Proof That You Are Burning Money On Facebook And Instagram
Here’s where ALL of your focus should be going into 2027
Enough About Us.
Here’s what restaurant owners see after working with Restaurant ROI.
Azul Tacos, Charlotte NC
In their first 90 days:
- 27% increase in revenue ($43,000 in added monthly revenue)
- 13x increase in Google Reviews
- 4.5 to a 4.7 on Google
Madfish, St. Pete FL
In their first 30 days:
4x increase in Google Reviews in their first month.
"Significant YoY increase even in slow season"
Buffalo Eatz, Charlotte NC
In their first year:
- Double Google Reviews YoY
- From $120,000/month to $232,000/month
- Second location opened in May 2026 to keep up with demand.
Bites & Pints, Greensboro
In their first 60 days:
- $70K/month to $88K/month
- ~25% increase in revenue
Tha Caddy Shack, Nashville TN
In their first week:
"We had a significant increase in different types of customers. We're in a real low-income area, but there's a lot of business buildings around us too, and people from those buildings started coming in who never had before. They were like 'we didn't know this was even here'. The first weekend, we killed it in wing sales."
You didn't open a restaurant to become a marketer.
And yet... Here you are.
There's "the Google thing" you've been meaning to fix for six months. The reviews that haven't budged since February. The nephew who keeps telling you to "get on TikTok." The agency that took your money and handed you a report you couldn't understand.
Yeah…
Restaurant marketing is a confusing, frustrating, bloated nightmare
It makes you think…
Is there even an effective way to fill a restaurant?
There is. And it took us over a year to figure it out.
I’m Gabe. From Asheville NC, and I spent a year doing restaurant marketing the hard way.
You’ve probably tried a lot of these as well:
Filming social media content in house
Editing “trendy” videos
Running “FREE appetizer” campaigns
Loyalty systems
Email/SMS marketing
Yelp ads
Radio ads
Mailers
Billboards
ALL OF IT
So much extra work
So expensive
So complicated
For barely any actual growth in sales.
But then I had a realization…
Something so simple that I wanted to kick myself.
And it comes down to two concepts:
Word of mouth, and reviews.
I had stumbled across a clip from mega-marketer Alex Hormozi talking to a restaurant owner trying to scale from 25 million to 100 million per year
His answer completely changed how I thought about restaurant marketing:
“Most people find restaurants through word of mouth, and reviews. It’s like 90% those two sources.”
🤯
It all made sense.
It was almost too simple.
I mean, think about it
When you go to a restaurant, it’s either because a friend/brother/mom/grandpa said “This place is really good, you should try it out!”
OR
You look up “_____ near me” on Google, look at some reviews, and go in.
Don’t you agree?
I mean... When was the last time you saw an instagram/facebook ad for a restaurant and actually went in?
Seriously… Think about it.
For me, and almost everyone I ask, the answer is… Never.
So…
We went back to the drawing board with two things in mind.
Word of mouth and reviews.
How do you tackle word of mouth?
By getting more people in the door to taste your amazing food and tell everyone they know about it.
How do you tackle reviews?
By giving more customers a chance to tell you how much they love your food and maximizing the effectiveness of each new review.
We cut out EVERYTHING that didn’t attack those two things.
No BOGO’s
No discounts
No “branding”
No “icing on the cake”
Everything was geared towards getting more customers in the door.
And where do most of your customers find you?
Google.
Before you stop reading, the results we’ve gotten restaurants with this system are almost unbelievable.
A lot of people are (and a lot of our clients were) skeptical about running Google Ads…
Give me 30 more seconds to show you why we’re the best at it.
Think about this…
Customers that are searching on Google are hungry NOW.
Customers that are doom-scrolling on Instagram are... DOOM-SCROLLING!
Both platforms can get a customer to walk in your restaurant
But one customer will be 5 times more expensive…
Targeting HUNGRY customers gets you more juice for the squeeze in marketing spend.
It costs less to get their business when they are already looking for food.
And as an independent restaurant with tight margins… every marketing dollar needs to count.
This brings us to the question that actually matters…
Okay… but what am I getting back for my money?
Restaurants are FAMOUS for having un-trackable marketing.
This is a feature of the restaurant industry, not a bug.
So when it comes to marketing on Google…
You kind of have to look at the bottom line sales, see an obvious boost in revenue, and trust what Google Ads has been doing for small businesses for decades (yes, 26 years).
BUT, there is a benchmark stat:
The average return on investment for restaurant Google Ads is 3-5x
Put $1,000 in, and the benchmark says $3,000 - $5,000 back.
Cool.
The “average” American is obese.
We don’t particularly care what the “average” restaurant does.
We care what YOUR restaurant does.
