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  • Independent restaurants · Marketing and direct booking

    Restaurant marketing agency: fill your dining room direct, without depending on platforms

    Your dining room fills up, but a share of your covers and orders pays a commission before it even reaches the kitchen. ARETA is a restaurant marketing agency based in the Basque Country, whose founder trained in restaurant management at Institut Paul Bocuse. On this page: what a restaurant marketing agency should do for you, the four levers that bring customers in direct, the measurement method and our prices.

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    Since 2019Independent agency, founder trained in restaurant management at the Institut Paul Bocuse
    Public pricingAudit from €1,500 excl. VAT, local SEO from €390 excl. VAT per month, with no minimum term
    MeasuredA single steering figure: the share of your revenue that goes through an intermediary

  • What is at stake

    A restaurant's marketing is judged by what stays in the till

    You can fill your dining room and lose margin. A cover booked through a platform, an order delivered by an app: the customer did come, but part of the bill left with them. Useful restaurant marketing is the kind that brings the customer in through your own channels, your Google Business Profile, your website, your phone, your customer database.

    The three benchmarks below come from our page on TheFork, Uber Eats and Deliveroo commissions, where each channel is detailed. The line-by-line calculation is in our article on the platforms' cost per cover.

    24 to 25%

    commission per delivered order, excluding sponsored placement, according to one operator's account (L'Hôtellerie Restauration, 18 February 2026). One account, not an average: your rate is in your contract.

    30 to 35%

    of orders: the ceiling reported to Parliament for delivery platforms (written question no. 12960 to the Assemblée nationale, Journal officiel of 17 February 2026). A reported ceiling, not an average.

    0 %

    intermediary commission on a cover booked by phone, on your website or from your Google Business Profile. The cost of the direct channel is fixed and known in advance: tools, SEO, payment fees where applicable.

    What this page does not say: that you should leave the platforms. They bring customers you would not otherwise have had and fill quiet services. The question is the share of your volume that goes through them, and whether that share is chosen or imposed.

  • The four levers

    What a restaurant marketing agency works on, lever by lever

    A restaurant is chosen in four stages: people find it, read what others say about it, book, and live the meal. Each stage has its lever. The four are worked on together, because a well-placed listing with a middling rating does not fill tables, and a beautiful plate that nobody finds does not fill them either.

    Be found

    Local SEO and Google Business Profile

    A hungry customer searches for “restaurant” followed by your town or your neighbourhood. The business listing, the website's local pages and the directories decide who appears. That is the job of our restaurant SEO page, and the detail of the listing side is in a restaurant's Google Business Profile: menu, booking link, photos, opening hours.

    Be chosen

    Reviews and online reputation

    Your rating decides before you do. Collecting reviews from your real customers and replying to each one in under 72 hours raises the rating and the volume of recent reviews. Our restaurant online reputation offer starts from €99 excl. VAT per month for Google reviews. We never buy reviews.

    Book without an intermediary

    Direct booking and ordering

    A booking link that points to your own module, a takeaway order on your website, a phone that gets answered: this is the mechanics of direct booking applied to restaurants. Your restaurant POS system data then shows which channel brings which bill.

    Make people want to come back

    Culinary marketing

    The menu, the plating, the story and the rhythm of the meal are the marketing your customers experience at the table. Culinary marketing writes these standards with the kitchen and the front of house, then measures them. This is what turns a first visit into a habit, and a satisfied customer into a review.

    What about answer engines? Part of the “where to dine tonight” searches now goes through AI: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode have been rolled out in France since 22 July 2026. Being cited in these answers is worked on with the same foundations as Google, detailed on our page on visibility in AI answers for a hotel or restaurant. Our GEO agency measures what ChatGPT and Gemini say about your establishment.

  • Who does what

    Restaurant marketing: what the tool does, what the agency does, what falls to you

    Under “restaurant marketing agency” or “communications agency for restaurants” you will find software publishers, advertising agencies, freelancers and SEO agencies. Before comparing quotes, divide up the tasks. The table shows what you are buying, and what no provider will do in your place.

