?
• What is the Complete Product Experience (CPE)?
• What is a customer journey map?
• What is product-led growth?
• What are the types of business transformation?
• What is enterprise transformation?
• What is digital transformation?
• What is the role of product management in enterprise transformation?
• What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
• What is a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP)?
• What is product vision?
• How to set product strategy
• What is product-market fit?
• What is product differentiation?
• How to position your product
• How to price your product
• What are product goals and initiatives?
• How to set product goals
• How to set product initiatives
• What is product value?
• What is value-based product development?
• Introduction to marketing strategy
• Introduction to marketing templates
• What is a marketing strategy?
• How to set marketing goals
• Marketing vs. advertising
• What is a creative brief?
• How to define buyer personas
• Understanding the buyer's journey
• What is competitive differentiation?
• 10Ps marketing matrix
• 2x2 prioritization matrix
• Business model
• Customer journey map
• Decision log
• Decision tree
• Fit gap analysis
• Gap analysis
• Lean canvas
• Marketing strategy
• MoSCoW model
• Opportunity canvas
• Porter's 5 forces
• Pricing and packaging research
• Pricing plan chart
• Pricing strategies (Kotler)
• Product positioning
• Product vision
• Segment profile
• SMART goals
• Strategic roadmap
• Strategy mountain
• SWOT analysis
• Value proposition
• VMOST analysis
• Working backwards
• Collections: Business model
• Collections: SWOT
• Collections: Objectives and key results (OKR)
• Collections: Product positioning
• Collections: Market positioning
• Collections: Marketing strategy
• Collections: Marketing messaging
• What is product discovery?
• How to do market research
• How to define customer personas
• How to research competitors
• How to gather customer feedback
• Asking the right questions to drive innovation
• Approaches table
• Competitive analysis
• Customer empathy map
• Customer interview
• Customer research plan
• PESTLE analysis
• Problem framing
• Product comparison chart
• Pros and cons
• Target audience
• Collections: Customer research
• Collections: Competitor analysis
• Collections: Marketing competitor analysis
• How to brainstorm product ideas
• Brainstorming techniques for product builders
• Why product teams need an internal knowledge hub
• Why product teams need virtual whiteboarding software
• What is idea management?
• 4 steps for product ideation
• How to estimate the value of new product ideas
• How to prioritize product ideas
• What is idea management software?
• Introduction to marketing idea management
• How to gather marketing feedback from teammates
• Brainstorming new marketing ideas
• How to estimate the value of new marketing ideas
• Brainstorming meeting
• Brainstorming session
• Concept map
• Data flow diagram
• Fishbone diagram
• Ideas portal guide
• Jobs to be done
• Process flow diagram
• Proof of concept
• Sticky note pack
• User story map
• Workflow diagram
• Roadmapping: Your starter guide
• Agile roadmap
• Business roadmap
• Features roadmap
• Innovation roadmap
• Marketing roadmap
• Product roadmap
• Product portfolio roadmap
• Project roadmap
• Strategy roadmap
• Technology roadmap
• How to choose a product roadmap tool
• How to build a brilliant roadmap
• What to include on your product roadmap
• How to visualize data on your product roadmap
• What milestones should be included on a roadmap?
• How often should roadmap planning happen?
• How to build a roadmap for a new product
• How to build an annual product roadmap
• How to customize the right roadmap for your audience
• Product roadmap examples
• How to report on progress against your roadmap
• How to communicate your product roadmap to customers
• What is a content marketing roadmap?
• What is a digital marketing roadmap?
• What is an integrated marketing roadmap?
• What is a go-to-market roadmap?
• What is a portfolio marketing roadmap?
• How to choose a marketing roadmap tool
• Epics roadmap
• Now, Next, Later roadmap
• Portfolio roadmap
• Release roadmap
• Collections: Product roadmap
• Collections: Product roadmap presentation
• Collections: Marketing roadmap
• What is product planning?
• How to diagram product use cases
• How product managers use Gantt charts
• How to use a digital whiteboard for product planning
• Introduction to release management
• How to plan product releases across teams
• What is a product backlog?
• Product backlog vs. release backlog vs. sprint backlog
• How to refine the product backlog
• Capacity planning for product managers
• What is requirements management?
• What is a market requirements document (MRD)?
• How to manage your product requirements document (PRD)
• What is a product feature?
• What is user story mapping?
• How to prioritize product features
• Common product prioritization frameworks
• JTBD prioritization framework
• Introduction to marketing plans
• What is a marketing plan?
• What is a digital marketing plan?
• What is a content marketing plan?
• Why is content marketing important?
• What is a social media plan?
• How to create a marketing budget
• 2023 monthly calendar
• 2024 monthly calendar
• Feature requirement
• Kanban board
• Market requirements document
• Problem statement
• Product requirements document
• SAFe® Program board
• Stakeholder analysis
• Stakeholder map
• Timeline diagram
• Collections: Product development process
• Collections: MRD
• Collections: PRD
• Collections: Gantt chart
• Collections: User story
• Collections: User story mapping
• Collections: Feature definition checklist
• Collections: Feature prioritization templates
• Collections: Marketing plan templates
• Collections: Marketing calendar templates
• Product design basics
• What is user experience design?
• What is the role of a UX designer?
• What is the role of a UX manager?
• How to use a wireframe in product management
• Wireframe vs. mockup vs. prototype
• 18 expert tips for wireframing
• Analytics dashboard wireframe
• Product homepage wireframe
• Signup wireframe
• Collections: Creative brief
• Common product development methodologies
• Common agile development methodologies
• What is agile product management?
• What is agile software development?
• What is agile project management?
• What is the role of a software engineer?
• What is waterfall product management?
• What is agile transformation?
• Agile vs. lean
• Agile vs. waterfall
• What is an agile roadmap?
• What is an agile retrospective?
• Best practices of agile development teams
• What is a burndown chart?
• What is issue tracking?
• What is unit testing?
• Introduction to agile metrics
• Agile glossary
• What is kanban?
• How development teams implement kanban
• How is kanban used by product managers?
• How to set up a kanban board
• Kanban vs. scrum
• What is scrum?
• What are scrum roles?
• What is a scrum master?
• What is the role of a product manager in scrum?
• What is a sprint?
• What is a sprint planning meeting?
• What is a daily standup?
• What is a sprint review?
• Product release vs. sprint in scrum
• Themes, epics, stories, and tasks
• How to implement scrum
• How to choose a scrum certification
• What is the Scaled Agile Framework®?
• What is the role of a product manager in SAFe®?
• SAFe® PI planning
• SAFe® PI retrospective
• SAFe® Sprint planning
• Sprint planning
• Sprint retrospective
• Sprint retrospective meeting
• UML class diagram
• Collections: Sprint retrospective
• How to test your product before launch
• What is a go-to-market strategy?
• How to write excellent release notes
• How to plan a marketing launch
• Knowledge base article
• Product launch plan
• Product updates
• Release notes
• Collections: Product launch checklist
• Collections: Marketing launch checklist
• How to make data-driven product decisions
• How to measure product value
• What is product analytics?
• What are product metrics?
• What is a product?
• What is a product portfolio?
• What is product development?
• What is product management?
• What is the role of a product manager?
• What is portfolio product management?
• What is program management?
• What is product operations?
• What are the stages of product development?
• What is the product lifecycle?
• What is a product management maturity model?
• What is product development software?
• How to create internal product documentation
• What to include in an internal product documentation hub
• Internal vs. external product documentation
• How to build a product knowledge base
• Use cases for knowledge base software
• Introduction to marketing methods
• What is agile marketing?
• What is digital marketing?
• What is product marketing?
• What is social media marketing?
• What is B2B marketing?
• Collections: Product management
• How to structure your product team meeting
• 15 tips for running effective product team meetings
• Daily standup meeting
• Meeting agenda
• Meeting notes
• Product backlog refinement meeting
• Product feature kickoff meeting
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• What are the types of product managers?
• 10 skills to succeed as a product manager
• Common product management job titles
• What does a product manager do each day?
• What is the role of a product operations manager?
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• Templates for program and portfolio management
• How to become a product manager
• How to prepare for a product manager interview
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• Typical salary for product managers
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• How to choose a product management certification
• Introduction to marketing
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• What is the role of a marketing manager?
• What is the role of a product marketing manager?
• How are marketing teams organized?
• Which tools do marketers use?
• Interview questions for marketing managers
• Typical salary for marketing managers
• How to make a career switch into marketing
• Job interview
• Negotiating an offer
• Product manager resume
• Collections: Product manager resume
• How to structure your product development team
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• How to streamline your product management tools
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• Aha! record map
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• Collections: Product management meeting
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• Product development definitions
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Recipe for navigating the restaurant business opening

