This guide gives you 20 specific, proven strategies for growing your restaurant. Some cost only your time. Others use tools that pay for themselves. All of them are worth knowing, whether you're running a single neighborhood spot or starting to think about a second location.
Why Growing Your Restaurant Business Matters in 2026
The restaurant industry has never been easy. But the last few years have made it genuinely harder. According to the National Restaurant Association's 2026 State of the Restaurant Industry report, food costs have risen 34% compared to pre-pandemic levels, and labor costs are up 39% over the same period. Add supply chain disruptions and more dining options competing for customers' attention and dollars, and the pressure on restaurant owners has never been higher.
A caveat: raising prices can only carry you so far before guests push back– or drop off forever. And trying to cut costs without a growth strategy just means you're a leaner operation on a slower decline. Sustainable growth requires a multi-channel approach that builds both your customer base and your revenue per customer.
Before jumping into tactics, it helps to understand what kind of growth your restaurant actually needs right now. Not all growth looks the same.
Increasing Restaurant Sales
More sales mean more transactions, including more guests through the door, more online ordering, and more pickup orders. You don't need a new location to grow sales. Better marketing, stronger word of mouth, expanded delivery reach, and smarter promotions can all drive more volume from where you already are. Learn more about ways to increase restaurant sales.
Increasing Restaurant Revenue
Revenue can grow even without growing sales if your average order value goes up. A guest who orders an appetizer, an entrée, a glass of wine, and dessert is worth significantly more than one who orders just an entrée. Upselling and cross-selling (when done naturally) move the needle without needing additional customers.
Increasing Restaurant Profits
This one's the trickiest. You can grow sales and revenue and still watch profitability stagnate if your costs rise at the same rate. Profitable growth requires looking at both sides of the accounting ledger: bringing in more revenue while running a leaner operation.
A few places operators often find margin: renegotiating supplier contracts (even a 5% reduction in food costs goes straight to the bottom line), tightening portion control to reduce waste without affecting the guest experience, and auditing labor schedules to align staffing with actual demand. Menu engineering — building your menu around your highest-margin items — ties both sides together and is one of the most effective tools here.
The 20 strategies below address all three.
20 Strategies to Grow Your Restaurant Business
Strategy 1: Optimize Your Google Business Profile
If someone searches "tacos near me" or "best brunch spot in [your city]" and your restaurant doesn't show up, you're invisible to some of your best potential customers. Claiming and fully completing your Google Business Profile (GBP) is free and one of the highest Return-on-Investment (ROI) things you can do for your online presence.
Add high-quality photos of your food, dining room, and staff. Keep your hours accurate — nothing loses a customer faster than showing up to a closed restaurant. Use the Q&A section and respond to reviews — replying to both positive and negative feedback signals to Google that your listing is active, which can improve your local search ranking. If applicable, activate Reserve with Google to capture reservations directly from search results. Adding a direct ordering link also gives customers a clear path from search to checkout.
Strategy 2: Invest in Local SEO
Local search engine optimization (SEO)-- the practice of improving how you appear in geographically relevant searches is a long game, but it compounds over time. When your restaurant shows up at the top of "best Italian restaurant near downtown" or "family-friendly Mexican food [your neighborhood]," that's consistent traffic you didn't have to pay for.
Build keyword-rich content on your restaurant website, create location-specific pages if you have multiple spots, and make sure your menu is text-based (not just a PDF) so search engines can read it. Structured data markup — the code that helps Google understand your hours, cuisine type, and price range — can also help you earn rich search results with star ratings and direct links. If that sounds technical, don't worry: most website platforms like Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress handle this automatically or through plugins, so you don't need to write a single line of code. For a deeper dive, check out how to improve restaurant SEO with a Google Business Profile.
Strategy 3: Leverage Social Media to Attract New Diners
Social media is where first impressions happen. Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook serve different purposes, and the restaurants that see success on social understand that. For a full breakdown of what works on each platform, check out The Ultimate Guide to Restaurant Social Media Marketing.
As you probably already know, there are differences between the platforms and the types of content they boost to bring in front of potential customers. Instagram rewards beautiful food photography and a consistent aesthetic. TikTok rewards personality– behind-the-scenes kitchen clips, the story of a dish, and a team member with natural charisma. Facebook still works well for local community reach and event promotion. Across all of them, consistency matters more than virality. Post regularly, use geotags, engage with comments, and repost user-generated content when customers tag you. One genuinely entertaining TikTok can sometimes drive more foot traffic than days of paid digital marketing — without spending a dollar.
