Friday is full. Saturday is full. Tuesday, you're looking at a half-empty dining room and a line cook scrolling his phone. And every week a little more of your revenue goes out the door to a delivery app.
When an owner in The Woodlands asks us "how do I get more customers to my restaurant?", awareness is rarely the real gap. People already know you're there. What you need is for more of them to pick you on a Tuesday, order from you directly instead of through an app, and come back without a coupon every time. Below is how we'd go at it if we were running your marketing, with published numbers where they exist and clearly labeled examples where they don't.
How diners in The Woodlands actually pick a restaurant
Think about the last time you searched "restaurants in The Woodlands" or "brunch near me." You probably looked at three places on a map, opened two of them, scrolled the photos, glanced at the stars, and checked whether they took reservations. That took under a minute.
That minute is your real storefront, and the survey numbers line up with it. BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, 74% look for reviews written in the last three months, and 31% will only use a business rated 4.5 stars or higher, up from 17% the year before. And Toast’s restaurant industry research reports that 50% of diners say social media played a role in discovering a restaurant.
So you're fighting on two screens: the Google map results and a feed of short videos. Both reward the same habit, which is showing fresh, real, appetizing proof that people enjoy eating at your place, week after week.
How to rank higher in Google Maps for “restaurants near me”
Google ranks map results on three things: how relevant your profile is to the search, how close you are to the person searching, and how prominent you are (reviews, links, mentions). You can't move your building, so put your effort into the other two.
Set up your Google Business Profile like it's your front door
- Pick the most specific primary category. "Mexican restaurant" or "Sushi restaurant" beats plain "Restaurant." Add secondary categories only if they're true (Bar, Brunch restaurant, Caterer).
- Load the menu with the menu editor. Google's menu editor is built for food and drink businesses and lets you add items, descriptions and prices grouped into sections, per Google’s menu editor help page. Changes can take 24 to 48 hours to show. A typed menu beats a blurry photo of a paper one, because the text can match searches like "birria tacos" or "gluten free pizza."
- Add your reservation and order links. If you use a reservation platform, connect it, or add your own link, as described on Google’s booking setup help page. Point the order link at your own online ordering, not a delivery app.
- Upload photos every week. Dishes, the dining room, the patio, the bar, staff. Real photos from your phone are fine. Ten new photos a month keeps the profile looking alive.
- Fill in attributes and holiday hours. Outdoor seating, kid-friendly, happy hour, vegetarian options. Set special hours for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Fourth of July before the day, not after the one-star review.
- Post weekly. A new special, an event, a seasonal dish. Posts won't rank you on their own, but they give searchers a reason to choose you.
Our guide to ranking in the Houston map pack goes deeper on categories and proximity if you want the full playbook.
Market Street, Waterway Square and Hughes Landing: competing in a crowded dining district
The Woodlands has an odd problem for restaurants. If yours sits on Market Street, along The Woodlands Waterway or at Hughes Landing, you're within a short walk of a dozen other good places to eat. Proximity stops being an advantage when everyone is close. A diner standing outside Waterway Square sees the same map you do.
In a cluster like that, the tie-breakers are your photos, your review count and recency, and how clearly your profile says what you're best at. "Great food and drinks" describes everyone. "Wood-fired pizza and a dog-friendly patio on the lake" is a reason to walk past three other doors.
A few things we see work in these districts:
- Own an occasion. Pre-show dinner before a concert at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Post-shopping lunch near The Woodlands Mall. Business lunch for the office towers. Pick one and say it in your profile description, posts and ads.
- Show the walk. Visitors and hotel guests along the Waterway don't know the area. A photo of your entrance and a line like "two minutes from the Waterway Square fountain" helps.
- Mind the parking question. If you have a garage nearby or validate parking, say so. It answers an objection before anyone asks.
If you're out on FM 1488 in Magnolia, along Rayford Road in Spring, or off I-45 in Conroe, you have the opposite situation: fewer neighbors, longer drives. There, the work is making sure you show up for the broader "restaurants near me" searches across a wider radius, and giving people a reason to drive 15 minutes.
