Restaurants do not have leads. They have decisions made in the twenty minutes before people go somewhere, which means everything about the plan is different.
Nobody fills in a form to eat dinner. The measurable outcomes are reservations, orders, direct traffic, and foot traffic — and most of the value is unattributable by design.
This means a plan built on cost per lead will conclude that restaurant advertising does not work. The right framework is reach and frequency inside a tight radius, at the right time of day, with an offer worth acting on.
The decision about tonight is made in the late afternoon. The decision about the weekend is made Thursday and Friday. Lunch is decided between eleven and noon.
Advertising evenly across the day wastes most of the budget. We weight delivery into the windows where the decision actually happens, which in this category frequently doubles effective reach for the same spend.
A restaurant’s market is a few miles, and interest targeting matters far less than proximity. Tight geographic targeting with high frequency beats clever audience building.
The exception is destination dining and catering, where people will travel and the radius widens considerably.
Catering and private events have real lead capture, high ticket values, and a considered timeline — which makes them the one part of a restaurant that behaves like a normal advertising category.
Most restaurants under-advertise it dramatically. A separate catering campaign with a form, a clear minimum, and a menu PDF frequently outperforms everything else in the account on a revenue-per-dollar basis.
Tight radius, daypart-weighted delivery, one clear offer per flight, and separate campaigns for dine-in, delivery, and catering.
Plus the fundamentals that matter more here than anywhere: accurate hours everywhere, current photos, recent reviews, and menus that load fast on a phone.
Reach and frequency in your radius, reservations and orders, direct traffic, and week-over-week revenue during flights. Not cost per lead.
For order volume yes, for margin often no. We usually push budget toward direct ordering and dine-in.
Catering and private events, if you offer them. It behaves like a normal lead category and is usually neglected.
Every two to four weeks. Restaurant creative fatigues quickly in a small radius.
Same execution layer, different mechanics. Twelve categories, every channel.
We run Restaurants & Food campaigns in every county in the country. A few of the markets we work in:
Tell us what you run today and what you pay for it. We'll show you the difference in one call.