Fred Neuville

The restaurant business is a juggling act: exciting, social, you learn new things constantly, and you get instant gratification daily. Proper planning in the pre-opening phase can ensure long-term success.

Use these guidelines to create an outline, as seen in this restaurant opening checklist:  Pre-Opening-Checklist.

Research: conduct thorough market research

You can get information from the D.O.T, Land and Planning Commission, the U.S. Census Bureau, Water, Electric and Gas Companies, Small Business Bureau, and your local governing body.

First research on the internet, then call each of them or what I did was research and come up with a list of questions like mentioned above, then I visited each local entity to have face time and get answers. The response was amazing compared to a phone call.

Who is your target audience?

What ages do you want to target? What is their professional background? Are they retired? This determines the portion size of your food, because older folks eat less and professionals along with retired people eat out more.

What is the traffic pattern?

Sit on the spot where you plan to open your business for a few hours (a few in the morning, afternoon, and night), count the cars and the people walking by. What is the pattern? Is it busy enough to support your venture?

Who is your competition?

Eat and visit other restaurants in the area you plan to open. Are there any like yours or are you providing a cuisine that is unique to your area? An example: If there are four Hispanic restaurants in the area, then don’t open a Hispanic restaurant. Change your business plan or go to another area which doesn’t have another Hispanic restaurant. You want to pick an area which is underserved and unique so that you create a destination. What is the median income in the area? Understand the income in a 1-mile radius and 5-mile radius, etc. You need to know this to set your price point and the more income means that your customers will dine with you more often).

Financial planning: ensure capital for rent, utilities, payroll, food, and beverage purchases

Many restaurants fail within the first year because they don’t follow a budget and a business plan. If you have a business plan and budget and review with management staff weekly, then your chances of success are greater.

Sample opening budget for restaurant

To estimate your capital needs you will need to go to your landlord (rent), utility companies (avg. cost for the type of business you are opening in your area), come up with a pay scale and find a payroll company to give you an estimated base line payroll and cost out your recipes and cocktails.

For a guideline, check out this sample opening budget for a restaurant: Opening-Budget-Example.

There are a few ways to secure proper capital for your restaurant

• Take an equipment loan out with your bank. (I bought equipment at auctions and then cost it brand new to get the highest loan I could get). The reason is the bank will only loan you a portion of the value of your equipment.
• Take a second mortgage out on your house or other property. (I did this through a Home Equity loan)
• Get an investor or a group of them and sell shares. (I did not want to do this because you are beholding to someone else) However I do know quite a few Restaurateurs that have used this method and have been very successful.
• Go through the S.B.A. (I went through the S.B.A. to buy the 2 acres that my restaurant was sitting on). It’s always wise to own the dirt because you hold your own destiny in your hands. And when you go to sell your

restaurant, you are selling the entire property not just the business. We made 4 million in sales and only got $350,000. for the business. The 2 acres that we sold with it allowed my wife and I to retire.

Pre-opening preparation: caution not to rush the opening

Staff training.

Proper training of both Front of the House and Back of the house which should include all staff meetings. Develop written tests for each to educate your staff on who you are and what your mission is.

Recipe standards

Development of standardized recipes for food and beverages. So that no matter who is making them they will be consistent.

Dry runs with staff only

This is important because your staff will get an education on how you desire to operate the business, builds camaraderie, and they learn how to describe the food. Then at least three friends and family events (they only pay for alcohol not food) Don’t serve the whole menu all three nights; break the menu up and serve the items over the course of the three nights. Have comment cards made up so your guests can critique the service and food. This is invaluable information. You can tweak service and recipes through the feedback of your guests.

Point of Sales system

The P.O.S. companies that I have used are Aloha (which is great) and Upserve. When we switched to Upserve from Aloha it was because Upserve had handheld devices for order taking that made service smoother and the customer could pay the bill right at their table. However, make sure your internet signal is strong in all areas of your restaurant inside and out. We had an issue with that but solved it with a booster. Other companies are Toast, Square and Clover. All companies will help train your staff.

Proper marketing

Even with the best culinary offerings won’t guarantee success if your customer base is not aware or your establishment. Effective marketing is essential for attracting and building a loyal customer base.

To build my brand, I volunteered to cook at events for 5 causes near to my heart. One was Darkness to Light (because we were foster parents and adopted 5 children). The second was Lowcountry Food Bank (which supports no child goes hungry), Charleston Wine and Food, Charleston Farmers Market, and the Childrens Museum.

Use a P.R. firm which is costly, but you need to focus on running the business and they will use social media on all platforms to build your online presence and S.E.O. By hiring a P.R. firm, they can guide you by showing you your online analytics (what’s working and should you change anything. You can also skip the P.R. firm if it’s not really in your budget and post everyday on Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Hosting charity events is a great way of getting involved with your community and letting people know what you are all about. If you neglect marketing and think that word of mouth will be enough, then your restaurant will struggle to gain traction.

Neglecting your customer feedback

Feedback from your guests is invaluable for restaurant owners wanting to improve and evolve. Listen to them and make small changes so they see you are listening. Then they feel like they are invested in your business and become loyal customers.

Final preparation

Opening a restaurant is an extremely challenging endeavor. But if you plan accordingly, you can increase your chances of success by conducting proper market research, budgeting, getting involved with your community, investing in marketing, prioritizing operational efficiency, and listening to your customer base. You are setting your new business up for success day one. And stay in tune with your industry to stay ahead of the trends, by joining groups like local entrepreneur networking groups, the American Culinary Federation, your local Chamber of Commerce. These organizations will help you become a better leader in your industry.

Chef, Restaurateur, Operations, Cayuga Hospitality Consultants

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Guide: how to open a bagel restaurant?

Thinking of opening a bagel restaurant ? Great idea! Bagels aren't just delicious, they're increasingly popular.

The proof: if more than 120 million bagels were consumed in 2020, the market for this gourmet bread could represent more than 250 million euros by 2025!

So, if you're passionate about the restaurant business and have a soft spot for those round delicacies, here's how you can turn that business dream into reality! We tell you all about it in our Innovorder guide.

1. Doing market research for your bagel brand?

Why and how to conduct market research.

