Guía sobre los conceptos básicos de marketing de restaurantes

Restaurant marketing is the strategic promotion and branding of a dining venue to attract customers, drive sales, and build brand loyalty.

Unlike other industries, food service satisfies a time-sensitive and daily customer pain point: hunger. Secondary pain points, including cost, convenience, and personal preference, can also play a role in consumers’ immediate purchasing decisions.

Because the pain points of hungry local consumers differ from those of retail and e-commerce shoppers, so does the restaurant marketing playbook. In the food service industry, marketing is all about immediacy. In other words, it’s about reaching customers when they’re hungry and ready to make a purchase.

The US food service industry is booming and expected to reach $1.5 trillion in sales in 2025, with the number of US meal delivery customers forecast to reach 192.5 million by 2029. Currently, 40% of US consumers use food delivery apps or order takeout 3 to 5 times a month.

While this increased interest in food service is excellent news for restaurant owners, it also means new restaurants are popping up and competition is fiercer than ever. In fact, at the beginning of 2025, 9 out of 10 restaurant operators said they believe competition will be high this year. According to internal Uber Eats data, over 1 million active merchants are now on the platform, spanning over 11,000 cities across 6 continents.

With enticing new restaurants on every corner and available at the tap of a button, you could gain an edge over your competitors by having a dynamic marketing strategy. Below are some additional benefits you’ll experience by marketing your restaurant.

Without OOH (out-of-home) advertising and digital marketing, your restaurant’s visibility is limited to people who happen to walk or drive by. Marketing campaigns, on the other hand, make it possible for people to see your restaurant’s name repeatedly, whether they’re scrolling third-party delivery apps, reading restaurant reviews, or searching online for delicious restaurants in the area.

The quality of your food isn’t the only reason people will pick your restaurant. Diners will also select your restaurant based on the ambiance, service, dining experience, and occasion. When you take the marketing reins, you build your brand experience and show customers what type of restaurant to expect. Are you the local brunch spot? Are you the bar for business meetings? Are you the fancy restaurant where lovers get engaged? How about the fast-casual spot that always delivers piping-hot food? You get to decide.

Good marketing goes beyond just attracting customers—it also engages them. Whether through promotions, events, review responses, or loyalty programs, good restaurant marketing helps you maintain an ongoing relationship with customers, which typically results in repeat visits and higher customer retention rates.

Growing your sales is the most direct benefit of effective restaurant marketing. Special offers, promotions, and brand exposure drive more traffic, increase online orders, and build loyalty, all of which lead to higher sales and greater revenue. According to Deliverect, restaurants that use online ordering platforms see a 15% to 30% boost in takeout profits.

Premature marketing could cause a surge in customer interest you may not be prepared to handle. So you don’t want to start advertising your restaurant until you have all your operational ducks in a row.

Before diving into your marketing strategy, strengthen your supply chain, train your staff, and fine-tune your pricing. “Check to see that your menus are optimized,” says Paige LaPorte. “This is especially important for your menus on apps like Uber Eats. Include imagery, detailed descriptions, and the appropriate modifiers. Review your analytics to see if you’re preparing orders accurately and in a timely manner.”

Once you have a solid foundation in place, perform a soft launch to identify areas for process improvement before investing in large-scale marketing campaigns.

Successful restaurant marketing is all about meeting your customers at that moment of hunger, with inviting offers, on their platform of choice. The good news? Finding and targeting those hungry consumers is easier than ever.

Nearly a third (30%) of customers order takeout or delivery as often as they dine out, and 33% prefer ordering from third-party delivery platforms, according to Toast. As such, it’s essential to beef up your marketing efforts on third-party apps like Uber Eats.

Derek Ryan explains why marketing on third-party delivery apps is so promising for restaurant operators: “Uber Eats attracts a high-intent user. These are customers who are in a restaurant’s delivery radius, they’re hungry, and they’re opening the app because they want to order something right now. Because of that high intent, restaurants can see higher returns on their marketing efforts than they might on other platforms.”

LaPorte adds: “You can also target new customers or users who haven’t ordered from you within a specific time frame. You have the ability to get very granular with your targeting.”

The added benefit is that even if a customer doesn’t order delivery from your restaurant immediately, they’re still getting exposure to your restaurant and promotions for future potential purchases.

Lo que gastes en marketing dependerá de tus objetivos y necesidades comerciales. “Algunos restaurantes necesitan exposición, otros necesitan aumentar los pedidos”, dice LaPorte. “Es posible que otros necesiten ayuda para impulsar la demanda en los periodos de baja demanda, como el desayuno y la cena. Define qué es el éxito para ti antes de agarrar vuelo”.