Delivery apps vs. direct online ordering: do the math
Delivery apps are a customer acquisition channel. They're also expensive, and many owners have never sat down and priced it out per order. Here are the published rates as of this writing:
| Platform and plan | Delivery commission | Pickup commission |
|---|---|---|
| DoorDash Basic | 15% | 6% |
| DoorDash Plus | 25% | 6% |
| DoorDash Premier | 30% | 6% |
| Uber Eats Lite | 20% (15% in some cities) | 7% |
| Uber Eats Plus | 25% | 7% |
| Uber Eats Premium | 30% | 7% |
Rates from DoorDash’s merchant pricing page and Uber Eats’ merchant pricing page. Uber Eats says its 7% pickup rate requires in-app prices to match in-store prices; otherwise it's 10%. DoorDash notes that orders through its own online ordering storefront are commission-free but carry a payment processing fee.
On a $40 order, the difference between a 30% plan and your own website is about $10 or more, every single time. If you do 150 delivery orders a week, that's a real number.
We wouldn't tell most restaurants to quit the apps. They bring in people who have never heard of you. The play is to use the apps to get discovered, then move repeat customers to direct ordering:
- Put a card in every delivery bag: "Order direct next time at [your site] and get a free dessert." Keep it simple.
- Make the order button on your Google profile and Instagram bio go to your own ordering page.
- Run a slightly better deal on direct orders, since you can afford it.
- Collect the email address at checkout so the customer becomes yours.
Restaurant social media marketing that fills seats
Short video on Instagram Reels and TikTok is where most people under 45 find a new place to eat. You don't need a production crew. You need a phone, decent light and a steady habit.
A shot list that works for almost any restaurant
- The "money shot": the cheese pull, the pour, the sizzle, the torch on the crème brûlée. Five to eight seconds.
- A cook or bartender making one signature item start to finish, sped up.
- The owner or chef saying one sentence about why a dish exists.
- What $25 gets you at lunch. People love a price.
- The room on a busy night. Social proof is visual.
- A walk from the parking lot to the table, so first-timers know where they're going.
Three to four short videos a week is a realistic pace for a small team. Post the same clip to Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Put the city in the caption ("best tacos in The Woodlands" is a phrase people type into TikTok search), and tag your location.
Local creators
Houston has a deep bench of food creators, from accounts with a few thousand followers in Spring and Katy to large metro-wide pages. In our experience the smaller local ones are usually the better deal: their followers actually live nearby, and many will come in for a comped meal and a modest fee. Invite five creators to a tasting night instead of paying one big account. And make sure every paid or comped post is disclosed, because the FTC treats a free meal as a material connection. Our guide to FTC rules for influencer partnerships covers what to require in writing, and micro-influencers vs. big names covers how to choose.
Build an email and SMS list you own
Followers belong to Instagram. Delivery customers belong to the app. An email list belongs to you, and it's the cheapest way to fill a Tuesday.
Ways to collect contacts without being annoying
- Online ordering checkout (the easiest source, and the highest quality).
- A birthday club: "Tell us your birthday and get a free entrée that week." People happily give up an email for that.
- Guest Wi-Fi login that asks for an email.
- Reservation platforms, if your settings allow marketing opt-in.
- A QR code on the check presenter for a monthly giveaway.
Send one email a week at most. Make it about something: a new seasonal dish, a wine dinner, a Monday deal, the Thanksgiving pie pre-order deadline. Text messages get read faster, so save SMS for time-sensitive offers, and only text people who gave clear permission to receive marketing texts. If you're starting from zero, our email marketing basics post walks through the setup.
Events and slow-night offers that work in Houston
Every restaurant has its slow nights. For most places around here it's Monday through Wednesday, plus the weeks after the holidays, plus the stretch of July and August when it's too hot to sit outside and families are traveling.
Discounting your busiest night teaches people to wait for a deal. Aim your offers at the empty nights instead, and give people a reason that isn't just "cheaper":
- Recurring theme nights: trivia Tuesday, a half-price bottle Wednesday, a kids-eat-free Monday. Consistency matters more than cleverness. It takes six to eight weeks for a weekly event to catch on.
- Industry night: a discount for restaurant and hospitality workers on their night off.
- Prix fixe or chef's table: a set menu on a slow night that feels like an event.
- Ride the local calendar: Pavilion concert nights, high school football Fridays, holiday lighting events, the RodeoHouston run in March, watch parties for the Texans and Astros.
- Summer indoor push: when the patio is unbearable, promote the air-conditioned bar, a happy hour that runs later, or a lunch combo for the office crowd.
Then tell people. Email the list, post the event to your Google profile, make a short video, and run a small radius ad for the week of the event.
Review management for restaurants
In a crowded map result, reviews break most ties, and the survey numbers near the top of this post say the recent ones count most. A 4.6 with forty reviews from this summer will often win the click over a 4.7 whose newest review mentions a menu you retired in 2023.