To launch your bagel restaurant project on a solid footing, a thorough understanding of the local market is essential. Who are the bagel lovers in your area? Which varieties attract the most diners? And most importantly, could your bagel burger concept stand out from the crowd? Proper market research will reveal this valuable information and help you tailor your offering to best meet the expectations of your future customers.

Financial planning

Initial costs and budget planning.

Opening a restaurant requires a substantial investment from the outset. Whether you're considering joining a franchise or launching your own brand, initial expenses such as rent, the purchase of specialized equipment for your bagels, and initial marketing efforts add up quickly. So it's essential to have a robust financial plan in place to effectively navigate through these expenses and keep your cash flow in balance.

👉 Find out how to create your business plan in 7 easy steps in this comprehensive guide .

Franchisee or independent?

Each option has its advantages:

• Starting a franchise gives you the backing of an established brand and a proven business model, which can make a lot of things easier, especially when it comes to marketing and brand recognition. Among the best known are Bagelstein and Bagel Corner.
• On the other hand, creating your own bagel restaurant gives you total freedom to customize your menu, décor and marketing strategy. If you have a particular vision, such as that of an innovative burger and bagel venue, opting for an independent project could be the way to realize that unique vision.

👉 To go further: How to accelerate the development of your restaurant franchise

2. Take the right administrative steps

Legal formalities.

Launching your bagel restaurant starts with a few essential legal steps. These include registering your business with the relevant authorities, choosing the right legal structure and, potentially, protecting your trademark. It's vital to understand and manage these steps carefully to avoid future complications. 

Licenses and permits required

Before the doors of your bagel restaurant can officially open, a series of licenses and permits must be obtained. These documents vary depending on your location and what you offer, especially if you plan to sell alcohol or specific food products. Every detail counts, from the health license to the one regulating the use of your commercial space. Make sure you obtain all the necessary certifications well in advance of your planned opening.

👉 Find out all about restaurant licenses in this comprehensive guide

Choice of legal status

Choosing the legal structure of your business is more than a formality; it's a decision that directly impacts your tax obligations, your liability in the event of litigation, and your ability to attract investors. Options range from the simpler sole proprietorship, with unlimited liability, to more complex structures such as the SARL, which offers additional protection, but with more formalities. Think about your current and future needs to choose the framework that will best support your vision and business objectives.

3. Launching your restaurant

Location selection.

Location is essential to the success of your restaurant. A good spot is one where there's a lot of foot traffic: busy pedestrian areas, business districts, or near major schools and universities. Also consider ease of access and parking. A good location can greatly increase your visibility and attract a steady flow of customers.

Restaurant layout

Your restaurant should be more than just a place to eat; it should be a destination. The atmosphere should be warm and the layout practical. Attractive design and a welcoming atmosphere are essential if your first guests are to become regulars. Think of the guest experience in every detail, from seating comfort to lighting!

Suppliers and equipment

The quality of your bagels depends on the quality of your ingredients and equipment. Select suppliers with a reputation for reliability and superior quality. A good partnership with your suppliers will guarantee a constant supply of quality bagels.

👉 To find out more: How to find the best suppliers for your restaurant

4. Implement a marketing strategy

Marketing strategy.

Consider adopting a diversified marketing approach to reach your target audience. Combine traditional advertising techniques with innovative campaigns on social networks (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok...) and local marketing actions. Storytelling can also be a powerful tool for connecting with your customers by sharing your brand story, your values and your passion for bagels!

Opening and launch

Launch your bagel restaurant with a bang. Why not organize a memorable opening event with free tastings, special offers, and invite the local press? Use this event to create a buzz around your new establishment and establish a strong presence from day one.

5. Manage day-to-day operations

Personnel management.

Your staff is the heart of your operation. Invest in their training and well-being to keep them motivated and efficient. Well-trained, happy staff are synonymous with quality customer service that builds loyalty among your guests!

Daily operations

Efficient day-to-day management requires organized routines and smooth communication within your team. Set up systems for everything from inventory management to order taking, to ensure a smooth operation!

6. Digitizing your restaurant

Opening and running a bagel shop is a time- and energy-intensive adventure.

To maximize your chances of success, equip your fast-food restaurant with tools specially designed to save you time, optimize your operations and boost your revenues.

For example, if you want to concentrate on customer reception, service and kitchen preparation, entrust order-taking to an order kiosk. In addition to reducing queues, an order kiosk increases your average bill thanks to appetizing photos of your menu and an intelligent order path offering automatic extras (drinks, desserts, etc.).

To expand your catchment area and attract thousands of potential customers, offer home delivery and click & collect with online ordering .‍

I've increased my sales by 50% thanks to delivery and click and collect. Peggy, BCHEF franchisee

To go even further, download our free guide by clicking on the banner below 👇

Are you opening or taking over a restaurant? Contact an Innovorder expert to get personalized advice for your restaurant!

Eat App for

How it works

16+ Best Online Restaurant Reservation Systems Compared (2024 Edition)

Today's guests have a few expectations when booking a table.

Not only do they want a seamless experience from the beginning of their reservation to its end with as few interactions as possible, but they also expect real-time waitlists , reviews and recommendations from other guests, and an option to make their preferences known.

Using an online restaurant reservation system or restaurant reservation software gives customers the freedom to make a booking whenever they like without having to call you.

The best restaurant reservation systems

A quick search on Google reveals there are several restaurant reservation systems in existence. How do you know which one is right for your restaurant? What are some popular options in the restaurant management space?

To help you discover the right reservation system for you, we've rounded up a list of the 16 best online restaurant reservation systems with an in-depth analysis of each.

Let's jump right in.

Eat App is a cloud-based, cross-platform (you can use it on iPads, Desktops, and mobile phones), and a simple-to-use restaurant reservation system .

Eat App recognizes the importance of a restaurant reservation app and ensures that usability is as simple as possible across different devices. It also keeps in mind that other types of restaurants have different needs - for example, restaurants requiring prepaid reservations for high-end dining experiences.

In addition, Eat App also includes powerful table management , guest database and CRM features that help with day-to-day operations, reducing mistakes and improving revenue.

An all-in-one solution to help restaurants provide the best hospitality .

The reservation system enables easy floor plan setup and control over party sizes and availability directly through the app and also comes with an easy-to-install widget that shows real-time table availability for your guests to book directly from your website or social media profiles including capturing upfront online payments for events or booking deposits.

Eat App also enables your restaurant to access a global reservation network to attract guests through partners like Instagram, Facebook, Google, TripAdvisor, American Express, and more, helping you cast a wide net and build a direct connection with guests on their platform of choice, increasing covers and overall visibility.

Eat App offers a system that is the easiest way to take online restaurant reservations and seat walk-ins, without the headache of expensive software and complicated pricing structures.

This efficient system also helps restaurants with flexible and powerful shift management, credit card hold for reducing no-shows, restaurant automation , iOS, and Android manager apps for on-the-fly management, as well as cross-restaurant data sync if you have multiple branches or operate as a group.

Eat App’s various integration possibilities including POS , phone and payment integrations take your hospitality and marketing to the next level with guest-advanced data, like spend per guest, itemized menu items per guest and voided tickets, and improved customer service.

Simply put, Eat App puts you in control of the data and the reservation experience, allowing you to build direct relationships with your guests.

