Whether you run a fine dining restaurant, a local bar, or a growing food brand, your customers are checking Facebook multiple times a day. 

In this post, I outline why Facebook ads are so important for raising awareness of your restaurant and share seven killer ad tactics to drive more business (including catering).

Who is this post for?

This post is for restaurant managers, owners, or staff who want to understand how to use Facebook and Instagram ads to grow their business. 

Paid social ads on Facebook and Instagram are essential for building an effective online presence that drives customer growth. (A related post here on growing your restaurant's SEO presence in Google)

This post is your roadmap to turning those views into actual reservations, online orders, and in-store visits. We outline why Facebook ads are critical for your survival in 2025 and give you seven specific ad tactics you can use right now to grow your business, including how to land big catering contracts.

Why you need to use Facebook ads to promote your restaurant

Did you know that nearly 74% of diners use social media to decide where to eat? (source: Oyster Link)

Yet we see restaurant owners and food brands make the same mistake every day. They post a delicious photo of their special on their Facebook Page, sit back, and wait for the crowds.

And then nothing happens. 

And that's because without ads, you have minimal brand reach. Organic Facebook or Instagram posts reach low single digits of your fan base, but with ads, your reach is unlimited!

Consider also that many of your restaurant competitors are not very savvy with online marketing and are still over-relying on inefficient, wasteful traditional marketing, or doing no marketing at all. 

While traditional marketing has its place, there is a real opportunity for you to get in the game ahead of your slower, less marketing-sophisticated competitors.

Facebook Is Pay-to-Play

Here is the hard truth. Facebook is "pay-to-play." Organic reach is dead. If you have 1,000 fans, Facebook might show your post to 20 of them if you are lucky. If you are not running ads, your competitors are the ones who are savvy enough to pay for placement. They are stealing your customers while you post for free and reach almost nobody.

Forget About Facebook Organic Posts – There’s No Exposure Without Ads!

This does not mean you should stop organic page posts - you still need to post up good content to your Facebook page, but realize that real, tangible business results, such as growing new customers or repeat customers, happen with ads. 

Different Skill Set Required for Running Ads

In addition, running ads on Facebook is a very different skill set from posting content on your page. Facebook has one of the most robust advertising platforms, which means there are many levers, options, steps, and decisions that you need to take to set up a winning restaurant ad campaign.

For example, Facebook has many campaign objectives that align with different business goals. Each campaign objective has an algorithm behind it designed to achieve that goal. So, your choice of campaign objectives is the first essential step to a successful campaign. 

So, depending on the creative you have at hand and what business outcome you are trying to achieve your objective will change. Here are 3 of the most common campaign objectives for restaurant and food companies. 

But throwing money at a "Boost Post" button is not the answer either. That often just gets you "likes" but no sales. If you're running Boost Posts (a campaign objective similar to Engagement), here is a related post about why you should not be running the Facebook Boost Post.

Incredible Demographic Targeting Possibilities with Facebook Ads

In our experience managing millions in ad spend, targeting is the most critical step. You can have the best burger photo in the world, but if you show it to a vegan 50 miles away, you have wasted your money.

For Meta marketing for restaurants, there are three specific audiences you need to build:

Restaurant Ad Example #1: The Spanish Tapas Bar

Let's say you own a Tapas restaurant in Houston. We don't just target "Houston." We use Facebook Ads to find people in the Houston area who:

This is how you stop wasting money on people who will never visit - specific, customer-focused targeting. 

Restaurant Ad Example #2: The NYC Fast Casual Spot

Assume you have a fast casual restaurant in midtown Manhattan as an example. We can target people who are interested in competitor restaurants in Midtown Manhattan.

For this example, we selected Chipotle Mexican Grill, Qdoba Mexican Grill, El Pollo Loco, and Panera.

Facebook tells us there are more than 8,000 people here who are interested in those competitor restaurants. This is low-hanging fruit. 

Before you spend a single dollar, you must set up tracking. Old tracking methods often lose 40% to 60% of data due to new privacy protections on mobile phones.

You must install Facebook's advanced tracking tool (called Conversions API) to fix this.

Think of this as a direct line from your website to Facebook that ensures your data is accurate. This allows you to track key actions your customers take.

Facebook or Instagram Ads?

A quick note about a question we get often: Should we run Instagram ads too? 

Since Meta owns both platforms, you manage them from the same place.

The smartest move is to let Meta's algorithm do the work. When you select "Automatic Placements" in your ad settings, you allow the system to hunt for the lowest cost result across all platforms.

For example, if it is cheaper to get a reservation from a user browsing Instagram Stories than someone scrolling the Facebook News Feed, the algorithm will automatically shift your budget to Instagram. You do not need to guess. You just need to give the system the freedom to find your customer wherever they are scrolling. 

It helps if you have a calendar planned for the quarter, month by month, week by week. If it is summer, showcase your salad options.

Mother's Day Targeting Example

Alternatively, if it is Mother’s Day, showcase the food items that will resonate well with families and moms.

Below is another example of targeting for Mother’s Day – perhaps your restaurant has a Mother’s Day brunch special and fun activities planned for young kids as well.