Restaurants get plenty of reviews without asking, but the unprompted ones skew toward people who were annoyed. To balance that out:
- Have servers mention it at the close of a great meal, with a QR code on the check presenter that opens your Google review form.
- Add a review link to the online ordering confirmation email.
- Reply to every review within a couple of days. Thank the happy ones by name and mention the dish. For the angry ones, apologize once, take it offline, and don't argue in public.
- Never pay for reviews or offer a discount in exchange for a 5-star rating. The FTC's rule on fake reviews applies to restaurants too; see what the fake reviews rule means for local businesses.
Our complete guide to Google reviews has scripts for replies and asking.
Simple ads for restaurants: a radius around your door
Restaurant advertising gets overbuilt. Most independent restaurants we talk to need two campaigns set up carefully, not ten set up in a hurry.
Google Search and Maps ads
Target searches like "restaurants near me," "[cuisine] near me," "[cuisine] the woodlands" and "happy hour [your area]." Set a tight radius, usually 3 to 8 miles depending on how far people drive to you. In the Google Ads location targeting settings, choose to reach people in or regularly in your area ("presence") rather than people merely interested in it, or you'll pay for clicks from someone in Dallas reading about Houston. Add your location so the ad can show in Google Maps with directions. See our search marketing page for how we manage this.
Meta (Instagram and Facebook) radius ads
Take your best-performing short video and run it to people within 5 to 10 miles. Use it to promote a specific thing (the new brunch, Thursday trivia, the holiday catering menu), not "come eat with us." This is where paid social earns its keep for restaurants.
| Campaign | Typical starting budget | What to measure |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search and Maps, 3-8 mile radius | $15-$40 a day | Calls, direction requests, reservation and order clicks |
| Meta video ads, 5-10 mile radius | $10-$30 a day | Event RSVPs, offer redemptions, direct online orders |
| Event or holiday push (1-2 weeks) | $150-$500 total | Covers on that night vs. a normal week |
These are typical ranges we'd start a single-location restaurant with, not a rule. A busy Houston location near the Galleria will need more than a neighborhood café in Shenandoah. The point is to start small, measure what you can tie to covers and orders, and add money to what works.
Where to start this week
If you only do a few things before the weekend, do these:
- Change your Google order button to your own online ordering page and type your menu into the menu editor.
- Upload ten fresh photos and set holiday hours through New Year's.
- Pick your slowest night and give it a weekly reason to come in.
- Print a "order direct next time" card for every delivery bag.
- Film three short videos with the dish people photograph most.
We work with restaurants and hospitality brands across the area (see our restaurant marketing page and the new-location launches in our Toasted Yolk Cafe case study). If you're already boosting posts or running Google ads and can't tell whether they moved covers, our free Ad Spend Leak Check is a quick way to find out. We record about 10 minutes of video going through your actual Google or Meta account, pointing at the spend that isn't earning its keep, and it lands in your inbox within 48 hours.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get more customers to my restaurant?
Start with your Google Business Profile: the most specific category, a typed menu, weekly photos, and reservation and order links. Then build reviews steadily, post short videos three or four times a week, collect emails at checkout, and give your slowest night a recurring event. Small radius ads on Google and Instagram help once those basics are in place.
How do restaurants rank higher on Google Maps?
Google weighs relevance, distance and prominence. You can control relevance with a specific primary category, accurate menu items, attributes and a clear description, and prominence with a steady flow of recent reviews, fresh photos and local links. Distance you can't change, so in dense areas like Market Street, reviews and photos are usually the tie-breaker.
How much do DoorDash and Uber Eats charge restaurants?
As of late 2026, DoorDash's published delivery commissions are 15%, 25% or 30% depending on plan, with 6% for pickup. Uber Eats lists 20% for its Lite plan (15% in some cities), 25% for Plus and 30% for Premium, with 7% for pickup when in-app prices match in-store prices. Your own online ordering usually only costs card processing.
Is social media marketing worth it for a small restaurant?
Yes, if you treat it as short video and not as a posting chore. Toast reports that half of diners say social media played a role in discovering a restaurant. Three or four short clips a week of your best dishes, your staff and the room on a busy night will do more than daily photos with long captions.
How much should a restaurant spend on marketing?
There is no single right number, but a single-location restaurant can test Google and Meta ads for roughly $25 to $70 a day combined before deciding what to scale. Free work comes first: your Google profile, reviews, email list and short videos. Spend on ads only where you can tie results to calls, reservations, orders or covers.