• Manage staff, bookings, and guest experiences all in one spot.
• Use automated emails to encourage return visits.
• Reduce no-shows and cancellations
• Manage your waitlist at the door or online
• Utilize reports to identify trends and boost profits.
• Access excellent 24/7 customer support.
• Seamlessly integrate with popular POS systems.
• Connect with guests through SMS and two-way WhatsApp messaging.
• Gain insights into guest preferences with detailed profiles.
• Boost revenue with event ticket sales and pre-order options.
• Send booking confirmations via SMS and email.
• Integrate social media channels for direct bookings.
• Fully customize your booking widget to fit your brand. 
• These features are only available for Eat App customers. 

Want to explore what Eat App has to offer? Book a free Eat App consultation to learn more.

Eat App Pricing

Eat App offers simple pricing for their restaurant reservation system:

Free Plan - $0/month: Basic table management, access to online booking channels, and 30 cover limit.

Starter Plan - $49/month: Full table management, access to online booking channels, automated messaging, 300 cover limit, and 25 free SMS monthly.

Basic Plan - $129/month: Full table management, access to online booking channels, simple reports, guest surveys, automated messages, unlimited Covers, and 100 free SMS monthly.

Pro Plan - $229/month: Everything in the basic plan, 300 free SMS monthly, CRM and guest database, reporting and analytics, customizable design and messaging, auto guest tagging, and marketing campaigns.

For a fully integrated reservation system and table management with unlimited covers go for the $129/month plan or if you want more advanced restaurant management with rich analytics and full guest CRM the $229 plan is perfect. If you need help deciding which Eat App plan is right for you, take the quiz.

Resy offers a waitlist and restaurant reservation system with mobile bookings, POS integration, and table management features.

Like any other full-featured reservation system, it lets you create a custom floor plan including bar seats, dining room, and patio, for example. Guests can cancel or confirm through text and even inform you they're running late.

Upon purchase, the reservation system will also let you share guest notes and preferences across all your restaurants on as many devices as you'd prefer.

Through the Resy mobile app, every guest writes their details, shares birthdays, and indicates food restrictions and allergies – so you don't have to ask. Fully adaptable to your customers, you can also attach notes for additional context.

Resy restaurant booking also directly integrates with Facebook, Trip Advisor, Airbnb, and other channels to help people discover and connect with your restaurant. 

• Boost table turnover and earnings with Resy's seat management.
• Generate extra money by selling event tickets.
• Use reporting tools to monitor and improve performance.
• Text guests about bookings and offer touch-free payment.
• Get guest feedback through the Resy app.
• Resy’s team helps restaurants target the right customers.
• The dining network is small with limited marketing help, making it less suitable for new restaurants without regular customers.

Resy Pricing

Resy offers three pricing tiers: Platform, Platform 360, and Full Stack.

Starting at $189 per month and POS integration, the Platform tier offers unlimited users, devices, and covers. The Platform 360 tier costs $399 per month and offers extra features for branding and hospitality, including customizable guest messaging and a data and analytics package. The Full Stack starts at $899 per month, offering features like high-volume network configuration and API access for restaurants looking for enterprise scale.

For ticketed events, Resy charges a 3% fee from Platform users, which goes down to 2% for those upgrading to or investing in the Platform 360 or Full Stack plan.

Wisely bills itself as an operations and marketing system that includes reservations, waitlists, marketing features, table management, and more.

Like other providers you get a customizable floor plan - all it takes is a glance for your wait staff to know who's seated where, what time did they arrive, and what they like to order.

Like any other advanced restaurant reservation system, when it comes to anticipating your guests' needs, Wisely automatically integrates data from your point-of-sale, public reviews, and more.

This lets you see if they have a certain preference for the ambiance, food, serving style, etc. In addition, smart seating and booking algorithms allow you to create custom plans for one-off events, regular tasting experiences, or holidays.  

Simply put, Wisely puts you in control of the data and the table reservation experience, allowing you to build direct relationships with your guests.

• Wisely’s booking system integrates with common POS systems to lessen the need for extra devices.
• Strong marketing tools using emails and texts.
• Advanced software for managing tables and analyzing to boost your restaurant’s results.
• Options for pick-up orders and touch-free payment.
• The Wisely app connects with Olo for delivery services.
• No marketplace to advertise your restaurant to new customers.
• No tailored pricing plans for big restaurants.

Wisely Pricing

Wisely offers two main packages, in addition to custom software and branded apps. The Operations Software package is billed annually at $200 per location, per month. Customers can also pay monthly based on usage: free up to 300 tables, $150 per month for 301-800 tables, and $220 per month for more than 800.

The Growth Software package is billed annually at $215 or monthly at $260 per month. Branded apps range from $40,000 to $50,000. For custom software, customers must contact Wisely for a quote.

Tock is a table management system that aims at improving restaurant revenue by reducing no-shows through a ticketing system that allows restaurants to take table reservation deposits and prepayments. 

Automated notifications and waitlists allow you to fill last-minute cancellations with the right customers, and pre-visit questionnaires ensure you're aware of your guests' preferences before they walk through that front door. Also offered is an offline mode that keeps you and your restaurant up and running.

For restaurants aiming to take their customer experience to the next level, Tock offers fully configurable guest notes, tags, and automatic LinkedIn/Instagram/Facebook profile integration.

In a nutshell, Tock provides you with everything you need to deliver a magical hospitality experience. 

• Advanced table management increases profits.
• Includes high-profile clients and restaurant partners.
• Provides strong online marketing support.
• Offers advanced tools for customer relationships like rewards, VIP discounts, and post-visit surveys.
• Supports online take-out orders and touch-free payments.
• Tock needs you to use your own devices for access and management, but it works with any laptop, iPad, or smartphone.

Tock Pricing

Tock is available in three plans: Intro, Plus, and Pro. Intro is a free monthly plan with a 3% prepaid fee. It's geared toward pop-ups and prepaid culinary events that don't need table management software.

The Plus plan starts at $199 per month with a 2% prepaid fee. It offers a complete table management and reservation system, including prepaid experiences like a chef's counter or tasting menus.

The Pro plan is ideal for high volume or chef-driven restaurants, offering full features and 0% prepaid reservation fees. This plan starts at $699 per month.

OpenTable offers table reservation software that allows you to organize shift summaries, automate reservation reminders, optimize turn times, and more.

Once installed, customers can see real-time availability and book a table online through your website. Table categories allow you to get more covers by letting patrons book the patio, bar, and other seating areas.

Like any other restaurant reservation system, it also saves useful customer details such as guest history and visit notes to help you and your team deliver personalized service.

Besides all that, OpenTable offers integrations and access to 27m diners via its expensive diner network to help you fill more seats and effectively manage reservations.

• Connects with 31 million diners.
• Guests can see your available bookings anytime via the app.
• Show off your restaurant with photos, menus, and safety info.
• Buy a boost to make your restaurant more visible on the app.
• Confirm reservations with guests via text messages.
• Core and Pro packages offer data collection and performance visualization.
• OpenTable leads the industry, so there's a lot of competition for visibility.
• Bigger restaurants that can pay for more visibility tend to do better than smaller ones.

OpenTable Pricing

OpenTable offers a three-tiered system starting with the basic which gives you access to OpenTable's dining network for $39/month and a per-cover charge of $1.50. The Core package offers basic table management and waitlist features for $249 and a per-cover charge of $1.

The full stack, priced at $449/month gives you access to all of OpenTable's extensive table management systems, with a per-cover charge of $1.

Yelp Reservations

Yelp 's reservation software has the standard features you would expect that enable you to reach more diners, give accurate wait times, assign servers, and accept bookings on your Yelp business page.

When it comes to booking, Yelp lets your prospective customers check availability and reserve places in just a couple of taps, directly from your Yelp page.

