Restaurants · Meta Ads
Meta Ads for restaurants
Diners scroll before they book. One good plate on Instagram can decide where someone eats on Friday. Meta Ads put your restaurant in front of nearby diners with a specific reason to book: a set menu, a new season, a quieter night worth trying.
From £399 per month, fixed fee
The situation
Why your customers are searching.
Organic posts mostly reach people who already follow you, and boosted posts tend to chase likes. Neither fills a Tuesday. Restaurants have natural campaign moments, from a new menu or seasonal dish to midweek offers and private dining ahead of December, and paid social can put each one in front of the right diners nearby. The creative has to look like your restaurant on an ordinary night. Diners notice when what arrives at the table doesn't match the ad.
What sends them looking
- Per-cover and commission fees from booking platforms are starting to add up.
- Weekends are full. Tuesdays and Wednesdays aren't.
- You've got a new menu, chef, refurb or opening to tell people about, including people who've never been in.
- You're in a tourist area, and visitors can't easily read the menu or book in their own language.
- Private dining, set menus or wine dinners need a steady flow of bookings to pay their way.
The problem
What costs restaurants work.
Where the work slips away
- PDF or photo menus are slow on mobile, hard to read and close to invisible to search engines.
- Photography that doesn't match the room or the plates leaves diners unsure what they're walking into.
- Opening hours, kitchen closing times and holiday closures can disagree between your website, Google and the booking platforms, and diners notice.
- Overseas visitors find you on Google Maps, then leave when the site, menu and booking route are English only.
- Send a diner to a third-party booking page and that platform can market other restaurants to them.
What makes customers hesitate
- The booking platform brings in covers. Pushing diners elsewhere feels like a risk.
- Proper food photography sounds expensive, and hard to fit around service.
- It's hard to see how a new website changes how full the dining room is.
- Past social ads brought likes and comments, and no bookings anyone could see.
How it helps
What Meta Ads changes.
- Every campaign targets a specific service or occasion. General awareness doesn't book tables.
- The creative shows your dishes and your dining room, planned so it can be shot between services.
- Ads take diners straight to a booking route, with no detour via the homepage.
- Tracking follows reservations and enquiries, so the budget moves to whatever's filling tables.
What you get
Service-by-service campaign plan
Campaigns aimed at quieter services, launches and seasonal menus, with spend weighted towards the nights that need it most.
Dish and dining room creative direction
Shot lists for short videos and stills of signature dishes, the pass, the room and the table, made for Reels and Stories.
Private dining and group campaigns
Ads for private rooms, set menus and group bookings, timed ahead of Christmas, celebrations and the corporate booking season.
Visitor campaigns for tourist areas
Campaigns aimed at people who've recently been in the area, with ad copy and landing pages in the languages that matter.
Reservation tracking setup
Meta pixel and conversion events on booking confirmations and enquiry forms. Where bookings happen off-site, tracked WhatsApp and call taps fill the gap.
Measurement
The enquiries that count, tracked properly.
What counts as an enquiry
- A table booked direct through your own site or booking system.
- A WhatsApp message or call to book, started from your website or Google Business Profile.
- An enquiry for private dining, a group or an event.
- A seat booked for a set-menu evening, tasting night or seasonal special.
What gets tracked
- Reservations and booking starts attributed to each campaign.
- Covers on the services you targeted, against the same services before the campaign ran.
- Cost per private dining or group enquiry.
- Engagement from new local audiences. Useful, but only a secondary signal.
Worth knowing
What customers check, and the rules to follow.
What customers look for before they call
- Photos of your own dishes and your own dining room, lit the way diners will see them.
- An up-to-date menu with prices, dietary markings and allergen guidance.
- Accurate hours, a map that works and a line on parking or transport.
- Recent Google reviews, with your replies on show.
- A booking route that confirms the table straight away, or says exactly how and when it will be confirmed.
Rules worth knowing
- Information on the 14 regulated allergens must be available, and for food sold online for delivery or collection, it's needed both before purchase and on delivery.
- In England, businesses with 250 or more employees must show calorie information on menus, online menus included. Most independents fall below that threshold.
- Ads featuring alcohol, wine pairings included, must follow the CAP Code's alcohol rules and Meta's age restrictions.
- Online menu prices should match what you charge in the restaurant, with compulsory charges included and any discretionary service charge shown as optional.
Straight answer
Is it right for you?
Worth running when there's a specific service or occasion to fill and a direct booking route ready and waiting. Without both, hold off.
Made for
- Restaurants with quieter services and tables to fill.
- Restaurants launching a new menu, chef, refurbishment or opening.
- Restaurants in tourist areas that want to reach visitors during their stay.
Not for
- Restaurants that are consistently fully booked with a waiting list.
- Restaurants without any direct booking route to send diners to.
Starting price
From £399
per month, fixed management fee
What moves the price
- Volume of creative and testing
- How much creative you can supply versus what needs briefing
- Number of campaigns and audiences
- Reporting frequency
Your ad budget is separate. It goes straight to the platform and is never marked up.
Questions
Meta Ads for restaurants: your questions answered
Does food photography for restaurant ads need a professional shoot?
Not always. Well-directed phone footage of your dishes and your room often suits Instagram better than a studio-style shoot. A professional shoot still earns its place for the website and hero images, and those shots can be reused in ads.
Can Meta Ads reach tourists as well as locals?
They can. Location targeting can include people recently in an area as well as residents, and ads can run in more than one language. The landing page then has to match, with a menu and booking route the visitor can understand.
Start a conversation
Tell Arête about the business and what currently feels missing.
You will receive a direct reply with the most sensible next step, even if that means recommending that nothing needs changing yet.
A direct reply
A personal reply, usually within one working day. No sales script, no chasing.
A short conversation
A look at the business, your current website and what a good result would look like for you.
A clear recommendation
The leanest sensible next step, with fixed scope and a fixed price. Sometimes that's nothing yet, and you'll be told so.
Prefer email? Write to info@aretemarketing.co.uk.