A restaurant marketing plan turns the promotion ideas in your head into a schedule your team can follow: who you want to reach, what you’ll offer them and where you’ll say it. It matters more as guests expect more from a night out. Nearly three in four US consumers (74%) say they’ll return to a restaurant after a truly unique experience, according to our 2026 US Restaurant Trends Report.
This guide walks through how to write one in 10 steps, with a free restaurant marketing plan template you can fill in right here on the page.
What’s a restaurant marketing plan and why do I need one?
A restaurant marketing plan is a document that outlines and informs your marketing strategy. It typically covers topics like who your ideal customers are, how you’re going to reach those customers and how you’ll compete with your competitors. Creating a strategic plan is a helpful exercise in many ways:
- Defines how your business compares to other similar businesses in your area, including your competitive advantages
- Encourages your team to be more efficient, deliberate and more successful in your marketing initiatives because you know who to target and the resources worth investing
- Helps you reach new customers and expand your customer base
- Supports expansion
If you plan to grow or seek investors, you’ll need to present a marketing plan to stakeholders in addition to your business plan. Together, these documents prove that you’ve thought through the ins and outs of operating and promoting a restaurant.
Going through the exercise of creating a restaurant marketing plan helps you put all the creative promotional ideas you have in your head into writing, so you can share your vision with collaborators and hold yourself accountable.
Free restaurant marketing plan template
Copy this table into a doc and fill in one row at a time. Each row matches a step below, so you can jump down whenever a section needs more detail.
| Section | What to write | Question to answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Mission and brand | Why your restaurant exists and how it looks and sounds | What do we want guests to say about us after they leave? |
| 2. Unique selling proposition | Two or three things nearby restaurants don't offer | Why would a guest choose us over the place next door? |
| 3. Target customers | A short profile for each type of guest you want more of | Who books most often, and who do we want more of? |
| 4. Competitive analysis | Your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats | What are similar restaurants nearby doing better than us? |
| 5. Goals and KPIs | Three goals, each with one number to track | What should be different in 12 months, and how will we measure it? |
| 6. Pricing and positioning | Where your prices sit against competitors and why | Are we the everyday pick, the special-occasion pick or somewhere in between? |
| 7. Marketing budget | What you can spend and how it splits across channels | What can we spend each month, and what is already committed? |
| 8. Marketing channels | Each channel you'll use and the job it does | Which channels do our target guests actually use? |
| 9. Marketing calendar | Key dates, events and campaigns for the year | Which dates drive covers for us, and when do we start promoting each one? |
| 10. Restaurant overview | A short summary of the whole plan, written last | If someone reads only this paragraph, what should they know? |
Prefer a file you can save and share with your team? Download the template below.
How to write a restaurant marketing plan in 10 steps
Work through these steps in order. Each one fills a row of the template above, and the overview comes last because it summarizes everything else.
Step 1: Define your mission and brand guidelines
A restaurant’s mission and values are a large part of your brand identity: it informs your business decisions, branding, voice and processes. Simply put, a mission statement explains why your restaurant exists, and it needs its own space in your restaurant marketing plan.
Include your restaurant’s branding guidelines in your marketing plan.
Incorporate key branding assets, such as:
- Your logo and an explanation of what it means
- Your brand’s colors
- Your restaurant’s mission, vision and values
Take inspiration from burgers. beer. bourbon., which makes its branding guidelines publicly available online.
Step 2: Pin down your unique selling proposition
Write down your restaurant’s unique selling propositions (USPs): what makes it different from the competition.
Keep your USPs in mind when crafting your marketing strategy; they should inform everything from branding to your social media posts. It might also help to refer back to your mission statement when defining USPs.
Step 3: Identify your target customers
Who is your ideal customer?
Get specific. Knowing who you want to target with your marketing efforts will help you create marketing campaigns that resonate with that audience.
Consider creating restaurant personas for everyone who walks through your door. For example, you might want to target suburban families seeking a quick dinner meal at a good price. Alternatively, you may want to cater to high-paid, urban professionals looking for an exclusive restaurant where they can entertain clients.
The more you know about who’s dining with you, the better you can deliver personalized experiences that keep guests coming back. SevenRooms’ restaurant CRM can help you build detailed guest profiles that track everything from visit history to diner preferences.
Step 4: Run a competitive analysis (SWOT)
Research your market. Get to know the competition to source ideas from them and understand how to differentiate your business.
Answer questions like:
- What similar businesses already exist in the area?
- How does your restaurant differ from them?
- How can your restaurant improve on what similar restaurants are doing?
A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) can help identify what you’re doing well now as well as strategies for how to improve in the future.
Strengths: Internal attributes that can help your business:
Examples:
- You use your grandma’s original recipes from her homeland
- Your executive chef has trained with one of the best chefs in the world or has won a Michelin star
Weaknesses: Internal attributes that can stand in the way of your goals.
Examples:
- You have high employee turnover
- Your restaurant’s location does not get heavy foot traffic
Opportunities: External attributes that can help your business.
