Industry
Restaurant marketing, and marketing for food businesses
A bakery, a caterer, two restaurants, a macaron producer and an events venue, across six documented engagements.
What is different here
Why restaurants, food and hospitality does not run like everything else
Hospitality is the one vertical where the search that matters most is the one nobody types: somebody opens a map, looks at three photographs and a rating, and chooses. That makes the Google Business Profile the storefront and the website a secondary page most customers never reach, which inverts the usual order of work. The second difference is that the transaction is small and frequent, so a cost per acquisition that would be excellent for a contractor is fatal here and the only figure that matters is what a customer is worth across a year rather than a visit. The third is that the profitable enquiry is often not the one the owner is focused on: for the caterer in our library it was corporate and lifecycle events rather than covers, and for the bakery it was catering orders sitting behind a shopfront reputation. Chasing footfall when the margin is in the booking is the common expensive mistake.
Documented work
6 engagements in this sector
Each links to the full write-up, and each write-up links to the source document its figures came from. The location shown is the one that document states.
Where the leverage is
What we lead with, and why
Questions
Restaurants, food and hospitality: frequently asked questions
Is a website worth it when everyone finds us on Google Maps?
The profile matters more, and we would work on it first. The website earns its place for the enquiries the profile cannot take: catering, private hire, large bookings and anything with a deposit. For the bakery in our library the ranking work moved terms like catering and custom cakes, not the shop name people already knew.
What should a restaurant actually measure?
Covers, catering enquiries and repeat rate, not followers and not reach. The transaction is small enough that a single visit rarely pays back an expensive acquisition, so the number that decides whether marketing works is what a customer is worth over a year.
Do you manage review responses?
We set up the request flow so reviews arrive steadily rather than in angry bursts, and we can draft responses. We do not select who gets asked. Filtering requests so only happy customers are invited is review gating, it is against Google's policies, and it puts the profile the rest of the work depends on at risk.
Tell us what you are trying to grow.
We reply within 10 minutes during business hours. We will tell you what your leads cost now before proposing anything.