Someone searching for a restaurant by name wants to see its menu before visiting. On wmenu.pl, 88% of visits from Google go to individual venues' menus, not our pages about QR menus. Restaurant marketing therefore starts with what customers find when they type the venue's name, not with advertising.
Here are 6 actions in the order to take them. Each includes what to measure and the condition under which it stops paying off.
1. Google profile and menu
The Google Business Profile is the first thing customers see: opening hours, photos, reviews and the menu link. The “Menu” field accepts a link; if it points to a PDF or the website homepage, customers have to find the menu themselves. Set separate opening hours for 24, 25 and 31 December: until you change them, Google shows normal hours and sends people to a locked door. The guide to restaurant visibility on Google and the article on the menu in your Google profile explain the setup step by step.
What to measure: clicks on “Menu” and “Directions” in the profile statistics, month by month.
2. The menu as a page in search results
A PDF or photo menu tells Google nothing. A menu as a normal webpage, with dishes, prices and descriptions, appears in searches for the venue's name and for dishes: “arroz del senyoret Valencia” finds a venue that lists it on its online menu.
One wmenu.pl menu received 1,520 search visits between July and September 2026 from people looking for that venue or its dishes. This works only if the menu is current. Last year's prices on a phone and different prices at the table cost more trust than the extra visits bring.
What to measure: menu visits from search. WMenu shows these in a panel chart, separate from QR code scans.
3. Reviews: ask at the right moment
A review request works when the customer is still at the venue and happy: with the bill, through a QR code linking directly to the form. An email a week later gets fewer replies.
Reply to every negative review in less than a day, with facts and without arguing. The next customer reads that response, not the author.
Do not buy reviews or offer a discount for 5 stars. Google removes them and may flag the profile, and a venue caught doing it loses more than its average rating.
What to measure: new reviews per month and the average over the last 90 days, not your entire history.
4. Regular customers
The cheapest customer is one who has already visited. A list of emails or phone numbers collected with permission, when booking or signing up for an event, lets you announce the seasonal menu without paying for reach.
The article on email marketing in hospitality explains how to write those emails so they do not end up in spam.
What to measure: how many reservations arrive in the 7 days after sending, compared with a week without a mailing.
5. Prepaid events
A wine tasting, a chef's dinner, New Year's Eve. An event gives people a reason to talk about the venue, and prepayment removes the risk of empty seats. Without prepayment, more people sign up than attend.
What to measure: occupancy and how many attendees return within the following 60 days.
6. A small campaign, last
Advertising works once everything above is in place: the profile has reviews, the menu is current and the venue has something to offer. Then you can evaluate a Google Maps or Instagram campaign costing €5–8 a day within a radius of a few kilometres over a month.
The worst option is a discount platform selling your meal at half price. It attracts bargain hunters who do not return at full price, and the venue subsidises each one.
What to measure: the cost of a booking or visit attributed to the campaign. A link with UTM tags in the advertisement shows where people came from.
The campaign is unnecessary when the venue already fills up at the times it runs: you pay for customers who have nowhere to sit.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I invest in restaurant marketing?
Time first, not money. Points 1 to 4 mainly cost an hour a week, and an advertising budget makes sense once you know what a customer costs through each channel.
Do I need Instagram?
It is not compulsory, but customers look there for photos of dishes and the venue. A few current photos with the price in the caption do more than daily posts with nothing to say.
What if I have no time for any of this?
Do only points 1 and 2. A current menu linked from your Google profile works on its own all year.
