SearchBeyondGoogle
Restaurants & Hospitality Marketing

Marketing that fills tables,
not delivery-app pockets.

Diners don't browse anymore — they search. "Best ramen near me" on Google Maps, a TikTok scroll that decides Friday night, a quick check of your review score before booking. If your Google Business Profile is half-finished and your last Instagram post is from March, you're losing covers to the spot two doors down with 800 reviews and a menu Google can actually read.

We build the visibility system for restaurants, cafés, hotels, and event venues across the GTA. Local SEO that wins Maps discovery, social content that turns dishes into bookings, and Google Ads that drive direct orders and direct bookings — so UberEats' 20–30% commission and OTA fees stop eating your margin.

The Problem

Why restaurants marketing is harder than it used to be.

Delivery apps take 20–30% of every order

UberEats, DoorDash, and SkipTheDishes charge 20–30% commission — often more than a restaurant's entire profit margin on the order. Ontario capped fees during lockdowns precisely because the math doesn't work. The fix isn't leaving the apps; it's shifting volume to direct channels: ranking your own ordering page, owning "your restaurant name + delivery" searches, and converting app customers into direct ones.

Google Maps is the new walk-by traffic

The majority of restaurant discovery now happens on Google Maps — "brunch near me," "patio in Leslieville," "halal restaurant Scarborough." Ranking there depends on review volume and recency, photo freshness, populated menu data, and category precision. A restaurant with a complete GBP, weekly photos, and 500 reviews gets found; a better restaurant with a neglected profile doesn't.

Review sentiment compounds — in both directions

Diners filter at 4.0 stars and read the three most recent reviews before deciding. One bad month of service with no owner responses can drag bookings for a year. Review velocity systems — asking at the right moment, responding to everything within 24 hours, surfacing keywords like "patio" and "gluten-free" in replies — turn reviews into a ranking asset instead of a liability.

OTAs and booking platforms tax every reservation

Hotels pay Booking.com and Expedia 15–25% commission per stay; restaurants pay per-cover fees on reservation networks. Every guest who books direct instead is pure recovered margin. That requires your own site to rank for brand and "hotel in [area]" searches, a booking flow that doesn't leak, and ads that defend your brand name from OTAs bidding on it.

The System

Six channels, tuned for restaurants.

Every SBG engagement runs as one integrated system — here's how each channel earns its place for restaurants businesses.

Local SEO / GEO

Local SEO & Google Business Profile

Full GBP build-out — menu data, dish photos, attributes, Q&A, review velocity — so you rank for "near me" and cuisine-plus-neighbourhood searches. For hotels and venues, location pages tuned to "wedding venue Vaughan" style queries.

Social Media

Instagram & TikTok Discovery

Short-form video built around dishes, space, and atmosphere — the content that actually decides where people eat. Posting systems your team can sustain, plus geo-targeted paid social for launches, events, and slow nights.

Google Ads

Direct Order & Booking Ads

Campaigns that defend your brand name from delivery apps and OTAs bidding on it, capture "order [cuisine] near me" intent, and drive event and private-dining enquiries — measured in direct orders and booked covers, not clicks.

SEO

Menu, Location & Occasion SEO

Pages built for how people actually search: "private dining Toronto," "best patio King West," "hotels near Scotiabank Arena." Schema markup that gets menus, prices, and star ratings showing directly in results.

AEO

Answer Engine Optimization

Featured snippets and People Also Ask wins for occasion searches — "where to eat before a Leafs game," "restaurants with private rooms in Toronto." Each answer captured is a table booked without a dollar of ad spend.

AIEO

AI Search Visibility

Diners now ask ChatGPT and Google AI for restaurant recommendations by cuisine, neighbourhood, and occasion. Those answers pull from reviews, local citations, and structured menu data — we build the footprint that gets you named.

How We Work

The restaurants growth playbook.

01

Discovery & Channel Audit

We map how guests currently find you — Maps rankings, review sentiment, delivery-app dependency, OTA share — and quantify what platform commissions are actually costing you per month.

02

Foundation Sprint

GBP rebuild with menus and photos, review velocity system, direct ordering and booking paths fixed, brand-defence ads live. The first 60 days recover the margin leaking to platforms.

03

Visibility Build-Out

Occasion and neighbourhood content, short-form social systems, and AEO targeting go live — prioritized by covers and average spend, not vanity reach.