In addition, you can set up a booking widget to accept online reservations from your restaurant website. Special configurations allow you to keep track of your floor and service activity from any device, any place in the world to save time.

If you're already active on Yelp, this reservation system might be just what you need to turn your activity and presence into a profit.

• Add your restaurant booking system to Yelp’s well-known business listing.
• Talk to guests via text messages.
• Promote your restaurant to Yelp’s large number of users.
• Manage your restaurant’s seating with Yelp’s Guest Manager.
• Give iPads to customers to manage their Yelp bookings.
• Lacks advanced insights for managing guests and optimizing seating.
• Offers weaker marketing support compared to competitors.
• You must compete for attention with other restaurants and businesses on Yelp.

Yelp Pricing

Yelp charges a flat rate of $249 per month with no cover fees, setup fees, or web access fees. The iPad is included in the cost. Features include two-way diner messaging, table management, and waitlist management capabilities.

Table Agent

Table Agent aims to help restaurants save as much money as possible by offering an affordable and easy-to-use table reservation system. 

As Table Agent's main focus is reducing costs, it offers a rather simple restaurant reservation system that can be accessed via the web and has limited updates. 

Table Agent follows a slightly different approach to the other reservation management players with a "list" based approach for managing table reservations.

Think of a traditional restaurant reservation system or record book but in a digital form. Apart from the list system, Table Agent also offers an online booking widget for reservations.

If you're only looking for a simple system to help organize your reservations better, Table Agent can be the right fit for you, however, if you're looking for something more advanced, you might want to consider other options. 

• Control your restaurant's waitlist, bookings, seating, and table status in one app.
• Send texts to communicate with guests.
• Send special offers and discounts to guests through the app.
• Use a digital guestbook and tools for managing guests.
• Reports and visuals help improve your restaurant's seating.
• TableAgent doesn't have a marketplace to feature your restaurant.
• TableAgent offers limited customer support.

Table Agent Pricing

Table Agent offers a free-of-cost system without any monthly subscription or cover fee for the basic features.

However, for more advanced functionality, you will have to subscribe to add-ons at an added cost. For example, per transaction fee is priced at $1 or $29 for an unlimited per-month package, and SMS packages start at $20. 

Eveve facilitates real-time bookings by combining live online booking pages with real-time availability. Table management and booking pages accommodate instant table reservations for guests, which maximizes floor efficiency as reservations are available 24/7.

Another feature, called full availability, lets you offer alternative dates to guests when their desired ones are fully booked—all basic features of a good restaurant reservation system.

The customer database is auto-populated based on the day-to-day happenings, giving you insight into your guests' demographics. Furthermore, remote access allows you to monitor the restaurant from any place to make sure it's always operating efficiently.

• Efficient table management tailored to your market with 24/7 booking for guests.
• Advanced tools to manage guests and send discounts and marketing to VIPs.
• Detailed analytics and reports help you make smart decisions for your restaurant.
• Eveve lacks many marketing tools that competitors offer.
• There is no marketplace for advertising your restaurant on Eveve.

Eveve Pricing

Eveve's website doesn't disclose pricing, but other sources report that this system typically costs between $150-300 per month, with no additional fees per diner. To get a quote, restaurateurs should request a demo from Eveve's website.

Tablein provides smaller restaurants with modern capabilities to attract customers, optimize guest capacity, control kitchen staff's workload, and more.

Once set up, the software automatically allocates tables and displays all reservations on an interactive calendar or plan. Also, you get the option to remind guests of their upcoming visits, which automatically reduces the number of no-shows.  

Plus, you get the added benefit of being able to access marketing features to fill empty hours, list events and increase restaurant sales . If you have a small restaurant, Tablein can help streamline all reservations with a basic booking tool.

It's important to note that Tablein doesn't offer table management of any kind or advanced features like POS integration and server management. This puts it in a slightly different category from all the other systems in this post. 

• Easy to use.
• Helps arrange floor plans.
• Manages table use to prevent empty spots.
• Sends reminders to guests to reduce no-shows.
• Collects guest feedback for more exposure.
• Manages waitlists.
• Provides reports and analytics.
• Processes pre-payments for bookings.
• Fewer features than some competitors.
• May not be best for very large places needing comprehensive management tools.

Tablein Pricing

Tablein offers a free trial with free installation and live support, and two pricing plans: Standard & Premium. The Standard plan starts at $75 per month and includes 150 bookings per month, with a $0.25 charge for each additional booking. This plan includes all features, free live support, and free updates.

The Premium plan costs $115 per month and includes unlimited bookings and free installation, live support, and updates. 

ResOS is a cloud-based restaurant reservation system that offers a range of features to streamline your operations and enhance guest experiences. This system allows you to set up your restaurant's floor plan, manage party sizes, and track availability. ResOS also offers a seamless widget integration for your website and social media profiles, enabling guests to book tables directly from those platforms.

Moreover, ResOS offers integration options such as POS, phone, and payment integrations, allowing you and your team to gather advanced guest data and insights for improved service and targeted marketing efforts. 

ResOS Pricing

The ResOs unlimited tier which has all the basics for managing reservations starts at $95 per month.

Sevenrooms is a reservation and guest management platform designed to elevate restaurant operations. Sevenrooms enables you to optimize table assignments, manage reservations, and maintain a detailed guest database.

Sevenrooms provides a mobile app for on-the-go management, allowing you to monitor and make adjustments to reservations and waitlists in real time. Its integration with various platforms like Facebook and TripAdvisor helps you reach a broader audience and boost reservations.

• Easy to use with continuous improvements.
• Customizable features for managing guest interactions.
• Good for capturing detailed customer data.
• Integrates well with various POS systems.
• Can be complex to navigate, especially during setup.
• Occasional glitches and some integration issues.
• No free version is available.
• Not the standard in the industry, which may lead to unfamiliarity and lost reservations.

Sevenrooms Pricing

Pricing for Sevenroom varies depending on your specific restaurant and team needs - but if you're looking for table management, reservation management, and basic integrations, it will set your restaurant back $700 per month.

Servme is a restaurant reservation system that offers an array of features to streamline the guest management processes. Servme assists you in managing reservations, optimizing table assignments, and providing excellent customer service.

Their platform facilitates direct communication between your restaurant and guests, enabling them to book tables seamlessly from your website or social media pages. Servme also offers waitlist management, ensuring that you can fill cancellations efficiently.

• User-friendly reservation and table management accessible across devices.
• Integrates with social media for direct reservations.
• Features marketing tools and CRM for personalized guest experiences.
• Allows pre-payments to reduce no-shows.
• Some users might find the features limited compared to larger, more established competitors.

Servme Pricing

Pricing for Servme is not publicized but we estimate a standard package to cost around $300 per month per restaurant.

The Fork is an online table reservation system that enhances your restaurant's visibility and makes guest bookings easier. With a user-friendly interface, it allows diners to discover your restaurant, check availability, and make reservations online.

Integration with platforms like TripAdvisor and Google expands your reach, while the booking widget enables direct online reservations. The Fork also provides guest management tools, a detailed customer database, and reporting features to track table reservation trends and make data-driven decisions.

• User-friendly with promotions that attract diners.
• Increases restaurant visibility and helps fill quieter periods.
• Charges commissions, reducing restaurant earnings.
• This can impact profitability due to fees.

The Fork Pricing

Pricing for The Fork can vary depending on your restaurant's location and specific needs, but if your restaurant is located in the UK for example, you'll be spending $178 per month for The Fork's pro plan. In addition to the monthly subscription fee, The Fork also charges on a per-cover basis.

