In short: Email marketing for restaurants is one email a month to the people who've already been in, with a dish, a date and a book button. It's the cheapest channel per table there is and the one fewest restaurants use, because the list doesn't build itself: it gets built on the booking form, with a tick box people actually tick. At a restaurant we run, when we exported the contacts from the booking system, only around 5% had agreed to receive communications; the rest couldn't be used for anything. Here's when a newsletter makes sense, how to collect emails without being a nuisance, what to send, what it costs, what to measure, and when WhatsApp is the better option.
There are two kinds of restaurant email. The one that lands on the 1st with 'November news!', a huge logo, three stock photos and no reason to open it, and the one that says 'squid rice on Tuesday, twelve tables left' with a button underneath. The first gets deleted unread; the second fills a Tuesday. The difference isn't the tool or the design: it's having something to say and a list of people who are genuinely interested. The menu takes care of the first; the second is what almost nobody gets right.
When a newsletter makes sense for a restaurant (and when it doesn't)
Email marketing for restaurants makes sense when you already have customers who come back and something that changes: a seasonal menu, a dish of the day, events, celebrations. In other words, at almost any neighbourhood restaurant, at restaurant groups and at places that fill up with company celebrations. It's the last channel in the order we set out in our guide to restaurant marketing, and for a reason: it needs a list, and the list gets built with everything that comes before it (the Google listing, the website that takes bookings, the ads).
It doesn't make sense when the place lives off tourists who won't be back, when there's nobody to write it (a newsletter that goes out whenever someone finds the time is worse than none at all) or when what you want is new customers: that's what the listing and the ads are for. Email doesn't bring customers; it brings back the ones you already had. Keeping customers coming back at a restaurant is this, not a points scheme.
How to collect emails without being a nuisance: bookings, wifi, events
You don't buy the list (it's illegal and, besides, useless: nobody books a restaurant because a stranger emailed them) and you don't build it by asking for emails at the table, which makes everyone uncomfortable. You build it where people are already giving you their details:
- The booking form. That's 90% of the list. Whoever books has already typed in their name, their email and their phone number; all that's missing is a tick box, unticked by default, that says something specific: 'I'd like to hear about the new menu and the seasonal dishes, one email a month'. Generic boxes ('I agree to receive marketing communications') get ticked by very few people: at a restaurant we run, when we exported the contacts from the booking system, only around 5% had agreed. What the box says matters as much as the box being there.
- The restaurant's wifi. If logging on asks for an email, have it ask for permission too, with the same specific wording. It's a less loyal list than the bookings one (it includes people who came in once while passing through), but it's free.
- Events and celebrations. Whoever organises a company dinner or a lunch for thirty leaves you their contact details and will need you again next year. It's the most valuable contact on the list: write it down.
And the requirement everyone forgets: the booking engine has to let you export the contacts along with their consent. If the book button on your website sends people to a platform that keeps the data, the list belongs to the platform. What your website needs so that doesn't happen is in websites for restaurants; why the booking should be yours and not an app's, in marketing strategies for restaurants.
What to send: 1 email a month with a dish, a date and a book button
One a month. Not 'when there's something to say', because then it never goes out, and not every week, because then it gets deleted unopened. One email a month, on the same day of the month, with three things and nothing else:
| Part | What goes in | What stays out |
|---|---|---|
| Subject line | The dish or the date, by name: 'Squid rice on Tuesdays', 'The wild mushrooms are in' | 'November news', 'Don't miss out!', a row of emojis |
| Body | One photo of your own, of the dish or the dining room, three lines written by whoever cooks, and the day or days it's happening | The giant logo, the stock photos, the family history, five sections |
| Button | One: 'Book', opening the booking engine directly, without going via the homepage | Three buttons, 'follow us on Instagram', links to the website 'to find out more' |
| Footer | Address, opening hours and the unsubscribe link, visible | Nothing that hides the unsubscribe: anyone who doesn't want the email is better off the list |
The content comes from the same place as the Instagram content and the Google listing content: the product, the season, the team and the neighbourhood. The photo of the dish you filmed for the reel is the photo for the email; how to organise that so you don't produce the same thing three times over is in restaurant content strategy. And the person writing it is whoever cooks or whoever runs the dining room, not an agency: three lines in your own voice sell more than ten correct paragraphs.
