Restaurant Marketing and Promotion Checklist

Pick one hook for the month — a seasonal menu drop, a chef's collaboration, a Restaurant Week tie-in, a slow-night offer. A theme keeps social, email, and in-restaurant signage consistent. Avoid running 3 disconnected promotions in the same month; it dilutes the message and the FOH pitch.

Typical small-operator monthly marketing spend is 2–4% of revenue. Split across paid social, Google, print, and influencer comps. Document the dollar amount per channel so the recap at month-end can compare lift against spend.

The segment drives creative, geo-targeting, and the FOH pitch. Lapsed regulars need a different hook than tourists on a Friday night.

Shoot the hero dish and 2-3 supporting plates in natural light at the pass before service. Stale photos are the most common reason a campaign underperforms on Meta and Google.

Walk the dining room and pull any outdated signage from prior promotions. Check that menu inserts match the current POS pricing — a mismatch between the printed price and what Toast charges produces an avoidable comp at the table.

Refresh the Canva or Figma templates with the month's hero photo, headline, and offer code. Lock the color palette and typography so social, email, and print stay visually consistent.

Post the month's hero photo as the GBP cover image and add a Google Post for the offer. Verify holiday hours — Google flags closures aggressively, and a wrong-hours listing on a Friday costs covers.

Swap last month's offer copy and imagery on the homepage, the specials page, and the reservation widget. Test the Resy or OpenTable deep link on mobile — broken booking links during a paid push are an expensive mistake.

Menu, hours, and photos should match across reservation platforms. Yelp pulls outdated cover photos automatically — refresh manually if needed. Confirm the reservation availability window covers the campaign period.

Plan 8-12 posts for the month: 2-3 Reels, 4-6 feed posts, daily Stories. Anchor Reels to the hero dish, the chef, and a behind-the-pass moment. Avoid posting a static menu screenshot; engagement is half what video produces.

Queue the month in one sitting so service nights don't get hijacked by social. Best-performing post times for full-service restaurants are typically 11am-1pm and 5-7pm local — when guests are deciding where to eat.

30-45 seconds, vertical, the chef plating or firing the hero dish. Capture during a pre-service window, not in the weeds. Use a trending audio that fits the cuisine.

One offer per table tent — multiple offers confuse the guest and the server. Place at every deuce and four-top. Pull last month's tents from storage and recycle to avoid a stale-looking dining room.

Servers sell the offer; if they don't know it, the promo doesn't run. Cover the hook, the price point, the loyalty tie-in, and the suggested pairing. Quiz a server at random the next shift to confirm it stuck.

Load the campaign creative onto the host stand screen and any bar-area displays. Confirm the playlist loops correctly before the dinner push.

Not every monthly cycle needs paid spend. Skip paid in months with strong organic demand (Restaurant Week, holidays) and double down in slow months. If skipping, route the budget to influencer comps or to a print push in the neighborhood.

Set a 3-5 mile geo-radius around the restaurant; broader radii waste impressions on people who won't drive. Run the hero Reel as a Reels ad, the dish photo as a feed ad, and split-test headlines. $15-30 daily budget per ad set is the practical floor for a single-location operator.

Target phrases like "[cuisine] near me", "[neighborhood] restaurants", and the cuisine + city. Send clicks to the reservation page, not the homepage. Negative-keyword "recipes" and "jobs" to avoid wasted spend.

A press release without a hook gets ignored. Guest-chef nights, anniversary dinners, menu launches, and charity collaborations are pitch-worthy; a generic monthly promotion is not. If there's no event, skip the press push and reinvest in influencer comps.

Pitch the city's daily, the alt-weekly food editor, Eater's local desk if covered, and 2-3 neighborhood blogs. Lead with the hook (chef, charity, anniversary), not the menu. Send 10-14 days before the event so the weekly's print calendar can pick it up.

3-5 micro-influencers (5k-50k local followers) beats one mega-influencer for ROI. Confirm the agreement in writing — what they'll post, when, and which handles to tag. Comp the meal but not alcohol unless agreed; alcohol comps are a TIPS and ABC compliance concern.

Pull segments from Toast, SevenRooms, or Mailchimp: visited in last 30 days, 30-90 days, lapsed 90+ days, never visited. Send a different angle to each — a regular gets early-access copy; a lapsed guest gets a comeback offer.

Tuesday or Wednesday 10am tends to outperform weekend sends for restaurant audiences. Restaurant-industry benchmark open rate is 20-25%; click-through is 2-3%. Record this month's number to track trend over the quarter.

Pull featured-item sales mix from Toast or Square and compare against the prior month's baseline. Document what worked (which channel drove the lift, which creative converted) and what to drop next cycle. The recap is the input for next month's planning step.