    TaskThe tool (booking, ordering, POS, reviews)The marketing agencyYou and your team
    Be visible locallyHosts your listing, your website, your online menu.Works on the Google Business Profile, local pages, the technical side of the website and directories; records your rankings every month.Keep opening hours, menu and photos up to date: a wrong listing loses the customer at the door.
    Raise the ratingSends review requests by QR code, SMS or email.Organises collection, replies to every review in your voice, flags recurring irritants.Fix in the dining room and the kitchen what the reviews keep repeating: no reply replaces the fix.
    Sell directTakes the booking or the order, without commission or for a subscription.Brings demand to the tool: booking link on the listing, website journey, pages that answer searches.Pick up the phone and confirm quickly: direct business is lost first on a missed call.
    Bring them backStores the customer database and runs the sends.Defines what is collected, writes the messages, sets the reason to come back direct.Ask the customer for their contact details and consent: it is a question asked at the table, not a setting.
    MeasureDisplays its own statistics, channel by channel.Brings it all together in one figure: the share of your revenue that went through an intermediary, before and then every month.Give access to the POS and platform figures: without them, measurement stops at clicks.

    The question to ask any provider, ourselves included: how do you measure the share of my direct sales? If the report stops at impressions and followers, the question of commissions remains untouched. The full criteria are in our guide to choosing your hotel and restaurant marketing agency.

  • The method

    Five steps, in the order in which they pay off

    Order matters. A booking module installed before the listing is visible stays empty; a campaign launched before the baseline record proves nothing. Here is how we run a restaurant marketing engagement.

    1. The starting point

      Before any action, we record your local rankings, the state of your listing, your flow of reviews, your covers booked direct and the share of your revenue that goes through platforms, booking and delivery combined. Without this record, no review of results can be verified. To set it out yourself, learn to calculate your acquisition cost per channel.

    2. The Google Business Profile and the website, first

      These are the two channels that belong to you and that your future customers already consult. A complete, active listing, a booking link to your own module, a fast website, pages that rank for searches in your area. Our SEO agency applies the same method here as for any website: technical, content, authority, measurement.

    3. Reviews, continuously

      A review request at the right moment, a reply to every review, a monthly check on what customers keep repeating. The rating rises through the volume of recent reviews, not through a one-off effort.

    4. Direct, equipped and put forward

      Once the demand is there, the direct channel must be the simplest: booking in two taps, ordering takeaway without creating an account, finding the phone number. The tool is chosen based on what you already have and what your team will keep up to date.

    5. The monthly report

      Rankings, calls and direction requests from the listing, direct bookings and orders, citations in AI answers, and the platform dependency index: the share of your revenue collected by an intermediary. The report also says what did not work. The publication format is that of our hotel and restaurant case studies.

    What the method does not guarantee: a Google ranking, a citation by an AI, a number of covers. No provider controls these results. Our commitment covers the work delivered and a measurement you can verify yourself.

  • What we did

    What we do, what we do not do, what it costs

    ARETA is a marketing and customer experience agency based in Bayonne, active in the Basque Country, in Béarn and throughout France. Restaurants are one of the two trades of our hotel and restaurant marketing agency: independent restaurants, fine dining restaurants, bistros and hotel restaurants.

    What we do

    The four levers, run by a single point of contact

    Local and organic SEO, visibility in AI answers, reviews, direct booking and ordering, culinary marketing. You have a single point of contact, the founder, from the first meeting to the report. Accounts, access and content are opened in your name and remain yours when you leave.

    What it costs

    Public pricing, shown as “from”

    Full SEO audit from €1,500 excl. VAT, billed once. Local SEO Starter Pack from €390 excl. VAT per month, with no minimum term. Google reviews from €99 excl. VAT per month. Marketing consulting from €180 excl. VAT per hour. Culinary marketing by quote. A firm quote comes before any commitment; the full price list is on our hotel and restaurant marketing agency prices page.