Strategy 4: Partner with Delivery Platforms Strategically
Third-party delivery platforms aren't just providers of delivery people to get your products to your customers… they’re also gold for helping potential customers discover you. When someone new to your neighborhood opens DoorDash and searches for food, they're typically not looking for a specific restaurant. They're browsing to see what catches their interest and appetite. That's new customer discovery you couldn't easily buy elsewhere. Learn more about adding delivery to your restaurant and how to increase sales with DoorDash Pickup and Delivery Services.
Activating both pickup and delivery on DoorDash Marketplace captures customers across different ordering preferences. Pickup orders are commission-free on DoorDash, which makes them especially attractive from a profitability standpoint. Think of your Marketplace presence as a top-of-funnel channel: it brings in guests who don't know you yet — and DoorDash data shows repeat consumers make up nearly 40% of orders by month three (based on internal DoorDash data, January–December 2025).
Strategy 5: Collaborate with Local Influencers and Food Bloggers
You don't need a celebrity endorsement. Micro-influencers– local food accounts with 1,000 to 10,000 followers– often deliver more authentic reach than bigger names, and they're usually far more accessible.
A hosted tasting, a social media takeover, or simply inviting a local food blogger to try a new menu item can generate genuine, trusted content that reaches exactly the kind of local audience you want. The return on investment tends to beat traditional advertising because followers actually trust the person recommending you. For tips on finding and working with the right creators, see our Food Influencer Marketing Guide for Restaurants.
Strategy 6: Launch a Restaurant Loyalty Program
Loyal customers are your highest-margin guests. They spend more per visit, come back more often, and refer others. A loyalty program– whether points-based, visit-based ("your 10th coffee is on us"), or tiered– gives existing customers a reason to choose you over the place across the street.
The mechanics matter less than the execution. A simple, easy-to-use program that rewards behavior customers were already doing (like ordering their usual) works far better than a complicated points system no one remembers to use. DoorDash Commerce Platform offers Cross-Channel Loyalty tools that let restaurants run their own loyalty program across their direct ordering channels at no commission cost (payment processing fees apply). Commerce Platform is built specifically for restaurants and requires an active Marketplace account. See 5 Strategies for Successful Restaurant Loyalty Programs for a detailed playbook, and learn more about restaurant customer retention.
Strategy 7: Use Email Marketing to Re-Engage Customers
Email marketing has one of the highest returns of any digital marketing channel, and most restaurants underuse it. The key is segmentation– sending the right message to the right person.
New menu announcement? Send it to your most engaged regulars. Birthday or anniversary coming up? That guest gets a personalized note with a small offer. Haven't seen someone in three months? That's a win-back campaign opportunity. DoorDash Commerce Platform's automated email marketing makes it possible to set these up once and let them run practically on their own — and automated email has been shown to boost order frequency by an average of 15% (based on internal DoorDash data from March 2024 through March 2025) — so you're staying in front of existing customers without manual effort every week.
Read our full guide to Email Marketing for Restaurants: Grow Orders & Loyalty to set up your first campaigns.
Strategy 8: Send Targeted Text Message Campaigns
If email is a conversation, text messaging is a tap on the shoulder. It's immediate, it's personal, and open rates are extraordinarily high compared to email. Use it strategically– not every day– for things like last-minute table openings, flash promotions during slow periods, or order-ready notifications for pickup customers.
The goal is to be useful, not noisy. A well-timed text on a slow Tuesday afternoon ("Come in before 6 and get 20% off your bill") can fill seats you'd otherwise lose. Learn how in Restaurant Text Marketing: How to Use SMS and Push to Increase Orders.
Strategy 9: Personalize the Guest Experience with Customer Data
The best restaurants make guests feel remembered. Your customer data– order history, dietary preferences, visit frequency, favorite tables– can help you deliver that experience at scale. A customer who always orders vegetarian dishes probably doesn't need a push notification about your new smoked brisket. The one who orders wine with every visit, however, is exactly the one you’d want to tell about your sommelier dinner.
Want more 5-star reviews without spending hours asking for them? DoorDash Commerce Platform's Guest Experience Management automatically asks happy customers to leave reviews and helps you respond to every one — all from a single dashboard. This is one of the clearest advantages of combining Marketplace (which brings in new guests) with Commerce Platform (which helps you build relationships with them over time).