Hostme is a versatile table reservation system designed to optimize your restaurant's operations and guest management. With its easy-to-use interface, Hostme offers features like table management, waitlist management, and online reservations to ensure a seamless dining experience.

Hostme's unique features include its SMS notification system, which allows you to keep guests informed about their table reservation status and waitlist updates. This contributes to a smooth guest experience and reduces no-shows.

Hostme provides insights and analytics to understand table reservation trends and improve table turnover. Integration options enable synchronization with POS and other systems for enhanced efficiency.

• Easy to use interface, quick to set up and train staff.
• Includes waitlist, floor management, server rotation, digital guestbook, and online ordering.
• Sends booking confirmations via texts and emails.
• Offers detailed analytics and private guest data.
• Can sell event tickets and allow pre-orders to boost revenue.
• Can collect deposits or charge cancellation fees to lower no-shows.
• Provides premium chat and phone support.
• Lacks a marketplace to find new customers.
• Limited options for POS integration.

Hostme Pricing

For Hostme's most complete package for restaurants, you'll be spending $169 per month. 

ResDiary is a user-friendly restaurant reservation and table management system that optimizes guest handling and operations in restaurants.

ResDiary's unique feature is its channel management capabilities, allowing you to connect with various online booking platforms and increase your restaurant's visibility across different channels. This feature ensures your restaurant can reach a broader audience and drive more reservations.

Resdiary offers customizable messaging and communication tools, as well as reporting and analytics features for data-driven business decisions to enhance client and guest satisfaction and revenue.

• Effective booking management and table handling.
• Automation and customization features streamline the booking process.
• Flat-fee pricing model offers good value.
• Includes email marketing tools for customer relations and event promotion.
• A complicated software interface leads to user frustration.
• Lack of effective customer support after initial setup.
• Limited flexibility in customization tools.

ResDiary Pricing

ResDiary offers three pricing options for restaurants.

ResDiary Connect will cost $89 per month and includes 150 free bookings, ResDiary Express will cost $139 per month and include 500 free bookings, and ResDiary Pro will cost $189 per month and include unlimited bookings per month.

Restaurants will also need to pay a $129 setup fee when proceeding with ResDiary. To get the full benefits of ResDiary at your restaurant, they offer a host of add-ons which will cost an average of $45 per month per add-on.

Toast Tables

Toast Tables is a highly efficient table reservation and guest management system that seamlessly integrates with your restaurant's operations. With its intuitive interface, Toast Tables provides a wide range of features including advanced table management, efficient reservation handling, and effective communication with guests.

One of Toast Tables' highlights is its integration with the Toast POS system, creating a cohesive experience for both your front-of-house and back-of-house teams. This integration ensures accurate order information and personalized service based on guest preferences.

Toast Tables also offers waitlist management and online booking capabilities, allowing diners to easily reserve tables from your restaurant, website, or social media account profiles. Additionally, its reporting and analytics tools provide insights into reservation trends and guest behavior.

• Quick setup.
• Automatically updates table status.
• Manages server rotations and waitlist status.
• Creates guest profiles and supports 2-way SMS.
• Allows loyalty sign-ups and data-driven marketing.
• Imports floor plans.
• Compatible with iOS 12 and Android 11 or later.
• Provides accurate wait times.
• Specifically designed for restaurants.
• Limited compatibility with non-Toast systems.
• Extra costs for advanced features.
• Reliance on internet connection.
• Fewer customization options.
• Staff will need time to learn how to use it.

Toast Tables Pricing

Unlimited access to Toast Tables will cost $199 per month per restaurant.

Considerations for choosing a restaurant reservation system

To create this review we had a look at each restaurant reservation system in this list by signing up for each product, (where possible) and assessing the ease of use and the available features.

We also looked at current reviews on sites like G2 , as well as reviewed the pricing pages of each site to get up-to-date information on the price of each service.

To help get you and your team started, let’s first establish the criteria we used to evaluate the best online restaurant reservation systems.

As you do your research, there are some key considerations to look at to ensure that you’re getting your dollars’ worth when choosing a restaurant reservation system. Finding the best restaurant reservation software is crucial for meeting specific business needs amidst a variety of options available in the market.

Selecting the best restaurant reservation app is important for any restaurant owner. It's crucial to compare features and suitability for different types of restaurants, including high-end restaurants and wineries that may benefit from features like prepaid reservations. Platforms like Tock and OpenTable stand out for their ability to cater to high-volume restaurants with extensive features, integrations, and digital marketing solutions.

Is the restaurant reservation system intuitive and easy to use? Does it help reduce no-shows through features like SMS notifications, emails, push notifications, and tags for previous no-show guests? Does it offer booking widgets to help increase your online restaurant reservations too?

Does it help you manage capacity by offering table management, customer service, and waitlisting features? 

Does the restaurant reservation system streamline your front-of-house operations? Can it manage walk-ins as easily as it manages online reservations?

While cost shouldn't be the only thing you're considering, you might find that two or three of the best online restaurant reservation software are so similar that price will be the defining consideration.

Make sure there are no hidden or exorbitant fees, like installation, setup, restaurant reservation, or SMS fees. This is especially true for restaurants with high numbers of reservations. 

The takeaway

There are a lot of restaurant reservation systems out there, catering to the full range of budgets and needs.

Hopefully this lowdown on some of the best online restaurant reservation systems has helped you to identify which ones are within your budget while still offering all the features you're looking for in your shiny new restaurant reservation system.

While it may seem costly, these systems can offer much more value than they may seem on the surface.

Ultimately, the right one will pay for itself – and more – by organizing and streamlining your internal operations while creating meaningful customer experiences that consistently keep them coming back for more.

Frequently asked questions about restaurant reservation software (FAQs)

What is restaurant reservation software.

Restaurant reservation software is a helpful tool that allows customers to book tables at restaurants online, while also helping restaurant staff manage reservations and walk-ins, seating arrangements, and customer information efficiently.

How do restaurants keep track of restaurant reservations?

Conventionally, traditional restaurants would use a reservation book to keep track of reservations. As restaurant technology advanced, operators could adopt new industry-leading tools to help with the process. Rather than relying on pen and paper, a restaurant reservation system could be employed to track every single reservation, provide insightful analytics about performance, and even notify staff if a reservation is canceled. A good reservation system should be able to track both walk-ins and online reservations.

What software is used for booking?

Restaurant booking software like Eat App can be used to allow guests to make online bookings at their favorite restaurants. With easy-to-use booking widgets that integrate across all online channels, this makes it easier than ever for guests to discover and book tables at their favorite restaurant.

What is online reservations software?

Online restaurant reservation software is reservation software that is both cloud-based and makes it possible for guests to make restaurant reservations online.

What is a restaurant reservation system?

A restaurant reservation system is a type of restaurant software that enables both customers and restaurant staff to manage table reservations efficiently. It allows customers to book tables at their favorite restaurant online or through other channels (such as Google or Instagram), and it assists restaurant staff in organizing reservations and walk-ins, managing seating arrangements, and keeping track of customer information. This reservation system also helps streamline the reservation process and enhance dining experiences for all parties involved.

Further reading

• Best restaurant management systems
• Best restaurant CRM systems
• Best waitlist management systems
• Best restaurant marketing tools

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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Here is a free business plan sample for a fruit and vegetable store.

