About DigitalRestaurateur
Why this site exists, who it's for, and the standards behind every guide — operator-first, vendor-neutral, and sourced from public data.
DigitalRestaurateur is a guide to marketing and advertising a restaurant — Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram, local SEO, email, and the everyday craft in between. The goal is simple: help independent operators get more diners through the door without wasting money or time.
Who this is for
This is written for the people who actually run restaurants: owners, operators, and the one person on the team who somehow ended up in charge of "the marketing." Not agencies, not enterprise chains with a media budget. If you are deciding whether to spend thirty dollars a day on ads or fix your Google Business Profile first, these guides are for you.
Why vendor-neutral matters
Most restaurant-marketing advice online is published by the companies selling restaurant software — point-of-sale systems, online-ordering platforms, reservation tools. Their guides are genuinely useful, but they all end at the same place: sign up for their product.
We have nothing to sell you. There is no DigitalRestaurateur app, POS, or subscription. That independence is the entire point. When a guide here recommends a channel, a budget, or a tool, it is because it works for the operator — not because it moves our own product. Where we mention a platform, we are not affiliated with it, and we say so.
How we work
Every guide is built to the same standard:
- Operator-first, not listicle-thin. Real steps, real budgets, and honest expectations — what a channel does, when to use it, and what results to expect.
- Public sources only. Figures come from public, checkable sources such as government data and platform documentation. We do not invent statistics, case studies, or "our client saw 300%" stories.
- No fabricated experts. Guides are published under The DigitalRestaurateur Team rather than a made-up personal byline. We would rather earn trust through cited sources and sound method than a fictional author photo.
- Answer-first. Each guide opens with the direct answer to the question that brought you there, then goes deep for those who want the detail.
How we research a guide
Each guide goes through the same steps before it is published:
- Start from the operator's question. We look at what restaurant owners actually search for and the follow-up questions that come with it, and the guide answers those, in that order.
- Read the platform's own documentation. For Google Ads, Google Business Profile, Meta ads and the rest, we work from the platform's own help pages, not someone else's summary of them.
- Check figures against a public source. A number we rely on should trace back to a public source we cite. If we can't find one we trust, the number comes out.
- Make sure the source still loads. A citation that goes nowhere is no use to you. When a primary source is blocked or gone, we point to an accurate, accessible record of it instead.
- Show the date. Every guide shows when it was published, and when it was last updated once it has been revised, so you can judge how fresh the advice is.
The full policy on independence, sources and how we compare options is in our editorial standards.
How we choose what to cover
We pick topics by what operators need to know, judged by what they search for, not by which companies we might mention. When a guide names a tool or platform, it is there because it is relevant to the task.
Corrections
We would rather be right than look right. If something here is out of date, unclear, or wrong, tell us and we will fix it. See the contact page to get in touch.