Example:
- Falling commercial rent prices mean you’ll be able to afford a prime location for your restaurant
- Adding takeout and online ordering services to generate more business
Threats: External attributes that can stand in the way of your goals.
Example:
- Supply chain interruptions and rising costs
- Labor shortage means staff will be hard to come by
Step 5: Set measurable goals and KPIs
Explain your restaurant’s marketing goals and the key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll use to measure success.
Need inspiration? Here are some sample goals to get you started:
Goal 1: Reach new customers: KPI: Have 100 customers attend the restaurant’s grand opening celebration.
Goal 2: Increase customer retention: KPI: Double the number of customer accounts in the restaurant’s CRM
Goal 3: Boost brand awareness: KPI: Increase the restaurant’s social media following by 15% every quarter.
Step 6: Decide your pricing and positioning
Explain how your restaurant’s prices compare to competitors’ and how you’ll position your business among the competition.
Let’s say, for example, you run a healthy fast food restaurant chain. Fast-food restaurants aren’t known for having healthy options. You can leverage your higher prices to show that you use better ingredients and position yourself as the leader in healthier fast food.
Step 7: Set your marketing budget
Decide what you can spend before you pick channels, so the plan matches the money you actually have.
Split the budget into two parts: always-on channels that run every month, such as email, text and your website, and campaign spend for launches, holidays and events. Write down who owns each line so nothing runs without a budget behind it.
Then track what each campaign costs against the covers and revenue it brings in. Most operators can’t do this yet: only 27% very confidently know which of their campaigns led to repeat behavior, according to our 2026 Restaurant Industry Trends Report. Knowing which campaigns bring guests back makes it much easier to decide where next quarter’s budget goes.
Step 8: Choose your marketing channels
List any and all digital and physical marketing channels that your restaurant uses or plans on using, and explain how you’ll use each channel to achieve your marketing goals.
- Social media: Use Facebook pages, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok to share updates and encourage customers to make reservations and place online orders. Link to your direct booking and ordering platforms in your bios.
- Email: Targeted, automated emails drive 16X more revenue per email sent than mass sends, according to our 2026 Restaurant Industry Trends Report. Use restaurant marketing automation software that can send customers hyper-personalized marketing offers, automatically.
- Text: After collecting phone numbers through online booking processes, send targeted text messages advertising offers, promotions and even waitlist notifications.
- Your restaurant’s website: Optimize your website to convert visitors into paying guests through online orders and reservations. Pop-ups and prominent buttons will help.
- Google listings: Maximize your Google Business Profile and Google Maps listings by adding buttons that allow visitors to place orders and make reservations.
For marketing channels where you own your presence, such as your website and Google listing, prioritize direct booking and ordering over third-party platforms. (SevenRooms has a solution for this.) There’s no reason to have a middleman on channels that you have control over!
Learn More: How to Shift from Legacy Reservation Apps to Direct Booking
Step 9: Build your marketing calendar
Your marketing calendar should include holidays, events and other important moments. Every season offers a unique opportunity for restaurants to engage customers and drive sales, if you plan ahead and track every date. Create a simple marketing calendar to help ensure you celebrate every important, revenue-generating milestone.
Step 10: Write your restaurant overview
Write a brief introduction to the business that covers the basics, like your restaurant’s name, location, service style and concept.
Then, summarize highlights from the rest of the marketing plan. It sits at the top of the finished document, but write it last, once every other section is done.
9 Restaurant marketing strategies and ideas to include in your marketing plan
Use this section to turn what you’ve learned into the campaigns and restaurant marketing strategies you’ll use to launch or grow your business. These ideas are the heart of your restaurant marketing plan, so don’t skimp on the details here. Brainstorm actionable strategies, including long- and short-term plans, across specific channels.
As you strategize your marketing plans, know that confining yourself to a single channel alone won’t work. To reach today’s guests, you must be where they are, which means expanding into multiple channels and creating a consistent brand experience. This is called an omnichannel marketing strategy. Read our omnichannel marketing guide to learn how to implement it.
Whatever channels you decide to leverage (and you should choose several), remember to create a consistent brand experience across them.
Here are some ideas to get you started on a successful omnichannel marketing approach:
1-Email marketing
According to our platform data, customers who receive email marketing are 3.5 times more likely to book another dining experience than those who do not.
Convert first-time customers into regulars by collecting guest data and then using email software to send targeted emails to guests. Events that might interest them, loyalty program invites, review requests: it’s all fair game.
A successful email should include personalized subject lines and high-quality graphics.
Balance Hospitality Group used SevenRooms’ email marketing software to generate hyper-personalized email campaigns by segmenting guests based on interests. Their efforts translated to $1.3M and 18,000 covers across three venues, all through email. Read more about their marketing success here.
2-SMS marketing
Nearly half of US diners (48%) prefer to hear from restaurants by text, according to our 2025 US Restaurant Trends Report, which makes it a strong fit for time-sensitive messages and reservation updates. Text marketing also delivers 24 times the ROI, according to SevenRooms data.
