Marketing for Chefs Who Hate Marketing

TL;DR Getting the right guests through the door starts with what the kitchen can deliver consistently and profitably. Make it easy for guests to find you, choose your place, order with confidence and come back for something they know they will enjoy.

How do you attract the right restaurant customers when you would rather be running the kitchen? Start with the food and service you can stand behind, then make each step towards a visit easier for the guest. A current menu, a clear reason to book and a reliable plate do much of the work.

Decide what you want more guests to come for.

Choose a service, menu or dish you have room to sell. A pub may want a few more lunch covers. A small hotel may want residents to know they can eat in after checking in. A restaurant that fills Saturday already may have room for another sitting on a Wednesday. The useful question is how much work the extra trade puts on the team and what the business earns from it.

Walk through the experience as someone who has never been. Look for the menu on your phone, try to work out the cost of dinner and find where you would book. Ask the front of house which questions guests ask when they arrive. Take one of those questions back to the menu, the profile or the briefing and see whether a small change answers it sooner.

Help people find you.

Make the restaurant easy to check.

A person looking for dinner may start in Search or Maps. Give them the correct opening hours, a menu they can reach and an obvious place to book. Check those details again when a new service starts or when a bank holiday changes the rota. The Google Business Profile setup guide for restaurants covers the hours, menu, photos, reservations and review requests. Give the job to someone who hears about changes before the guest does.

Show a plate that will turn up.

Pick a photograph that explains the food or the room. A good picture answers a question about the portion, ingredients or kind of occasion. A picture from a different menu may sell a promise the team cannot deliver. Our guide to food photography on your phone explains how to use window light, angles and a simple background, and how to build a small library during prep. If the ingredient has a story worth telling, draw on the relationship behind an honest supplier story.

Help guests choose your restaurant and order with confidence.

Give guests a reason to trust the place.

Someone reading reviews is often trying to work out what happens when a service goes wrong. An even reply that acknowledges the concern and explains how to reach the venue can do more than a long defence. The guide to replying to a bad restaurant review covers when to wait, what to check and how to take a real problem back to the team. If several guests have the same complaint, give the problem an owner at briefing and check what changes during service.

Make the menu clear about what arrives.

When guests look down a menu, tell them what the dish is and what makes it worth ordering. A named ingredient, a clear cooking method or an honest description of what comes alongside can help. The guide to writing menu descriptions without the waffle covers which details to keep and which to cut. Start with plates the kitchen can deliver confidently and use sales and contribution to see which dishes could earn their place more often.

Make prices easy to read and sound for the kitchen.

Cost the portion before you decide what the menu should say. Then check how easily a guest can connect a price with a dish or compare choices in the same section. The guide to how guests read restaurant menu prices explains price anchors, rounding and layout, with gross profit and contribution as the starting points. Once the new menu has run for a while, look at what moved in the sales mix and what that change meant for your margin.

Give people a reason to come back.

Start with a service worth repeating.

People return when they know what they can count on and have a good reason to book again. Ask the team which parts of a visit guests mention on the way out. Turn one of those into a standard you can keep on a busy night. The guide to turning first-time guests into regulars covers repeatable service, an optional email sign-up and what to send when you have something guests can use.

Fill a quiet service on terms you can afford.

Look at an ordinary midweek night before you announce anything. If you have room and a short set menu the kitchen can run, cost the trial and decide what would count as a good result. Our guide to filling quiet midweek nights without killing your margin covers set menus, supper clubs and local partnerships, and shows what to measure after service. Start with a manageable run. You can always add another date once you know how the first one worked.

Pick the next job from the series.

Choose the point where guests seem to get stuck. If they call to check whether the kitchen is open, fix the hours first. If they are booking but the pass is struggling, work on what the menu promises and what the section can produce. A practical job you can finish before next week is a better starting point than a list of projects with no owner. The Attract more of the right customers collection brings the guides and related articles together.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where should I start if I have very little time?

Try to book your own restaurant from your phone. Fix the first thing that makes it hard to see when you are open, find the menu or reach the booking page.

How do I know whether more bookings are helping?

Check what the extra trade contributes after the costs it brings, and ask the kitchen and floor what changed. Look at the rest of the week as well as the service you were trying to fill.

Should the head chef be responsible for all of this?

Share the work with whoever runs the floor, booking system and website. The kitchen should keep the information about the food accurate and say what it can deliver before the offer goes out.

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