Simple tools and cost
You don't need a CRM. You need a tool that stores the list with its consent, sends one email a month with a button and tells you who clicked. Mailchimp, Brevo or MailerLite do that, have a free plan for the first few hundred contacts and a blank template, which is the only one you should use. What really costs is not the tool: it's the hour a month to write it and the ten minutes to export the new contacts from the booking engine.
Three things to check before choosing: that it imports the list from your booking system without a fight (Restoo, TheFork and CoverManager export to a spreadsheet), that the unsubscribe link works on its own, and that it measures clicks on the book button, not just opens. If your list is in a spreadsheet and has fewer than a hundred contacts, you don't even need that yet: you need the list to grow.
Measuring: bookings from the email, not opens
Opens are useless: an email counts as opened when the email program loads the image, whether anyone read it or not. What you measure is something else:
- Clicks on the book button. That's the one number from the tool that matters. If the button leads to the booking engine with a parameter that identifies the email, you'll also know how many of those people ended up booking.
- Tuesday bookings. If the email on the 1st is about the Tuesday rice, look at that month's Tuesdays against the previous month's. It's the crudest measure and the most honest.
- Unsubscribes. A few is normal; a lot at once means the email wasn't what the tick box promised.
And a warning about the list as an advertising tool, which is the first thing agencies suggest: Google needs around a thousand active contacts for a list to be usable for showing them ads, and the 5% consent rate from a booking system doesn't come anywhere near. If someone sells you 'remarketing to your customers' with two hundred emails, that someone is selling you smoke; how a restaurant really advertises, and why the money goes on the quiet days, is in Google Ads for restaurants and in how much Google Ads costs for a restaurant.
WhatsApp as an alternative for small places
For a place with one dining room and a list of a hundred people, WhatsApp works better than email: it gets read, answered and booked in the same place. The rules are the same, plus one: explicit permission, one message a month, the dish and the date, and never a group. WhatsApp Business broadcast lists send the same message to each contact separately, but they only reach people who have your number saved, so the first message is 'save our number and we'll let you know about the Tuesday rice'. WhatsApp marketing for restaurants done properly looks a lot like what the owner of a bar already does with the regulars, only written down.
Once the list goes past a few hundred, email scales better: it can be scheduled, it can be measured and it doesn't depend on a phone. Many restaurants end up with both: WhatsApp for celebrations and groups, who ask that way anyway, and the monthly email for everyone else.
The consent figure (around 5% of the contacts exported from a booking system) comes from a restaurant we manage at BL Gastro in 2026; the thousand-contact threshold for advertising lists is the one Google requires. These are our own data and the platform's conditions, not an industry average.
FAQ
Before you send anything
How often should a restaurant send a newsletter?
Once a month, on the same day, with a dish or a date and a book button. Every week gets deleted unopened; 'when there's something to say' never goes out.
How do I get my customers' email addresses?
On the booking form, with a tick box that's unticked by default and says what you'll send and how often. Generic boxes get ticked by very few people: at a restaurant we run, around 5% of the contacts exported from the booking system had agreed.
Can I use my customer list for ads on Google or Instagram?
Only if it's big: Google needs around a thousand active contacts for a list to be usable, and a restaurant's lists, with consent properly asked for, rarely get there. Until then, the list is for the monthly email, not for advertising.
Newsletter or WhatsApp?
With a list of a hundred people and one dining room, WhatsApp: it gets read and booked in the same place. From a few hundred contacts upwards, email scales better. Many places use both: WhatsApp for groups and celebrations, the monthly email for everyone else.