From personalized restaurant perks for birthdays and anniversaries to last-minute menu updates, a well-timed and personalized text is almost guaranteed to reach customers.
Consider adding marketing automation software to your restaurant tech stack to help power your email and text marketing strategies. SevenRooms offers hospitality templates you can use to quickly segment, customize and send targeted messages at scale in minutes.
3-Social media by channel
Some restaurant owners might focus all their time on one channel, while others have the bandwidth to promote across all platforms. Show users how a fan-favorite dish is made, invest in your photography skills or go live during an event. Regardless of where you choose to live online, commit to a consistent posting schedule to increase awareness.
Nearly half (49%) of diners discover new restaurants on social media. TikTok and Instagram are great social media channels for engaging potential customers and maximizing online presence. To capitalize on exposure and promote your restaurant, hire a social media consultant to work with influencers or partner with brand advocates.
Create links with source tracking attributes for your reservations, online ordering and event-ticketing landing pages. Place those links in your bio, about sections and in posts using a simple call to action like “book a table” or “order now.”
4-Video marketing
Restaurant video marketing is worth the investment, on social media and in your marketing campaigns. Facebook Reels and Instagram stories have high open rates and greater organic reach, so it’s worth dedicating some time to posting on these channels.
Keep them short and sweet: videos under 90 seconds have the highest viewer retention rates.
5-Loyalty programs
Even a small loyalty program can significantly boost sales. Brainstorm ways to create a loyalty program tailored to your business that caters to your most loyal customers and offers incentives to encourage repeat business.
Then, send texts and emails to encourage return visits. Small gestures, such as “thank you” notes to first-time diners and online reviewers or exclusive access to perks and limited-time offers, can help generate guest loyalty.
6-Events
Whether you host events for all customers or reserve special occasions for your VIPs, celebrations at your venue help generate excitement and word-of-mouth.
Create landing pages for each event and experience. A well-designed landing page with all the information about your event and restaurant is a highly marketable asset that you can promote across your website, email newsletters, and social media channels.
Events and experiences can also be a great way to drive pre-paid revenue and reduce no-shows and cancellations. Encourage guests to reserve their ticket and pre-pay by adding a direct booking link to your event landing page or reservation widget to your marketing materials.
7-Website/SEO
When building your website, implement a few search engine optimization strategies to increase visibility and positioning in search engines. The higher your SEO score, the more likely your restaurant will appear at the top of Google searches, and the greater chance you have to acquire a booking or order.
Use Google Keyword Planner to brainstorm website content and identify keywords to incorporate throughout. Consider hiring a digital marketing agency or SEO company to help you optimize your restaurant’s website.
8-Paid ads
A successful social media marketing strategy includes paid ads. While you don’t need to boost every post, it’s wise to promote your business across specific demographics (this is why guest data is important), to advertise new menu items or take-out options. Hashtags can also help ensure more people see your post.
With paid digital ads, you can:
- Boost posts
- Promote your whole page/channel
- Advertise an offer
- Send people to your website
9-Direct mail
Sending coupons, takeaway offers and event invites to a select group of people in the mail is still an effective marketing strategy. But before sending mailers, be sure your website and other POS systems are prepared to track the success of your campaigns.
As you build out your marketing strategies, remember to track the success of your campaigns to determine what’s worth allocating more time to and what isn’t. Digital marketing tracking links will help to determine the return on investment (ROI) of each partnership.
Building a restaurant marketing plan powered by data
Restaurateurs have a lot on their plates. It’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day operations and neglect promoting your business. A data-backed restaurant marketing plan can help keep your team focused on communicating with guests more intentionally.
However, developing marketing strategies that drive revenue and support your brand experience requires knowing your customers inside and out.
SevenRooms’ CRM, marketing and operations platform was built for hospitality operators who want to build better relationships with customers using guest data. When you collect this data using the right tech tools automatically, you can use it to tailor your marketing, elevate the customer experience and measure the impact on your bottom line.
Learn more about how a restaurant CRM could benefit your restaurant.
One guest list behind every channel in the plan
Every reservation, walk-in and DoorDash order builds a guest profile automatically, so the emails, texts and offers in this plan start from what you already know about the people who book
Restaurant marketing plan FAQs
What should a restaurant marketing plan include?
Your mission and brand guidelines, your USPs, your target guests, a competitive analysis, measurable goals, pricing and positioning, a budget, your channels, a marketing calendar and a short overview of the restaurant. The template above gives each one a row.
How long should a restaurant marketing plan be?
One to three pages. A plan nobody rereads is not a plan. Keep the detail in the calendar and the segment list rather than in the prose.
How often should you update a restaurant marketing plan?
Review it against results every quarter and rewrite it once a year. Update the calendar whenever a new date lands, which in practice is monthly.
What is the difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy?
The strategy is the argument for who you are trying to reach and why. The plan is the schedule that carries it out, with dates, channels and numbers attached.
How do you know if a restaurant marketing plan is working?
Track the share of covers coming from guests who have visited before, broken down by the channel that brought them. New covers tell you the marketing reached someone. Repeat covers tell you it reached the right someone.