    What we do not do

    No in-house tool, no platform contract, no guarantee

    We publish neither a booking engine nor a POS system. We do not negotiate your platform contracts and we do not manage your sponsored campaigns in their apps. We guarantee neither ranking nor citation, and we never buy reviews.

    When you need a pilot

    Several providers, a single direction

    If you already have a photographer, a booking software provider and an advertising agency, the need is sometimes to coordinate them. That is the role of our outsourced marketing director, on a fixed fee from €1,800 excl. VAT per month. And when the question is what the customer experiences on site, our customer experience consulting takes over.

  • Frequently asked questions

    FAQ | Restaurant marketing agency

    The questions restaurateurs ask us before handing over their marketing.

    What does a marketing agency do for a restaurant?

    It works on what brings customers in and what brings them back: local visibility (Google Business Profile, website, SEO), reviews, direct booking and ordering, and the experience at the table. A useful restaurant marketing agency reports in covers and orders that came direct, not in impressions. At ARETA, the steering figure is the share of your revenue that goes through an intermediary, recorded before the engagement and then every month.

    How much does a restaurant marketing agency cost?

    To our knowledge, there is no published market price: of the nine agencies we audited in August 2026, none displayed its rates. Ours are public, excluding taxes and shown as “from”: full SEO audit from €1,500 excl. VAT, Local SEO Starter Pack from €390 excl. VAT per month with no minimum term, Google review management from €99 excl. VAT per month, marketing consulting from €180 excl. VAT per hour. A restaurant with a local clientele most often starts with the audit and the Starter Pack, that is from €6,180 excl. VAT in the first year.

    What is the difference between a restaurant marketing agency and a restaurant SEO agency?

    SEO is one of the levers of a restaurant's marketing, the one that gets the establishment found in Google and in AI answers. The restaurant marketing agency adds reviews, direct booking, culinary marketing and overall steering. At ARETA, it is the same team: SEO is detailed on our restaurant SEO page, and this page covers the whole.

    Should you leave TheFork, Uber Eats or Deliveroo?

    No. These platforms bring customers who do not know you and fill quiet services. Cutting them off overnight means cutting off the volume they bring. The method is to grow the direct share while they keep running, then to decide, service by service, what you keep. A restaurant with 30% of its volume dependent on a platform does not negotiate like a restaurant at 70%.

    Do you work with restaurants outside the Basque Country?

    Yes. Our main office is in Bayonne and we work on site in the Basque Country, Béarn and Bigorre. The rest of France is handled remotely: local SEO requires knowing your catchment area, not being its neighbour.

    How long does it take to see results?

    The Google Business Profile responds within a few weeks, the website within several months; the timescale depends on your starting point and on the competition for your searches. We do not promise a date. We record the starting point, then the same figures every month, so that you can see the movement or its absence.

    Do you manage the restaurant's social media?

    Social media feeds the brand and the appetite; it captures less of the active search, that of the customer looking for where to dine right now. We treat it as a relay for the four levers, not as the heart of the engagement. If social media is your priority, say so at the first meeting: we will tell you whether we are the right provider.

  • Free meeting · 30 min · no obligation

    Know what share of your covers pays a commission

    ARETA, a restaurant marketing agency based in the Basque Country, helps independent restaurants fill their dining room direct: local SEO, reviews, booking and ordering without an intermediary, culinary marketing, visibility in AI answers. Public pricing: full SEO audit from €1,500 excl. VAT, local SEO from €390 excl. VAT per month, with no minimum term.

    In thirty minutes, at your establishment or by video call, we set out your current channels, the share of your volume that goes through platforms and the realistic levers in your case. You leave with this calculation, whether what follows is done with us or without us.

    Book 30 free minutes
    Email[email protected]
    Phone06 50 82 74 13
    Address2 place du Château Vieux
    64100 Bayonne
    LinkedInARETA

    Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm

    Last updated: 13 November 2026

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