Full on Tuesday, not just on Saturday

Why does advertising for restaurants work differently than for other businesses?

Because your capacity is fixed: more reservations on an evening that is already full earn you nothing, they cost you money. You have a set number of tables, two services per evening and a kitchen that can only handle so many plates.

What a restaurant needs is not a volume dial but a slider. The question isn’t “how do I get more reservations”, it’s “how do I get reservations at the moments where there is space right now”. That sounds like a detail, and it changes the entire setup of a campaign.

Does advertising work for a restaurant — and on which channel?

Yes, provided you steer on your empty moments. Meta usually does most of the work here, because people rarely search for your restaurant but do want to book an evening out; Google catches the ones who already know what they want and search “restaurant ” or “book ”.

The maths differs from other industries. You don’t pay per enquiry but per filled seat on an evening that would otherwise have stayed empty. At an average spend of € 45 per guest, a reservation for two can quite happily cost € 10 to € 15 — as long as that reservation falls on a Tuesday and not on a Saturday.

Why is your occupancy the most important steering variable?

Because most of the search volume sits on Thursday through Saturday — precisely the days you fill anyway.

Most restaurants I see advertise seven days a week on the same budget. The result is predictable: the bulk of the money is spent on the weekend.

The moment you structure campaigns by daypart, that flips. Budget on Monday through Wednesday, little to nothing at the weekend, and a separate line for the quiet periods of the year — the second half of January, the weeks after the summer holidays. You spend the same and fill different seats.

That does require knowing what your occupancy looks like. So at the start we first look at your reservation data from the past year: which days run by themselves, which don’t, and what the average spend per guest is per daypart. Without that picture, every budget split is a guess.

Do à la carte, takeaway and groups belong in one campaign?

No — they differ in margin by a factor of five, they are searched for at completely different moments, and the people behind them decide differently.

Almost every restaurant has more than one: à la carte in the dining room, takeaway or delivery, and groups — company drinks, birthdays, communions, memorial receptions.

Someone searching for “takeaway pizza” decides within two minutes and is price-sensitive. Someone looking for a room for forty people takes weeks, compares three venues and wants to call. Put those two in the same campaign with the same conversion goal and the algorithm only sees that takeaway converts more cheaply — and that is where your money goes, while the room booking is worth ten times as much to you.

How do you measure whether a reservation actually became revenue?

By feeding the confirmed reservation back as a conversion — and, where the system allows it, the realised spend as well.

The reservation is not your revenue. Your revenue is the guest who actually shows up and spends. Between those two sits a no-show rate that in practice runs between five and fifteen percent, and it varies sharply by campaign: a discount promotion demonstrably attracts more no-shows than a regular reservation.

Wherever possible, we feed the confirmed reservation back as a conversion and, if your system allows it, the realised spend as well. Only then can you see that campaign A produces cheaper bookings but campaign B more revenue — and steer on the second.

How far will guests travel for a restaurant?

For a weeknight, rarely further than ten to fifteen minutes; for a special occasion or a cuisine that’s rare in the region, considerably further.

That makes your radius the cheapest optimisation available, and immediately the most neglected. For weekday occupancy you advertise tightly around the venue, with the town and the neighbourhood in the ad and on the page — “restaurant ” and “dinner in ” are cheaper and convert better than the generic variant. For groups, holidays and a cuisine people deliberately drive for, that radius can be two to three times wider: someone looking for a room for forty checks the whole region.

Make sure your Google Business Profile, your opening hours and your reservation link all say the same thing. A large share of the people who see your ad check you in Maps first — and a profile that contradicts your ad costs you the booking without ever showing up in your numbers.

Why do images sell more than words here?

In most industries the gains come from better structure and better measurement. For restaurants, imagery plays a bigger role than anywhere else: people choose with their eyes. A well-photographed dish, a packed terrace on a summer evening, the kitchen in full swing — that works better than any ad copy ever will.

That is also where the most common mistake sits. Restaurants often advertise with discounts because that feels concrete. Discounts attract the guest who will be at your neighbour’s place next month because they have a promotion then. Images of what you make attract the guest who comes back.

What you can expect from me

I work a fixed number of days per week, fully dedicated to your accounts. You won’t get a junior handling it alongside ten other clients. Everything runs in your own Google and Meta accounts, so you keep the campaigns, the history and the data — even if we ever part ways.