We don’t set up “average” campaigns
The “average” cost per click for restaurant google ads is $2.05
Across all of our client accounts, our average cost per click is $0.38.
That’s over 5x cheaper.
Again, cool!
But you can’t deposit clicks into a bank account.
3-5x sounds nice…
Cheap clicks sound cool…
But…
Show me a restaurant where this actually worked.
Azul Tacos & Beer
On the west side of Charlotte, North Carolina
Anthony, the owner, already had a strong restaurant.
But there was one problem he specifically cared about:
Azul had lost a lot of its Hispanic customer base.
He wanted those customers back.
And he was skeptical that Google Ads / reviews were really going to be the things that did it.
Fair.
That’s exactly why there was no long contract or giant upfront commitment.
Here’s an actual text from Anthony describing what it's like working with us:
Then we built the campaign around what people in Charlotte were actually searching, including Spanish/Hispanic-intent searches that most generic campaigns would completely ignore.
And within the first month, Anthony started noticing something inside the restaurant.
More Hispanic customers were coming in again.
Then the sales numbers came in.
Revenue was up 27% from the month before.
And while that was happening, Google reviews accelerated by 6x.
Since we gave more customers a chance to speak their mind, and the majority of customers love the food, the ratio of good to bad reviews is much more in favor of good reviews.
This bumped their rating from a 4.5 to a 4.7 in one month.
Our reputation management even boosted their organic Google ranking
An extra $43,000 in new business in the first 30 days.
Azul went from “I didn’t even know you guys were here” to bringing in new faces, stacking reviews, and becoming much more visible in their local market in one month.
And before we ever asked him for referrals, he started sending other restaurant owners our way.
That’s about as good a signal of trust as you can ask for.
I know what you’re thinking…
“Okay, Azul looks insane. But maybe they were just a freak accident…”
What about everyone else?
Buffalo Eatz (also in Charlotte NC)
They were doing $125,000/month last year in July
In May of 2026, they did $232,000 and opened a new location on S Tryon St.
Bites & Pints, Greensboro NC
In their first 60 days, their monthly revenue went from 70K to 84K
19.4% increase in two months.
Tha Caddy Shack, Nashville Tennessee
After their first week, I had a call with Don, the owner.
I asked how things went in the restaurant, and this is what he said:
"We had a significant increase in different types of customers. We're in a real low-income area, but there's a lot of business buildings around us too, and people from those buildings started coming in who never had before. They were like 'we didn't know this was even here'. The first weekend, we killed it in wing sales."
Now we’re getting somewhere!
"So tell me..."
What are you actually doing every month?
The first week, we set everything up.
After that, we manage the campaign, manage the reviews, cut wasted spend, double down on the searches bringing in customers, and adjust based on what’s actually happening inside the restaurant.
No vague monthly reports.
We check in every week, you can text us whenever, and we handle the marketing in the background while you run the restaurant.
“Okay, but…”
Why can’t I just do this myself?
You can!
You can also change your own oil.
But this takes us back to the first thing we talked about
You didn’t start a restaurant to be a marketer.
So instead of spending months learning Google Ads or hiring some kid fresh out of college to be a full time marketer for $50,000 a year with employee benefits, micro management, no experience with other restaurants, PTO, etc…
You have us
For a fraction of the price
With a proven system and data from multiple restaurants in different markets
Handling the “heartbeat” of your marketing (word of mouth and reviews)
While you have the extra time freed up to:
Hire and fire
Keep good employees from quitting
Cover call-outs
Build the schedule
Handle payroll
Keep food costs from creeping up
Deal with vendors and price increases
Manage inventory and waste
Handle equipment breaking
Put out customer fires
Keep service consistent
Keep margins from getting squeezed
Train staff
Get your name out in the community
Hell, even just spend more time with your family and friends.
So you might be thinking
“Fair enough. If you guys handle it instead…”
How much of this shit do I have to do?
Absolutely nothing
Well, maybe a 5 minute call in the first week to give us access :)
But other than that, this is ZERO work for you or your staff.
There’s no weird pushy scripts you have to ask your staff to say
There’s no hours of filming content that gets 13 likes and 1 comment from your mom
There’s no confusing settings or apps to mess with
Everything is done for you in the background, and we update you every week with results.
“That all sounds great, but…”
How do I know this will work for MY restaurant?
You don’t.
Which is exactly why we test it first.
For every new client, we run a 7-day, $100 test campaign for your restaurant to show you real results, and real data before you ever make a decision.
We don’t make money on these tests.
That’s not the point.
The point is to earn your trust.
So…
What does it cost after the test?
$497/month.
Plus whatever you choose to spend directly with Google.
That’s it.
