Restaurants, bars and hospitality
Restaurant marketing for the decision people make an hour before eating
Nobody books a table three weeks out. They decide at six in the evening, on a phone, two streets away — and your map position, your photos and your last reviews make that decision for you. That is where the work goes.
No commitment and no lock-in. If you are turning people away, we will tell you not to spend.
5.0
Reviews from our Google profile, translated from Spanish.
What an unworked Google profile costs a restaurant
For a restaurant, the Google Business Profile is the shop window, the menu and the booking line at once. It is also, in most places, the single most neglected asset in the business.
- People a month searching to eat near you
- 2,000
- Who never scroll past the top three on the map
- 70%
- Decisions made without seeing you
- 1,400
- If just 2% would have come in
- 28 covers a month
None of those people ever contacted you, so none of them appear anywhere in your figures. It is the cheapest loss in hospitality to fix and the easiest to never notice.
What we find in nearly every restaurant:
Opening hours are wrong on a bank holiday
Google shows you as closed, or shows you open when you are not. Either one loses the table and the second one earns you a one-star review. Holiday hours are the most common unforced error in the sector.
The photos are the owner’s, from 2019
People choose where to eat with their eyes. Current photos of the actual dishes, the actual room and the actual terrace outperform anything else you could publish.
Reviews go unanswered
Especially the bad ones. A calm, specific reply does more for the fifty people who read it later than it does for the reviewer. Silence reads as not caring.
Every booking pays commission
Platforms bring diners and charge for it. What is avoidable is paying commission on the regular who already knows you and just wanted to book.
The menu is a PDF
Slow on a phone, unreadable at the table, and invisible to Google. A menu in plain text on the page is one of the few genuinely easy wins left.
Three things we will say that most agencies will not
“We need to post on Instagram every day.”
You need to be findable at six in the evening. Social keeps regulars warm and it is worth doing consistently, but if your map position is wrong and your hours are out of date, no amount of posting will fill the room. Fix the boring things first.
“A blog will help us rank.”
Almost never, for a restaurant. Nobody searching for dinner reads an article about olive oil. The pages that matter are the menu, the location, the booking path and the profile. Anyone selling you monthly articles should be asked how many covers the last one produced.
“Influencers will fill the restaurant.”
Occasionally, for one weekend, with people who never come back. A local account with a genuinely engaged following in your town can be worth it; a large account with a scattered one almost never is. We will tell you which is which before you give anyone a free dinner.
How we work with a restaurant
The order matters here more than anywhere. The first step is free and usually the biggest.
The Google Business Profile, properly
Categories, attributes, menu, current photos, hours including holidays, and the booking link. Done once properly and then kept current. This is the single highest-return hour in hospitality marketing.
A review routine that actually runs
Asking at the moment the bill is paid and the meal went well, and answering everything within a day or two, in the language it was written in.
The booking path
Click-to-call, a booking link that works on a phone, a map that opens, and the menu readable without pinching. Then tracking, so calls stop being invisible.
Content shot on site
Photo and video of the real food, the real room and the real people, in the languages your diners actually speak. We come and shoot it.
Paid only where it pays
Local campaigns for the quiet nights and the quiet months, aimed at people physically nearby, with the offer clear in the first two seconds.
What is included
Built around filling tables, not around posting volume.
Business Profile kept current
Including holiday hours, which is where most restaurants quietly lose covers and gain bad reviews.
Reviews asked for and answered
A routine that produces them, and replies that read well to the next person deciding.
A site that works on a phone at the table
Menu in text, booking in one tap, map that opens, fast on bad signal.
Photo and video on site
Our own crew. The food as it actually looks, which is the whole decision.
Local campaigns for the quiet periods
Switched on when you need covers and off when you do not, rather than running flat all year.
It depends on how much content you need and whether we are filming. You get the number in writing after the free audit, with no lock-in.
Get a free auditWhat we commit to
We commit to a fixed amount of work a month, delivered on the agreed dates, and to reporting what it produced rather than what it reached. If after ninety days we cannot connect the work to bookings, calls or covers, we will tell you and recommend spending the money elsewhere.
Three conditions, and all three are on your side:
- We can come and film on site a few times a year.
- Somebody tells us about holiday closures before they happen.
- Reviews and messages get answered — by us, by you, or both.
What we will not promise is a follower count. It is the wrong target and it is easy to fake. Covers, calls and bookings are the numbers that pay your rent.
Get a free audit
Which places this works for
It works well if
- You have quiet nights or quiet months you want to fill.
- Your food photographs well, or could with a proper shoot.
- Somebody can answer a message within a few hours.
- You would rather have direct bookings than platform ones.
It does not, if
- You are turning people away every night. Genuinely, save the money.
- Nobody will answer reviews or messages. That is the whole channel.
- You want daily social content and nothing else. We will do it, but we will tell you it is not what fills the room.
- You are looking for the cheapest supplier. There is always a cheaper one.
Frequently asked questions
What is the single biggest thing we could fix?
Your Google Business Profile, and it is free. Correct categories, current photos, the menu, hours that are right on bank holidays, and a booking link. For most restaurants it brings more covers than the website and the social accounts combined, and most profiles have not been touched since somebody set them up.
Should we be on the booking platforms?
Usually yes — they bring diners who would not have found you. What is worth fixing is paying commission on regulars who only wanted to book. A clear booking link on your profile and your site captures those without you leaving the platform.
How do we get more reviews without being pushy?
Ask once, at the right moment: when the bill is paid and the meal clearly went well. A card on the receipt or a QR works. What does not work is asking everyone automatically a week later. And answer every review, including the bad ones — those replies are read by the next fifty people deciding.
Do we need a blog?
No. For a restaurant it is close to a waste of money. Nobody searching for somewhere to eat tonight reads an article. Put the effort into the menu page, the location pages if you have several sites, the photos and the profile.
How much should we spend on ads?
Less than you would think, and only when you need covers. Local campaigns aimed at people physically nearby, running on the quiet nights and in the quiet months. Running the same budget flat all year is how restaurants conclude that advertising does not work.
Do you shoot the food photography?
Yes, on site, with our own crew. It is the highest-returning thing we produce for a restaurant, because choosing where to eat is almost entirely visual. Phone photos taken in bad light are costing you more than the shoot would.
Get a free audit for your restaurant
Give us your name and location. We will check your Google Business Profile against the places around you, look at your photos, your hours and your reviews, and tell you what we would fix first. We will come back either way.
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