Have you ever envisioned owning a bustling fruit and vegetable market that serves as a cornerstone of health in your community? Wondering where to start?

Look no further, as we're about to guide you through a comprehensive business plan tailored for a fruit and vegetable market.

Creating a solid business plan is crucial for any aspiring entrepreneur. It serves as a roadmap, outlining your vision, objectives, and the strategies you'll employ to turn your fresh produce venture into a thriving business.

To jumpstart your planning process with ease and precision, feel free to utilize our fruit and vegetable market business plan template. Our team of experts is also on standby to provide a free review and fine-tuning of your plan.

How to draft a great business plan for your fruit and vegetable store?

A good business plan for a fruit and vegetable market must cater to the unique aspects of this type of retail business.

Initially, it's crucial to provide a comprehensive overview of the market landscape. This includes up-to-date statistics and an exploration of emerging trends within the industry, similar to what we've incorporated in our fruit and vegetable market business plan template .

Your business plan should articulate your vision clearly. Define your target demographic (such as local residents, restaurants, or health-conscious consumers) and establish your market's distinctive features (like offering organic produce, exotic fruits, or locally-sourced vegetables).

Market analysis is the next critical component. This requires a thorough examination of local competitors, market dynamics, and consumer buying patterns.

For a fruit and vegetable market, it's imperative to detail the range of products you intend to sell. Describe your selection of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and any additional items you plan to offer, and discuss how these choices align with the preferences and needs of your customer base.

The operational plan is equally important. It should outline the location of your market, the layout of the retail space, your supply chain for fresh produce, and inventory management practices.

Given the nature of a fruit and vegetable market, it is vital to highlight the freshness and quality of your produce, your relationships with growers and suppliers, and adherence to health and safety standards.

Then, delve into your marketing and sales strategies. How do you plan to attract and keep customers coming back? Consider your approach to promotions, customer loyalty programs, and potential value-added services (like home delivery or a juice bar).

Incorporating digital strategies, such as an online ordering system or a robust social media presence, is also crucial in the modern marketplace.

The financial section is another cornerstone of your business plan. It should encompass the initial investment, projected sales, operating expenses, and the point at which you expect to break even.

With a fruit and vegetable market, managing waste and understanding the shelf life of products are critical, so precise planning and knowledge of your financials are essential. For assistance, consider using our financial forecast for a fruit and vegetable market .

Compared to other business plans, a fruit and vegetable market plan must pay closer attention to the perishability of inventory, the importance of a robust supply chain, and the potential for seasonal fluctuations.

A well-crafted business plan not only helps you to define your strategies and vision but also plays a pivotal role in attracting investors or securing loans.

Lenders and investors are keen on a solid market analysis, realistic financial projections, and a comprehensive understanding of the day-to-day operations of a fruit and vegetable market.

By presenting a thorough and substantiated plan, you showcase your dedication and readiness for the success of your venture.

To achieve these goals while saving time, you are welcome to fill out our fruit and vegetable market business plan template .

A free example of business plan for a fruit and vegetable store

Here, we will provide a concise and illustrative example of a business plan for a specific project.

This example aims to provide an overview of the essential components of a business plan. It is important to note that this version is only a summary. As it stands, this business plan is not sufficiently developed to support a profitability strategy or convince a bank to provide financing.

To be effective, the business plan should be significantly more detailed, including up-to-date market data, more persuasive arguments, a thorough market study, a three-year action plan, as well as detailed financial tables such as a projected income statement, projected balance sheet, cash flow budget, and break-even analysis.

All these elements have been thoroughly included by our experts in the business plan template they have designed for a fruit and vegetable market .

Here, we will follow the same structure as in our business plan template.

Market Opportunity

Market data and figures.

The fruit and vegetable market is an essential and robust component of the global food industry.

Recent estimates value the global fruit and vegetable trade at over 1 trillion dollars, with expectations for continued growth as consumers seek healthier eating options. In the United States, the fruit and vegetable industry contributes significantly to the economy, with thousands of markets and stores providing a wide range of produce to meet consumer demand.

These statistics underscore the critical role that fruit and vegetable markets play in not only providing nutritious food options but also in supporting local agriculture and economies.

Current trends in the fruit and vegetable industry indicate a shift towards organic and locally sourced produce, as consumers become more health-conscious and environmentally aware.

There is an increasing demand for organic fruits and vegetables, driven by the perception of better quality and concerns about pesticides and other chemicals. The local food movement is also gaining momentum, with consumers showing a preference for produce that is grown locally to support community farmers and reduce carbon emissions associated with transportation.

Technological advancements are influencing the industry as well, with innovations in vertical farming and hydroponics allowing for more sustainable and space-efficient growing methods.

Online grocery shopping and delivery services are expanding, making it easier for consumers to access fresh produce directly from their homes.

Additionally, the push for transparency in food sourcing continues to grow, with consumers wanting to know more about where their food comes from and how it is grown.

These trends are shaping the future of the fruit and vegetable market, as businesses strive to meet the evolving preferences and values of modern consumers.

Success Factors

Several key factors contribute to the success of a fruit and vegetable market.

Quality and freshness of produce are paramount. Markets that offer a wide variety of fresh, high-quality fruits and vegetables are more likely to build and maintain a dedicated customer base.

Diversity in product offerings, including exotic or hard-to-find produce, can differentiate a market from its competitors.

Location is also vital, as markets that are easily accessible to consumers will naturally attract more foot traffic.

Customer service is another important aspect, with knowledgeable and friendly staff enhancing the shopping experience and encouraging repeat visits.

Effective cost management and the ability to adapt to changing consumer trends, such as the demand for organic and locally grown produce, are crucial for the long-term viability of a fruit and vegetable market.

The Project

Project presentation.

Our fruit and vegetable market project is designed to cater to the increasing consumer demand for fresh, organic, and locally-sourced produce. Situated in a community-focused neighborhood, our market will offer a diverse selection of fruits and vegetables, emphasizing seasonal and organic options. We will partner with local farmers and suppliers to ensure that our customers have access to the freshest produce available, supporting sustainable agricultural practices and reducing our carbon footprint.

We aim to provide not just produce, but a holistic healthy eating experience by offering a range of complementary products such as herbs, spices, and artisanal condiments. Our market will be a hub for health-conscious consumers and those interested in cooking with the finest ingredients.

Our fruit and vegetable market is set to become a cornerstone in the community, promoting healthier lifestyles and fostering connections between local producers and consumers.

Value Proposition

The value proposition of our fruit and vegetable market lies in our commitment to providing the community with the highest quality fresh produce. We understand the importance of nutrition and the role that fruits and vegetables play in maintaining a healthy diet.

Our market will offer a unique shopping experience where customers can enjoy a wide variety of produce, learn about the benefits of incorporating more fruits and vegetables into their diets, and discover new and exotic varieties. We are dedicated to creating a welcoming environment where everyone can find something to enrich their meals and support their well-being.

By focusing on local and organic sourcing, we also contribute to the sustainability of our food systems and the prosperity of local farmers, aligning our business with the values of environmental stewardship and community support.

Project Owner

The project owner is an individual with a profound passion for healthy living and community engagement. With a background in agricultural studies and experience in the food retail industry, they are well-equipped to establish a market that prioritizes quality and freshness.

They bring a wealth of knowledge about the seasonality and sourcing of produce, and are committed to creating a marketplace that reflects the diversity and richness of nature's offerings. Their dedication to health, nutrition, and sustainability drives them to build a market that not only sells fruits and vegetables but also educates and inspires the community to embrace a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle.