Below, we can find families within 10 miles of San Diego who are parents with kids of ALL ages and have household incomes in the upper 25%.

If you run an Irish Pub or bar with a live band, target people within 5 miles who like "Craft Beer," "Jameson Whiskey," AND "Irish Folk Music." You are not selling beer. You are selling the Saturday night experience.

Promoting Restaurant Entertainment Example

How to implement retargeting (i.e. remarketing):

Restaurant Gift Card Purchases

There is nobody more likely to buy gift cards from you than your past customers. Facebook can be used to sell gift cards directly to all your past visitors. And considering that a large percentage of gift cards are never redeemed, that's cash flow and profit that ends up on the bottom line. 

Here's how it works. 

Once you have created a Custom Audience from your customer list, you tell Facebook to find people with profiles similar to those of the customers already in your list. This tactic is one of the first you should consider when running Facebook Ads.

This is all done with the Audience Manager in the Facebook Ads Manager.  

How to create a Lookalike audience:

Facebook will now scan millions of data points to find the 1% of people in your city who are most mathematically similar to your big spenders. This creates a "Super-Lookalike" list that is far more accurate than any manual targeting you could do.

The Execution: We switch from consumer targeting to business targeting here. In the "Detailed Targeting" section, select Job Titles instead of Interests.

These are the people holding the corporate credit card for the holiday party or the Monday lunch meeting. Drive them to a specific landing page about your Catering services, NOT your home page. (Read my related post about landing page best practices)

Traditional marketing (radio, print, TV) is expensive and hard to track. But when you pair it with Facebook Ads, you get a "Lift" effect.

The Execution: If you are running radio commercials in specific zip codes, run Facebook ads to that exact same area at the same time.

The result? When the customer is driving to work, listening to morning talk radio, they have already heard your brand. This familiarity builds trust and drastically increases redemption rates.

Seattle Sports Bar Example:

If you run a radio ad on a sports station, run Facebook ads targeting men in Seattle aged 22-55 who "Listen to Fox Sports Radio" and "Like the Seahawks." You are hitting them in their ears and their eyes simultaneously.

If you leverage Facebook ads and integrate them into your traditional marketing tactics, you will improve the “lift” or response from the traditional advertising tactics and will see better results.

Example Now Hiring Facebook Job Ad

Show the culture, not just the requirements.

Note: Facebook has strict "Special Ad Category" rules for employment. You will have limited targeting options (no age or gender discrimination), but the algorithm is very good at finding candidates based solely on the ad copy.

Restaurant job ads typically get very good mileage - meaning your job budget goes far. For this ad we were able to reach 85,630 unique people and close to 160,000 impressions. This ad ran for about 6 weeks. 

Different Types of Facebook Ads for Your Tactics

Facebook offers various ad formats to showcase your restaurant’s promotions, brand, or specials.

You can be incredibly creative with Facebook ads, and there are many ways to promote your restaurant with rich media. Your ad type will depend somewhat on what creative assets you have, such as images or video.

How to choose the correct format for your goal.

Facebook Restaurant Ad Examples

Single Image Ads: 

The most common type of ad runs with only one image. These are quick and easy and work well on Facebook for restaurants, but there are better options for rich media and greater creativity.

Video ads: 

Do you have nice video content? Maybe you had a promotional video made? 

For example, you can highlight the kitchen as the dishes are being prepared if you're in a higher-end restaurant. One of the best experiences I have ever had was at a restaurant in downtown Cleveland, sitting at the chef’s table – I had a front-row view of how the kitchen operated, and it was fascinating.

Video ads will stream through a user’s newsfeed and are muted until they tap the video to hear the audio.

And if you choose the Video Views campaign objective, you will likely get views on your video for pennies each view! As an advertiser, the Video Views campaign objective delivers substantial ROI for your ad spend. 

Carousel ads: 

Carousel ads are similar to single-image ads, except you can put multiple images in each ad.

It allows the user to "scroll" through the meal. Or perhaps you have multiple images of different dishes, or you want to showcase Friday night entertainment. Below is an example of a donut shop - notice the carrot on the right-hand side - that allows people to scroll through the images of your food or entertainment. 

You could do something like this:

Carousel ads are best for variety or storytelling. With carousel ads, users scroll horizontally through different pictures of the lunch special. In this case, you could show each item with a call-to-action on each image.

Carousel Ads give people a better sense of what you're promoting since multiple images are being shown.

Or another idea, maybe you have several different offers – you can use carousel ads to highlight each type of promotion allowing people to scroll easily through each promotion to find the most appealing.

Facebook Ads Manager

The days of relying on foot traffic and hope are over. Your customers are staring at their phones for 3 hours a day, and one-third of that time is spent on Facebook and Instagram. 

So, if you're ready to dive into learning how to run Facebook Ads yourself, the first place you need to start is the Facebook Ad Manager. If you have the time, Facebook provides many resources to dive in and learn from the basics of how to setup your ad account, business manager, to ad strategy.

Related Post: Common Facebook Ad Campaign Questions