04

Scale What Fills Seats

Monthly reporting tied to direct orders, reservations, and event enquiries. Budget shifts toward whichever channel fills tables at the lowest cost per cover.

Why SBG

An agency that knows
your market.

12+
Years marketing competitive local businesses
$1M+
Ad budgets managed across 4 countries
6
Channels in one integrated system
24h
Response time on every account

Hospitality marketing fails when agencies treat it like e-commerce. A restaurant's funnel is 30 seconds long — a Maps search, a glance at photos and reviews, a decision. We've spent 12+ years marketing local businesses where visibility at the exact moment of intent is everything, and the GTA is one of the most competitive dining markets in North America to do it in.

Our advantage is the integrated system. Review velocity lifts your Maps ranking. Fresh dish photos lift both GBP conversion and social performance. Occasion content feeds featured snippets and AI recommendations. Most agencies sell restaurants a social media package and stop there; we connect every channel to the metric that matters — covers and direct revenue.

And we understand the margin math. A point of Maps visibility that shifts 50 orders a month from UberEats to direct ordering is worth more than any awareness campaign. We measure direct orders, reservations, and event enquiries — and we cut anything that can't be traced to them.

Talk to us about your restaurants business
FAQ

Restaurants marketing questions, answered.

How much should a restaurant spend on marketing?
Independent GTA restaurants typically invest 3–6% of revenue in marketing; for a $1.5M/year restaurant that's $3,750–$7,500/month across all channels. The sharper question is allocation: most restaurants overspend on sporadic boosted posts and underspend on Local SEO, where "near me" searches convert at the highest rate of any channel. We usually start at $1,500–$3,500/month focused on Maps visibility and direct ordering, then layer paid social for launches and slow periods.
How do restaurants reduce dependence on UberEats and DoorDash?
Three moves, in order. First, rank your own ordering page for "your name + delivery" and "your name + order" so brand searches stop landing on commission apps. Second, convert app customers to direct with box inserts and first-order incentives — a 10% discount still beats a 25% commission. Third, win Maps visibility so new customers discover you directly. Restaurants running this playbook typically shift 20–40% of delivery volume direct within 6 months.
How do I get my restaurant to rank higher on Google Maps?
Five factors carry most of the weight: review volume and recency, complete GBP data (menu, attributes, hours, dishes), photo freshness, primary category precision, and proximity. Practical targets: 15–30 new reviews per month, owner responses within 24 hours, new photos weekly, and a fully populated menu with prices. Most restaurants see measurable Maps movement in 6–8 weeks — faster in suburban GTA markets, slower in saturated zones like Queen West.
Does TikTok and Instagram marketing actually fill tables?
Yes — when the content matches how discovery works. Short-form video of dishes, space, and atmosphere drives the "saw it, saved it, booked it" behaviour that now decides a large share of dining choices for diners under 40. The mechanics matter: location tags, neighbourhood hashtags, and a bookable link in bio. One genuinely shareable dish video outperforms a month of generic posts. We build systems your staff can sustain in 2–3 hours a week.
How can hotels and venues get more direct bookings?
Start with brand defence: OTAs bid on your hotel's name and take 15–25% commission on guests who were already looking for you. Brand-term Google Ads plus a rate-parity message ("best rate guaranteed direct") recover those bookings at a fraction of the commission. Then build organic visibility for "hotel near [landmark]" and event-venue searches, where your own site can outrank aggregators. Direct booking share gains of 10–20 points within a year are realistic.
How long until restaurant marketing shows results?
Faster than most industries. Google Business Profile improvements typically move Maps visibility within 4–8 weeks. Brand-defence and direct-order ads produce measurable shifts in the first month. Social discovery content compounds over 2–4 months as the algorithm learns your audience. Occasion SEO — "private dining," "best patio" — takes 3–6 months but then delivers bookings every season at zero marginal cost. We report covers and direct revenue monthly from day one.
Related Industries

More sectors we serve.

Home Services & Renovation

HVAC, plumbing, roofing & renovation

Explore
Consumer Products

CPG & consumer brands, retail + DTC

Explore
E-Commerce & DTC

Shopify stores & DTC brands

Explore
Free 45-Minute Audit

See where your restaurants business
is losing visibility.

The free Visibility Audit covers your rankings, ad waste, review profile, and AI citation opportunities against your top restaurants competitors. Specific findings, whether you work with us or not.

Book Free Audit All Industries
No contract required
Response within 24 hours
Real findings, not a pitch