You can’t stop food prices from going up. And you can’t control rising labor wages. But you can control your marketing budget. As a small restaurant, you have to be smart about how you spend your marketing dollars.
In a recent article, we found that most restaurants will spend 3-5% of their overall budget on marketing. Marketing strategies for small restaurant operators should be focused on getting the maximum impact while minimizing their marketing spend.
With that in mind, we’ve highlighted some small restaurant marketing ideas that can make a big impact at a low cost.
5 Marketing Strategies for Small Restaurant Owners
Let’s take a closer look at five small restaurant marketing ideas that can help you get the best ROI (return on investment) out of every dollar you spend.
1. Use a Reliable Social Media Management Tool
Social media marketing can give you a lot of bang for your buck. But it takes time and energy to do it right — to post consistently, develop fresh content, and engage your followers. It’s a lot, and we're guessing you don’t have a ton of extra time to spare.
That’s why I like to recommend an all-in-one social media manager like SocialPilot. This is a fantastic application that helps you schedule, automate, and analyze your content across multiple platforms. My favorite thing about it is that the basic pro package is just over $20 a month.
SocialPilot is affordable and easy to use, and it makes it easy to understand what’s working and what’s not. This means SocialPilot can help you make better and more effective posts without becoming a social media marketing expert.
2. Get Involved in Your Community
As a small restaurant, your local visibility is a big deal. Community involvement is an effective, affordable, and authentic way to engage directly with your target market.
According to Toast, 53% of restaurants plan to invest in greater local community involvement in 2025. Community-based small restaurant marketing ideas include partnerships with local sports teams and area businesses, participation in community events, and charity sponsorships.
Naturally, you'll want to choose opportunities that match your brand and identity. A partnership with the local Little League may be a good move for a pizza joint, but probably wouldn’t make a lot of sense for a fancy French restaurant. But the main thing is to get out there and meet your customers face to face.
3. Bring Back Happy Hour
One of the most affordable marketing strategies for small restaurant owners is a good old-fashioned happy hour. It may not be a radical idea, but the truth is that the pandemic was a real drag on the classic after-work hang.
Way back in 2020, says Business Insider, 8.26% of all restaurant spending took place during the traditional happy hour block, 4 to 6 p.m. We may be back to work, but we still haven’t quite returned to that pre-pandemic peak. In 2023, happy hour accounted for 7.66% of all restaurant spending.
Today, happy hour is making a comeback as remote workers look for ways to socialize and cash-strapped consumers look for discounted drinks and dishes. As a restaurant owner, your goal is to calculate the best prices and portions for each discounted dish — to be sure that you are providing the customer with value while still controlling your costs.
Fortunately, a comprehensive inventory management system like MarginEdge can help you make these calculations and ultimately create happy hour specials that bring in regulars without hurting your profit margins.
4. Celebrate the Seasons
As a small restaurant, take advantage of opportunities for limited-time specials. Lean into the changing seasons and the big holidays. Use special occasions as an excuse to freshen up your menu and promote seasonal specials — think pumpkin soup in the fall; sparkling citrus cocktails in the summer; and rich, indulgent pastries to mark the winter holidays.
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Your small restaurant may not have the budget of a larger restaurant chain. But you do have the ability to be nimble, to adjust your ingredients, to offer your customers new reasons to come in and see what’s on your menu.
Meez can be particularly helpful, providing you with the tools for precise food costing, recipe organization, and real-time menu engineering. You can use these features to adjust your menu offerings at the beginning of each new season while keeping a close eye on your profit margins.
5. Actively Manage Your Reviews
Online restaurant reviews are extremely important. Good reviews can be a powerful marketing tool. Bad reviews can seriously hurt your business.
But according to Toast’s recent index of key stats for restaurants in 2025, only a few restaurants have an active strategy for managing reviews. For instance, they report that only 23% of restaurateurs reach out directly to diners who give them negative reviews. One reason is that managing all of your reviews across every website and social media platform can be a huge job.
Reputation management services like Localyser can help. With Localyser, you can automate your tracking, replying, and analysis of online reviews from all sources including Google, Yelp, OpenTable, Tripadvisor, Uber Eats, DoorDash, and more.
By consolidating all of your reviews on one easy-to-use dashboard, Localyser reduces the time, money, and effort required to address negative reviews, generate positive reviews, and enhance your restaurant’s online reputation.
Low-Cost Marketing With the Right Tech
I’ve highlighted a few of my favorite tech-based solutions for small restaurant marketing. So what do they all have in common? Each of these solutions is effective and extremely affordable.
Still, the best low-cost marketing solutions for your small restaurant will depend on a unique combination of factors — your target market, your location, your budget, and more. I’m here to help you figure all this out. Schedule your consultation today so we can take a closer look at your marketing needs and identify the tools that make the most sense for you.
