Restaurant Marketing That Works: From Trends to Customer Loyalty

The restaurant business is one of the most competitive markets, where fighting for the audience's attention is becoming more difficult and expensive every year. Today we will tell you what trends you should pay attention to in order to stay among the leaders.

According to analysts, 2024–2025 will be a turning point for HoReCa. Audience preferences are changing, the demand for personalized service and business transparency is growing, and new technologies and marketing tools allow restaurants and cafes to build a dialogue with the client on a completely different level.

Every day, customers make a choice of where to go: a cozy coffee shop, a restaurant with signature cuisine, or a trendy gastropub with an unusual concept. In conditions where there are often several establishments on the same street with similar menu items and the same pricing policy, competent marketing promotion becomes a key factor in success.

More and more people are turning to conscious consumption and a healthier approach: choosing establishments that support their values, paying attention to the composition of dishes and the origin of products, thinking about the transparency of business policies. Against this background, three key areas stand out that will determine the restaurant business in 2025.

Environmental awareness is no longer just a buzzword – it increasingly influences consumer decisions. It is no longer enough to simply make something tasty – customers want to understand what products are used in the kitchen, how they were produced, and what footprint their consumption will leave.

Against the background of the wellness trend, such establishments receive an additional plus in karma: people who monitor their diet pay attention not only to calories, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates on the menu, but also to the quality of the product itself and its origin.

Today, data is everything: technology helps analyze customer behavior, predict trends, manage procurement, and personalize service.
What is already being actively implemented:

The restaurant delivery market continues to grow. People want to eat delicious food, but without having to leave home. The restaurant business is increasingly integrated into the digital environment, and now establishments are faced with a choice: to work through aggregators or create their own delivery service?

The main advantages of working through aggregators are access to a wide audience and minimization of marketing costs. The disadvantages include high commissions and weak quality control of delivery.

The advantages of your own delivery service include the ability to collect customer data and personalize your offer, as well as full control over the process. However, the entry threshold into the delivery format is quite high: you need to select and pay for an IT platform or develop your own portal, hire couriers, take care of logistics and promotion.

Understanding your target audience is a business necessity. Who are your restaurant guests? What do they really want? What are their consumption habits?

Modern consumers choose not only delicious food, but also the ideology of the restaurant: they care about what values the establishment conveys, what atmosphere reigns in it and how it fits into their lifestyle. Therefore, it is important to adapt the menu, service and concept of the establishment to the needs of the generation that is the core of your target audience.

• Atmosphere – millennials value comfort and thoughtful interior details.

• Beautiful Presentation – for millennials, the presentation of a dish is more important than its taste. The dish should look so appealing that you want to take a photo of it.

• Conscious Consumption – this manifests in a caring attitude towards the environment, preference for local products, and ethical production. Millennials choose restaurants that share these values.

• Personalized Service – millennials love attention and value dialogue with the waiter. Robots and QR menus? It's convenient, but these guests will appreciate warm human communication more.

Effective marketing to millennials requires an emphasis on personalization, sustainability, and emotional engagement.

Even with their own unique habits, all consumer groups remain demanding of the taste and quality of food. The main trends in gastronomy in 2025 are locality, unusual combinations of flavors, and a “journey” to the other side through traditional cuisine.

1. Locality - COVID times have forced people to stay within their region more often. This has led to an increase in the popularity of establishments located far from the city center.
2. A modern take on traditional classic dishes - restaurateurs add new textures and unexpected combinations of ingredients to recipes.
3. The value of traveling to another culture - establishments are starting to focus not only on the recipe, but also on cultural references. The atmosphere, music, table setting - all the details become part of the meal ritual, allowing you to establish a deep connection with different cultures, be it Russian, Japanese, Chinese or Italian cuisine.

Personalization of the offer should take into account not only trends, but also the diversity of diets and eating habits. A modern menu should be adapted for vegetarians, vegans and people with allergies.

What is important to consider?

Restaurant marketing in 2025 is convenience, awareness, and technology. Millennials choose atmosphere, aesthetics, and service. Zoomers value speed, integration of digital tools, and originality. And conscious consumption and menu diversity are a must-have for everyone. Restaurants that know how to listen to their guests will win.

Today, it is not enough to simply cook delicious food — it is important to be able to tell about it correctly. To stay in the game, a restaurant must competently combine digital marketing tools and offline activities.

A social media account will allow guests to evaluate in advance how “photogenic” your business is. What content formats should you work on first?

Opinion leaders can help you make a breakthrough in both social networks and the number of bookings. Collaborating with bloggers can quickly provide an influx of audience, but it is important to choose the right people. When choosing bloggers, pay attention to:

1. Location – it makes sense to advertise the establishment only with a blogger who lives in your city.
2. Number of subscribers – sometimes a microblogger with a loyal and engaged audience works better than an expensive influencer with millions of subscribers.
3. Audience quality – check for bots among subscribers and the number of likes and comments under posts.
4. The blog's theme and communication style – they should coincide with the values of the business. It is worth starting with gastro bloggers, opinion leaders with lifestyle content, and local media that talk about events and establishments in the city.

An interesting move is interactive collaborations with influencers — for example, a limited range of dishes from a famous blogger or a personalized menu for a month.

A powerful tool for promoting restaurants and cafes is advertising in geo-services. The format allows you to reach your closest target audience: ads can be targeted to specific areas of the city.
Advertising allows a business to be shown more often than competitors, to design a beautiful company showcase — you can add menu items to it — and generate text and graphic ads to get more calls and online bookings.

Attracting a client is expensive, but retaining one is much more profitable. That is why restaurants that implement loyalty systems are one step ahead of their competitors.

• The loyalty program should be simple and clear — let one point be equal to one "ruble", and % cashback accumulates from the amount of each check. You can add privilege levels — by the number of guest visits or by the total amount spent.

• Personalization and CRM marketing – offer customers discounts on their favorite dishes in newsletters, and send gift bonuses a few days before their birthday.

• Use a digital loyalty card. Integration into an app or Apple Wallet is much more convenient than plastic: you can’t forget such a card at home or lose it.

Despite the development of digital marketing tools, live communication remains a powerful way to attract and retain guests. Offline promotion builds customer loyalty and strengthens word of mouth. Joint events, theme nights, gastronomic dinners and culinary master classes allow a restaurant to go beyond the usual format and become a place of urban attraction.

Collaboration with other brands is a win-win marketing strategy where there are no losers. The main thing is to look for partners with a similar audience, but without direct competition.

Who can be involved?

A growing format for interacting with guests is organizing culinary master classes with the chef. Participants of such events are deeply immersed in the atmosphere of the establishment, because they visit not only the main hall, but also explore other areas of the restaurant.

Thematic evenings with the participation of famous artistic figures — for example, jazz performers, artists or art historians — will reflect and enhance the concept of your establishment, diversify the leisure of clients, and help form a reputation in the target audience you need.

Promoting a restaurant is not only about creative content, but also about working with numbers. To understand how successful a strategy is, it is important to track key performance indicators (KPIs).

At the end of each month, it is worth analyzing the results and making a media plan for the next period. It is necessary to specify target indicators: coverage, likes, applications, visits.
In the first months, it is usually easy to grow even exceeding the planned indicators, but over time the numbers may slow down. This moment is a signal that it is time to implement new tools or change the promotion strategy.

Restaurant marketing is not just about food, but also about experiences, atmosphere, and emotions. In 2025, the establishments that understand their target audience, are able to adapt to changing trends, and competently use marketing tools for promotion on social networks will be successful.