And there’s a reason it’s that cheap...
We spent a year cutting shit OUT
No monthly content shoots
No giant social media package
No bloated dashboard you’ll never open
No 14 different “marketing services” thrown into a proposal to justify a $2,000 “management fee”
We kept the handful of things we believe actually matter most
Which means you don’t need to make Restaurant ROI some giant expense on your P&L
It should be something you can comfortably keep running through the busy months and the slow ones
“Okay. $497. No work for me. I get to test it first. So…”
What’s the catch?
There is one.
We cannot make people like your restaurant.
If the food sucks…
If everybody leaves pissed off…
If your Google reviews are telling the truth and the truth is ugly…
More customers walking through the door might actually make your problem worse.
Restaurant ROI only works when the product is already good.
When customers already love you.
When the problem isn’t “How do we make this place worth visiting?”
It’s:
“How do we get more people to discover it?”
So, if you’re wondering...
You’ll probably be a great fit if…
People genuinely like your product.
You want more people in your area to know you exist.
You want someone else handling the marketing.
You’re willing to invest money to grow.
You care about building a stronger restaurant long term.
And if you just read that thinking…
“Yeah. That’s literally us.”
Then there’s really only one thing left to picture.
What happens when this actually works?
More people in your area know your name.
More new customers walk through the door every week.
More of those customers leave great reviews.
Your rating gets harder and harder for competitors to touch.
Those customers tell friends
Those friends become customers
And little by little, your restaurant stops being the place people should know about…
and becomes the place everybody does
You’re not fucking around with ads every Tuesday
You’re not wondering what to post
You’re not paying somebody $2,000 a month to send you a PDF
The system just runs in the background while you run the restaurant
And the alternative is pretty simple.
Six months from now, you can still have the same great food, the same loyal customers…
and the same people five minutes away who still don’t know you exist.
Or you can spend one week and a hundred bucks finding out how much untapped demand is actually sitting around your restaurant.
Six months from now, you’ll either be glad you tested it…
or still wondering what could’ve happened.
So there’s really only one question left:
Are you ready to stop being the best-kept secret in town?
We only take on restaurants we know we can help, so the first step is a quick look to see if you're a fit.
FAQ
Questions you're probably already thinking.
What other restaurant owners asked before working with us:
What makes Restaurant ROI different from other marketing agencies?
Almost all restaurant marketing agencies focus on getting you more attention. We focus on what happens after someone discovers your restaurant, compares you with the other options nearby, and decides where to spend their money. The decision. Not just attention. Then we strengthen that entire path instead of giving out discounts that attract petty customers, or chasing likes and impressions that may never turn into sales.
How does this help us get more customers?
We make your restaurant easier to find, easier to trust, and easier to choose. That means more people already looking for somewhere to eat see a strong, active presence and have a real reason to choose you over the restaurant down the street.
We already do social media and marketing. Why would we need this?
Social media is great for staying visible, but most people scrolling Instagram are not deciding where to eat at that exact moment. We focus on the people actively comparing restaurants and looking for somewhere to go, so this strengthens your existing marketing instead of replacing it.
How do you generate more reviews?
We install a simple system that helps more of your real customers leave reviews without your staff constantly asking or you running complicated follow-up campaigns.
We already have a good Google rating. Why do we need this?
Your rating is only one piece. Google ranks you on # of reviews, your rating, how detailed the reviews are, and weighs most heavily on how recent they are.
Are these fake or paid reviews?
No 🤣 Every review comes from a real customer. We do not buy reviews, create fake accounts, or manipulate ratings.
Can you remove bad reviews?
If a review appears to break Google’s rules, we will report and escalate it. Google makes the final decision, so we never promise removals (but we try our absolute best).
Will our staff have to do anything differently?
No. We handle the setup, management, monitoring, and ongoing work. Your staff doesn’t need to learn new software, run campaigns, or add anything to their routine. They can focus on running the restaurant.
How quickly should we expect to see results?
Most restaurants start seeing movement within the first couple of weeks. Unlike social campaigns that need time to find the right audience, we put your restaurant in front of people already looking while your review activity builds from day one. Early wins can happen quickly, but the strongest results compound over the first 60 to 90 days.
How do we know it’s working?
We don’t stop at clicks and surface-level activity. We compare your review growth, visibility, customer activity, and campaign data against actual weekday and weekend sales trends, giving us a much clearer picture of what’s translating into revenue.
Do you work with every restaurant?
No. We work best with restaurants that have a genuinely good product, take care of their customers, and know they should be growing faster than they are. You also need to be ready to invest in growth and capable of handling the additional business. If the food or operations are the real problem, marketing won’t fix it.
Ready to give this a try?
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