Eight free ways to get your restaurant known

Eight levers, all free. None needs a budget, all need time. The last one is CalVal, and it is the only one we are not impartial about, so we say so rather than slipping it in among the others.

1. Your Google listing, kept current

It is the first result someone sees when they search "restaurant" and the name of your street, and it costs nothing. A complete Google Business Profile changes more than a website does.

What matters, in order: accurate opening hours including the exceptional closures, recent photos taken by you, an up-to-date menu, and a reply to every review including the bad ones. A listing untouched for a year tells Google and the customer the same thing.

2. Reply to reviews, especially the bad ones

A negative review you answer calmly is worth more than no review at all. The reader is not judging the incident, they are judging your reply.

The expensive reflex is replying while annoyed. Write it, wait an hour, read it again, then post.

3. Your customers have phones

The photo a customer takes of their plate does more for you than your photographer's, because it is unpolished. What you can do is make the photo easy: decent light on the tables, a plate that reads well, and your account name visible somewhere without anyone hunting for it.

4. The businesses on your street

The simplest trade in the trade, and the most neglected: the hairdresser opposite, the gym two streets over, the florist. Every one of them has customers who eat lunch somewhere.

The agreement fits in a sentence, with no paperwork and no exclusivity: your customers are welcome here, mine are welcome there.

5. Your quiet hours are worth something to somebody

An empty service costs no less than a full one. The people who can come at two o'clock or on a Tuesday exist: remote workers, retired people, shift teams, students.

They simply do not know you want them. Saying so, on your listing and out loud, is often enough.

6. The neighbourhood, not the city

A traders' association, a market, a street party, a sports club looking for somewhere to go after training. That is time, not money, and it puts you in front of people who live five minutes away.

A restaurant fills up with its neighbourhood first. The rest comes after.

7. A menu anyone can read online

Plenty of people choose a restaurant by reading its menu before leaving the house. If yours is a blurry photo or a PDF that will not open on a phone, they choose the one next door.

Text, current, with prices. It is not a design job.

8. An offer you keep control of

A discount attracts, but the question is not how much you give, it is who you give it to. A discount in the window reaches your regulars, who were coming anyway. A discount reserved for someone who does not know you yet buys a visit you would not otherwise have had.

That subject has a guide of its own: what discount to give, and how to know if it is costing you.

And CalVal in all this

CalVal is the eighth lever, applied: members earn a reward by moving and arrive with a code. It is free for the restaurant, with no subscription, no commission on your sales and no hardware. You set the discount, you change it whenever you like, and you can pause your listing overnight.

What we will not tell you is how many customers it will bring. CalVal is young, and nobody can honestly guarantee you covers. What we can tell you is what you are committing, and that is the discount you choose, nothing else.

The other seven levers on this page ask nothing of anybody. Start with those.