Strategy 10: Engineer Your Menu for Profitability
Menu engineering– the practice of strategically designing your menu to guide guests toward high-margin items– sounds technical. In practice, it's fairly intuitive. Items placed in the top-right corner of a menu get more attention. Descriptive language ("slow-braised for six hours with our house spice blend") justifies a higher price point. Removing dollar signs from prices subtly reduces price sensitivity. For hands-on tactics, see Practical Menu Engineering Tips to Drive Restaurant Profits.
The bigger picture is this: not every item on your menu deserves equal space. Your high-margin, high-popularity items should be easy to find and visually prominent. Your low-margin, low-popularity items should probably be cut. On DoorDash, adding descriptions to at least 50% of menu items can increase sales by over 6% on average, and reaching 50% photo coverage can drive a 13% average sales increase (based on internal DoorDash data, 2023–2025). A leaner, more profitable menu is also easier for your kitchen to execute consistently.
Strategy 11: Offer Reservation Upgrades and Add-Ons
Before a guest ever walks through the door, you have a chance to increase their spend. Prepaid add-ons at the time of reservation — champagne on arrival, a birthday cake, a wine pairing for a special occasion, chef's table access, a kitchen tour, or a specialty dessert platter — boost restaurant revenue while also making the guest feel taken care of. Setting these up is straightforward: most reservation systems let you offer add-ons at the time of booking, or you can present them in a pre-arrival email as a simple upsell before the guest arrives.
The dual benefit here is real: you capture revenue upfront (reducing no-show losses) and you create a guest experience that's worth talking about. Guests who feel genuinely celebrated tend to come back — and according to the 2026 DoorDash Delivery Trends Report, 62% of consumers who order delivery from a restaurant later visit in person, which means every positive experience, whether in the dining room or at home, builds the relationship.
Strategy 12: Create Special Dining Experiences
The most successful restaurant operators don't just sell meals — they sell evenings. Multi-course tasting menus, chef collaboration dinners, wine pairing events, themed pop-up concepts, cooking classes, and behind-the-scenes kitchen experiences all create premium-priced evenings that attract guests who wouldn't necessarily come in for a regular Tuesday dinner. These events command higher price points precisely because they offer something the regular menu can't: an experience that feels exclusive, curated, and worth planning around. To test demand without operational risk, keep your first event small and reservation-only — a six-seat chef's table dinner is easier to execute than a full dining room takeover, and it gives you real feedback before you scale.
These events also generate social media content organically. Guests at an experience post about it. That content reaches new audiences. Those people become potential customers. And according to the 2026 DoorDash Delivery Trends Report, 62% of consumers who order delivery from a restaurant later visit in person — meaning the audience you build online has a real path back to your dining room.
Strategy 13: Fill Off-Peak Hours with Targeted Promotions
Empty tables during slow periods are lost revenue you can never recover. Targeted promotions– offered specifically during off-peak windows, not blanket discounts– can turn weekday lunch slumps and slow early-dinner hours into productive service periods.
DoorDash Marketplace's Promotions tool delivers a median return of $4 in incremental sales for every $1 spent.* Running a time-limited offer during a slow period is very different from discounting broadly and without a strategic promo end date. The former fills gaps strategically; the latter trains customers to wait for deals.
Strategy 14: Train Your Staff to Upsell Naturally
Upselling doesn't have to feel pushy. When it does, it backfires. The difference between a server who says "Can I get you anything else?" and one who says "The lamb pairs really well with the Rioja we just got in, if you're interested" is everything.
Train your team to make genuine recommendations based on what guests have already ordered. An appetizer suggestion that fits the table's chosen entrées. A dessert mention that comes after the plates are cleared, not before. Natural cross-selling– suggesting add-ons that complement the order– can meaningfully boost check averages without making guests feel sold to.
Strategy 15: Optimize Your Delivery Menu for Travel
Your in-person menu and your delivery menu don't have to be identical, and at most restaurants, they probably shouldn't be. Some dishes travel beautifully. Others arrive sad, soggy, and nothing like what you intended.
For delivery, curate a menu of items that maintain their quality during transit. Invest in packaging that preserves temperature and presentation. Adjust portion sizes where needed. Removing items that don't travel well protects your brand reputation with every order that goes out the door.
Strategy 16: Create Takeout Bundles and Family Meals
Bundles do two things at once: they increase average order value, and they simplify the decision for the customer. A family meal pack that serves four to six, a date night bundle with an appetizer and a bottle of wine, a weekday lunch combo– these remove the friction of decision-making and building an order from scratch.