Antes de lanzar cualquier campaña de marketing, haz un análisis exhaustivo de tus necesidades. Esto te ayudará a identificar los desafíos y las oportunidades exclusivas de tu restaurante, para crear una estrategia de marketing más específica y usar de manera más inteligente tu presupuesto.

Así puedes hacer tu primer análisis de necesidades:

• Define los objetivos. Escribe tus objetivos de marketing (como aumentar el tráfico peatonal, aumentar los pedidos en línea o aumentar la lealtad de tus clientes). “Si tu presupuesto es pequeño”, dice Ryan, “ten en cuenta tu objetivo y qué esperas obtener del marketing. Eso es lo primero que debes establecer”.

• Recopilación de datos. A continuación, establece una línea de base analizando los datos históricos de ventas, el comportamiento de los clientes y el desempeño anterior de marketing. También puedes encuestar a tus clientes o revisar formularios de comentarios antiguos para comprender qué creen que debes mejorar. Esto te dará una idea precisa de dónde necesitas hacer cambios e inversiones.

• Identifica los puntos débiles. Analiza los datos e identifica las áreas en las que tu restaurante tiene un bajo rendimiento, como los artículos específicos del menú que no se venden bien o las horas del día en las que el tráfico peatonal es bajo.

• Revisa los costos y establece los parámetros del presupuesto. Evalúa tus gastos actuales en marketing y otras áreas operativas para comprender cuánto presupuesto se puede reasignar o aumentar para marketing. Con base en tus objetivos y hallazgos, define un presupuesto de marketing preliminar.

• Prioriza los canales. Determina cuáles son los canales de marketing más efectivos para llegar a tu audiencia objetivo y asigna el presupuesto en consecuencia. Para resolverlo, puedes ver qué funciona para tus competidores, preguntar a tus clientes dónde hacen sus pedidos y profundizar en los datos de la industria para obtener más información.

Una vez que hayas hecho un análisis de necesidades, tendrás una idea más clara de cuánto costarán las iniciativas de marketing de tu restaurante.

No marketing plan is complete without a way to measure performance. Establishing and tracking KPIs (key performance indicators) will show you which of your marketing efforts are most fruitful, when you need to make changes in your strategy, and what marketing initiatives aren’t working at all.

Since every restaurant is different, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to measuring performance. But LaPorte offers insight into how to test the waters and watch your data trends: “When launching a new campaign, let it run for 2 weeks before making any changes. Stay consistent, and give your campaign time to collect data. From there, you can start to see a clearer picture of what’s working—if customers are actually converting and placing larger orders. Give the data time to speak.”

Some trial and error can be expected, Ryan adds: “You might find out that a 20%-off offer works really well on the east side of town but that folks respond better to a BOGO offer on the west side of town. Identify your goals, get creative, and be willing to experiment.”

At first glance, capturing and analyzing marketing data can seem overwhelming, but there’s good news: you don’t have to do it alone. Third-party delivery apps like Uber Eats include robust analytics and reporting to help you monitor your advertising and marketing success.

In today's competitive food delivery landscape, visibility is key to capturing consumers’ attention and driving sales. In-app ads are a sure way to increase the likelihood of hungry users discovering and choosing your restaurant in real time.

“When someone goes on the Uber Eats app, dozens of restaurants appear—but customers typically only scroll through a fraction of them,” says LaPorte. “The power of advertising is that you can be found at the top of the feed when someone is in your area looking for food right now.”

And being at the top matters. Uber’s data shows that when people search for food, they’re most likely to choose from these top results—just as businesses on the first page of Google search results get the most clicks. With an ad, you can increase the likelihood that your restaurant will be among the few that customers see when choosing what to eat.

Not to mention, you can customize your ads based on your growth goals, set ads to target your predefined audience, and monitor campaign performance in the Uber Eats Manager dashboard.

In addition to running ads, you can encourage potential customers to place an order by providing an enticing offer.

Ryan recommends using a Better Together strategy, pairing ads and offers: “We want to drive as many people as we can to your storefronts using an ad. Once a customer is there, we want people converting. The way that we increase conversion rate is to add an offer on top of an ad. Historically, when we use this Better Together strategy, we see sales growth go up and to the right. What’s more, we have internal data that says using ads and offers together drives greater sales than using one tool alone.”

With Uber Eats, you can create different offers based on your business goals. If you’re looking to promote a particular menu item, for example, you can create a BOGO offer. If you want to boost the total order amount, you can run a Spend X, Save Y offer. And if you’re hoping to attract new customers, using a high-value promotion encourages people to try out your restaurant and makes a good first impression.