Their vision is to create a space where the joy of fresh, wholesome food is accessible to all, and where the market serves as a vibrant gathering place for people to connect with their food and each other.

The Market Study

Market segments.

The market segments for this fruit and vegetable market are diverse and cater to a wide range of consumers.

Firstly, there are health-conscious individuals who prioritize fresh, organic produce in their diets for wellness and nutritional benefits.

Secondly, the market serves customers who are looking for locally-sourced and seasonal produce to support community farmers and reduce their carbon footprint.

Additionally, the market attracts individuals with specific dietary needs, such as vegans, vegetarians, and those with food sensitivities who require a variety of fresh produce options.

Culinary professionals, including chefs and caterers, represent another segment, seeking high-quality ingredients to enhance their dishes.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis of the fruit and vegetable market project highlights several key factors.

Strengths include a strong focus on fresh, high-quality produce, relationships with local farmers, and a commitment to sustainability and eco-friendly practices.

Weaknesses might involve the perishable nature of inventory, the need for constant supply chain management, and potential seasonal fluctuations in product availability.

Opportunities exist in expanding the market's reach through online sales and delivery services, as well as in educating consumers about the benefits of eating fresh and local produce.

Threats could include competition from larger grocery chains with more buying power, adverse weather affecting crop yields, and potential economic downturns reducing consumer spending on premium produce.

Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis in the fruit and vegetable market sector indicates a varied landscape.

Direct competitors include other local markets, organic food stores, and large supermarkets with extensive produce sections.

These competitors vie for customers who value convenience, variety, and price.

Potential competitive advantages for our market include superior product freshness, strong community ties, exceptional customer service, and a focus on sustainable and ethical sourcing.

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of these competitors is crucial for carving out a niche and ensuring customer loyalty.

Competitive Advantages

Our fruit and vegetable market's dedication to offering the freshest and highest quality produce sets us apart from the competition.

We provide a wide array of fruits and vegetables, including rare and exotic items, to cater to the diverse tastes and needs of our customers.

Our commitment to sustainability, through supporting local farmers and minimizing waste, resonates with environmentally conscious consumers.

We also emphasize transparency and education about the source and benefits of our produce, fostering a trusting relationship with our clientele.

You can also read our articles about: - how to open a fruit and vegetable store: a complete guide - the customer segments of a fruit and vegetable store - the competition study for a fruit and vegetable store

The Strategy

Development plan.

Our three-year development plan for the fresh fruit and vegetable market is designed to promote healthy living within the community.

In the first year, our goal is to establish a strong local presence by sourcing a wide variety of high-quality, seasonal produce and building relationships with local farmers and suppliers.

The second year will focus on expanding our reach by setting up additional market locations and possibly introducing mobile market services to access a broader customer base.

In the third year, we plan to diversify our offerings by including organic and exotic fruits and vegetables, as well as implementing educational programs on nutrition and sustainable agriculture.

Throughout this period, we will be committed to sustainability, community engagement, and providing exceptional service to ensure we become a staple in our customers' healthy lifestyles.

Business Model Canvas

The Business Model Canvas for our fruit and vegetable market targets health-conscious consumers and those looking for fresh, local produce.

Our value proposition is centered on offering the freshest, high-quality fruits and vegetables, with a focus on local and organic options, and providing exceptional customer service.

We will sell our products through our physical market locations and consider an online ordering system for customer convenience, utilizing our key resources such as our relationships with local farmers and our knowledgeable staff.

Key activities include sourcing and curating produce, maintaining quality control, and engaging with the community.

Our revenue streams will be generated from the sales of produce, while our costs will be associated with procurement, operations, and marketing efforts.

Access a complete and editable real Business Model Canvas in our business plan template .

Marketing Strategy

Our marketing strategy is centered on community engagement and education.

We aim to highlight the health benefits of fresh produce and the environmental advantages of buying locally. Our approach includes community events, cooking demonstrations, and partnerships with local health and wellness organizations.

We will also leverage social media to showcase our daily offerings, share tips on healthy eating, and feature stories from our partner farmers.

Additionally, we plan to offer loyalty programs and seasonal promotions to encourage repeat business and attract new customers.

Risk Policy

The risk policy for our fruit and vegetable market focuses on mitigating risks associated with perishable goods, supply chain management, and market fluctuations.

We will implement strict quality control measures and develop a robust inventory management system to minimize waste and ensure product freshness.

Building strong relationships with a diverse group of suppliers will help us manage supply risks and price volatility.

We will also maintain a conservative financial strategy to manage operational costs effectively and ensure business sustainability.

Insurance coverage will be in place to protect against unforeseen events that could impact our business operations.

Why Our Project is Viable

We believe in the viability of a fruit and vegetable market that prioritizes freshness, quality, and community health.

With a growing trend towards healthy eating and local sourcing, our market is well-positioned to meet consumer demand.

We are committed to creating a shopping experience that supports local agriculture and provides educational value to our customers.

Adaptable to market trends and customer feedback, we are excited about the potential of our fruit and vegetable market to become a cornerstone of healthy living in our community.

You can also read our articles about: - the Business Model Canvas of a fruit and vegetable store - the marketing strategy for a fruit and vegetable store

The Financial Plan

Of course, the text presented below is far from sufficient to serve as a solid and credible financial analysis for a bank or potential investor. They expect specific numbers, financial statements, and charts demonstrating the profitability of your project.

All these elements are available in our business plan template for a fruit and vegetable market and our financial plan for a fruit and vegetable market .

Initial expenses for our fruit and vegetable market include costs for securing a retail space in a high-traffic area, purchasing refrigeration units and display equipment to maintain and showcase fresh produce, obtaining necessary permits and licenses, investing in a robust inventory management system, and launching marketing initiatives to attract customers to our location.

Our revenue assumptions are based on an in-depth analysis of the local market demand for fresh, high-quality fruits and vegetables, taking into account the increasing trend towards healthy eating and organic produce.

We expect sales to grow steadily as we establish our market's reputation for offering a wide variety of fresh and locally sourced produce.

The projected income statement outlines expected revenues from the sale of fruits and vegetables, cost of goods sold (including procurement, transportation, and storage), and operating expenses (rent, marketing, salaries, utilities, etc.).

This results in a forecasted net profit that is essential for assessing the long-term viability of our fruit and vegetable market.

The projected balance sheet will reflect assets such as refrigeration and display equipment, inventory of fresh produce, and liabilities including any loans and operational expenses.

It will provide a snapshot of the financial condition of our market at the end of each fiscal period.

Our projected cash flow statement will detail all cash inflows from sales and outflows for expenses, helping us to predict our financial needs and ensure we have sufficient funds to operate smoothly.

The projected financing plan will outline the sources of funding we intend to tap into to cover our initial setup costs and any additional financing needs.

The working capital requirement for our market will be carefully managed to maintain adequate liquidity for day-to-day operations, such as purchasing fresh stock, managing inventory, and covering staff wages.

The break-even analysis will determine the volume of sales we need to achieve to cover all our costs and begin generating a profit, marking the point at which our market becomes financially sustainable.

Key performance indicators we will monitor include the turnover rate of our inventory, the gross margin on produce sales, the current ratio to evaluate our ability to meet short-term obligations, and the return on investment to gauge the profitability of the capital invested in our market.

These metrics will be instrumental in assessing the financial performance and overall success of our fruit and vegetable market.

If you want to know more about the financial analysis of this type of activity, please read our article about the financial plan for a fruit and vegetable store .

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