For takeout and delivery customers especially, a well-priced bundle is often an easier sell than individual items. And because you control the bundle composition, you can include higher-margin items alongside the popular attention-grabbers.
Strategy 17: Leverage Community Events and Local Partnerships
Your restaurant exists in a neighborhood, a city, a community. The operators who grow fastest tend to be deeply embedded in that community– sponsoring a local 5K, cooking at a food festival, partnering with a nearby business for cross-promotion, or catering for a school event.
These partnerships rarely cost much, but they build the kind of local visibility and goodwill that digital marketing campaigns can't replicate. Word of mouth from a genuine community presence is still among the most powerful drivers of repeat business.
Strategy 18: Expand Your Reach with Multiple Locations or Concepts
When a restaurant concept is working, expansion becomes a logical next step for an entrepreneur ready to scale. Opening a second location in a complementary neighborhood extends your reach to an entirely new customer base. Launching a virtual brand (a delivery-only concept that runs out of your existing kitchen) can test new ideas with minimal overhead before you commit to brick-and-mortar.
For a full look at what expansion requires, see our guide to restaurant expansion.
If the concept and operations are strong, franchising is another path worth considering, though it requires significant systemization before you can replicate consistently. Whatever direction you take, expansion works best when the foundation is solid– strong margins, reliable operations, and a trained team that doesn't need you in the building every hour.
Strategy 19: Turn Loyal Customers into Brand Ambassadors
Your most loyal customers are already doing some of your marketing for free. Give them more to work with. Referral programs that reward both the referrer and the new guest create a structured reason to spread the word. Instagram-worthy dishes and presentations generate organic social content. Featuring customer stories on your own channels builds community.
The restaurants that grow through word of mouth have one thing in common: they create moments worth talking about. That starts with the food and service, but it extends to how you make people feel over time.
Strategy 20: Sell Restaurant Merchandise and Packaged Goods
New revenue streams that don't require additional covers are worth finding. Branded merchandise — aprons, tote bags, coffee mugs, drinkware — turns loyal customers into walking advertisements for your restaurant. These physical items work best when they reflect your brand's personality: a neighborhood taqueria selling branded hot sauce feels authentic; the same restaurant selling a generic apron doesn't.
Food products are often the stronger revenue play. Signature sauces, spice blends, pantry staples, cookbooks, meal kits, and gift boxes let customers bring a piece of your cuisine into their homes — and give them a reason to share it with others. To start small without a heavy upfront investment, list a few products on Etsy, add a dedicated section to your restaurant website, or set up a simple display near the host stand to test what your regulars actually want to buy.
This isn't the right move for every restaurant, but for those with a strong brand identity and a loyal customer base, packaged goods can become a meaningful additional revenue line that grows independently of your dining room capacity.
Common Mistakes That Limit Restaurant Growth
Even with the best strategies in place, a few avoidable habits can undercut your progress.
Over-discounting regular customers is one of the most common. Giving blanket promotions to guests who would have paid full price anyway sucks away your margins without inducing any new behavior. Discounts should target specific goals– filling slow periods, winning back lapsed customers, and converting first-time visitors.
Ignoring off-peak opportunities leaves real money on the table. Empty seats during slow hours represent lost restaurant revenue that cannot be recovered once that service window closes. Targeted promotions and reservations for those windows are worth building into your marketing strategy.
Inconsistent marketing efforts can often be more damaging than no marketing at all. Posting sporadically on social media, sending occasional emails, and running one-off promotions with no follow-through fails to build the brand recall that turns a curious first-time visitor into a regular. Consistency compounds.
Not measuring what works means you'll keep repeating ineffective tactics while accidentally abandoning the ones that drive results. If you're running marketing campaigns– especially paid ones– you need to know which channels, offers, and messages are actually having a positive impact. Track any rise in sales specifically attributable to your initiative, not just total sales.
Start Growing Your Restaurant Business Today
Growing your restaurant business starts with reaching more customers and converting first-time visitors into regulars. The 20 strategies above give you a clear roadmap, but the fastest path to new customer discovery is meeting diners where they're already searching.
DoorDash Marketplace connects you with millions of active diners looking for restaurants like yours. Whether they're ordering delivery or picking orders up themselves, Marketplace puts your restaurant in front of high-intent customers ready to order—without the complexity of managing your own marketing campaigns.
Join thousands of restaurants using DoorDash Marketplace to reach new customers and increase sales.
