What does marketing that works look like for restaurants?

The short answer

Restaurant marketing works when it defends margin rather than just filling seats. Delivery platforms take 15% to 30% of every order in a year when 42% of operators were not profitable. The mix that works is local pack dominance, reviews, and first-party ordering. Paid search is a cheap supplement.

What actually drives the number

Commission is the biggest number in the plan. DoorDash’s published merchant pricing sets partnership plans at 15% commission on delivery for Basic, 25% for Plus and 30% for Premier, with pickup at 6% across all three plans. Its own Online Ordering and Storefront products are commission-free, carrying payment processing fees instead. Put that against the industry’s margin reality: the National Restaurant Association’s 2026 State of the Restaurant Industry found 42% of operators reported their restaurant was not profitable last year, with more than nine in ten citing food, labor, insurance, energy and swipe fees as significant challenges. A 30% commission is not a marketing line item in that context. It is most of the margin.

Demand exists, traffic is soft. The same report forecasts $1.55 trillion in restaurant and foodservice sales for 2026 on 1.3% real growth and 15.8 million jobs, while 60% of operators reported softer customer traffic and more than seven in ten consumers said they would dine out more with additional disposable income. Latent demand with soft traffic is a conversion and visibility situation, not an awareness one. Those consumers already want to eat out. They are choosing someone else at the moment of decision.

The local pack is the decision surface. Google states that local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence, that more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking, and that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. That last sentence is the one that matters. The single most valuable placement in restaurant marketing cannot be bought. It is earned through complete profile data, category accuracy, photos, hours, attributes and a real review operation.

Paid search is the cheapest in the study. WordStream’s analysis of 13,474 US search campaigns from April 2025 to March 2026 puts restaurants and food at a $2.05 average cost per click, the lowest of the 23 industries measured, with a 6.83% click-through rate, 8.05% conversion rate and $30.57 cost per lead against an all-industry $5.42 CPC and $66.69 CPL. Search is not where restaurants overspend. Commission is.

How to tell which applies to you

Run one calculation before any campaign decision. Take your third-party delivery sales, multiply by your commission rate, and compare that number to your total annual marketing budget.

The rule: if third-party commission exceeds your entire marketing budget, your marketing strategy is already set and someone else wrote it. Every dollar spent shifting one order from a 30% channel to a 6% or first-party channel is worth roughly four dollars of new revenue at typical restaurant margins.

What we’d do

TACK has built marketing systems for 300+ brands and 2,500+ campaigns since 2009. For a restaurant or a small group, the order of work is not negotiable.

• Fix the Google Business Profile before anything else. Primary and secondary categories, hours including holiday hours, ordering links pointed at your own system, menu, attributes, and 20 or more current photos. This is the placement that cannot be bought, and most independents have it half filled.
• Build a review engine, not a review policy. Google names reviews and ratings as a prominence factor. That means a repeatable ask at the table or on the receipt, and a response to every review. Volume and recency both matter, and neither happens without a process.
• Move ordering in-house and give people a reason to use it. A first-party ordering link on the profile, on the site, and on every package insert, with a loyalty offer that only exists there. The margin difference between 30% and payment processing funds a generous offer and still leaves you ahead.
• Keep third-party platforms as a deliberate acquisition channel. Price the tier honestly, use it for reach into neighbourhoods you do not otherwise serve, and put a first-party offer in every bag that comes back.
• Answer the questions people actually ask. Gluten-free options, parking, patio, group bookings, kids’ menu, late kitchen. Those queries decide a table on a Friday night, and getting them cited in AI answers and local results is exactly the work behind SEO, AEO and GEO, alongside the paid media and CRO that carries promotions.

Common mistakes

Buying sponsored placement on the platform that already takes 30%. That stacks an ad fee on top of a commission on the same order, on a business where 42% of operators did not make money last year. If the tier and the ad spend together exceed your food cost percentage, you are running a marketing campaign that loses money on every conversion.

Ignoring the profile because it is free. Google is explicit that ranking cannot be bought. That makes the profile the only channel where effort beats budget, and it is the one most operators delegate to nobody. A half-complete profile with 2023 photos and wrong holiday hours costs covers every single week.

Discounting on the platform to win volume. A 20% platform promotion on top of a 25% commission means giving away close to half the ticket to acquire a customer whose contact details you will never receive. Run the same offer on your own ordering system and you keep both the margin and the email address.

The bottom line

Restaurant marketing is margin defence. Own the local pack, run reviews as an operation, move orders to first-party channels, and treat delivery platforms as paid acquisition priced at 15% to 30% rather than as a sales channel. Paid search at $2.05 a click is the least of your worries.

If you want an outside read on where your covers and your margin are leaking, book twenty minutes at calendly.com/tack-media-agency/talk-to-an-expert or call TACK at 310-620-1141. Engagements start at $5,000 per month.

Sources

• DoorDash: merchant fees and pricing
• National Restaurant Association: 2026 State of the Restaurant Industry
• Google Business Profile Help: tips to improve your local ranking
• WordStream: 2026 Google Ads benchmarks