The Two Hidden Problems Behind 99% of Restaurant Marketing Struggles
I think a lot of restaurant owners make the same mistake when it comes to marketing and growth.
They try to do too much. Or they're aimless in their approach.
So here's the antidote: Get really clear about the problem you're solving.
In the restaurant space, I believe there are two massive problems. Pretty much every restaurant I work with has at least one of them.
Let me break them down.
Problem #1: 60% of first-time guests never come back
Think about that for a second.
Around 60% of all the first-time guests that walk through your doors leave and never return.
And here's what I find really interesting — most restaurants haven't actually thoughtfully engineered a system to bring those guests back.
I've been aware of this stat for a long time. But when I saw Jon Taffer's breakdown, it completely changed how I think about restaurant growth:
- Around 41% of new guests will return for a second visit
- If they come for a second visit, around 42% will come back for a third
- But if they come for a third visit, it's actually more like 70% that will return
When I saw that, it just shone a light on the entire mission.
Get guests back for three visits.
Because once you have them for three visits, it's hook, line, and sinker — they're much more likely to become regulars.
So if you're stuck or trying to figure out what to focus on, start here.
Create a badass system. Engineer something that's 12, 24, or 36 weeks long. Build it on incentives. Build it on specific, unique, compelling reasons why that first-time guest should return.
Give your restaurant more at-bats at solving this problem instead of leaving it to chance.
Problem #2: You don't know how much it costs to acquire a guest
This one's harder to see, but it's just as big.
You don't have clarity around how much it costs to acquire a guest. Or a private event inquiry. Or an online order.
And this is not a straightforward problem to solve.
If you're an e-commerce company, it's much easier. Platforms like Shopify are designed to speak to ad platforms. You can clearly understand not only how much it costs to get a customer, but also what your lifetime value is compared to your customer acquisition cost.
But in the restaurant space?
Every restaurant has a different reservation tool. Different online ordering platform. Different private event booking tool. Different website builder. Different POS system.
It's all like a Frankenstein.
And if you're someone like me who works really hard to help restaurants grow, that's a very challenging problem when you go from one restaurant to the next and each one has a different tech stack.
But here's why this problem matters so much.
The restaurant business is seasonal. It's cyclical. There are all kinds of factors at play that make a restaurant busy or not busy.
But if you can be clear on how much a certain campaign or offer or ad angle costs to bring a guest in?
Then you have a system.
If business is slow one week, you have the initial conditions of a system that you can deploy.
And here's where it gets really interesting.
Once you understand how much it costs to get a guest, the next question is: Is the cash you collect on that first visit (or within the first 30 days) more than your customer acquisition cost plus your cost of goods sold?
If it is, you have an extremely good candidate to fill your restaurant on demand.
But you have to understand those economics first.
Let's say your budget right now is three grand a month in ad spend.
If you don't have clarity on these numbers, and you have a slow week coming up, you're not going to have the confidence to spend $30,000 to fill the restaurant. It wouldn't even be within the realm of possibility.
But if you do know that the cash collected is greater than the cost of goods sold plus the customer acquisition cost within the first 30 days?
That's something you can take to the bank.
You'll make a well-informed, data-driven decision to fill the restaurant on demand.
So what do you actually do about this?
If you're stuck right now — you've got ad campaigns running, social media posts going out, you're spending on creative, sending emails, doing this, that, and the next thing — do a reset.
Get really clear on the problem you're solving.
I think these are the two primary problems:
Problem #1: 60% of our first-time guests never come back
Let's engineer a system to fix that. Give yourself more at-bats. Don't leave it to chance.
Problem #2: You don't know how much it costs to get a reservation
Depending on how you approach it, this could be straightforward.
You could start by running offers — like a buy-one-get-one or a complimentary something. That helps you gain clarity because you can run ads to that offer, build up your database, and see exactly how much it costs in ad spend to get someone in.
Then you can compute the cost of goods sold to service that offer.
From there, you can get your tech set up right. If you're using OpenTable, you can deploy some code to start tracking conversions. Your ads get attributed to things like reservations.
It evolves from there.
The bottom line
If you're spending money on marketing and you can't confidently answer these two questions, that's where the work is:
- What's your system to bring a first-time guest back three times?
- How much does it actually cost you to acquire a guest?
Fix those, and you'll have a growth system you can actually rely on.
Want help engineering your restaurant's growth system?
That's exactly what we do at Guest Getter.
We help restaurants get clear on what's working, fix what's not, and turn guest flow into something you can actually control.