How do you run Facebook and Instagram ads for one restaurant location?

A first test answers one question. Did people near this address see the offer and come in? Likes and comments cannot answer it. A redeemed code at the counter can.

Set the pass mark before the ads go live. Decide what one new guest is worth to you. Your average check and your food cost set that limit. The ad account does not.

Pass, and you can raise the budget for a reason. Fail, and you change one thing and run again. Either way, the money bought an answer.

They do. Toast surveyed U.S. diners in October 2025. Of them, 27% said they found a new restaurant through Facebook. Instagram came in at 15%. Word of mouth still led. Facebook beat TV ads and map apps.

A Pew Research Center survey in 2025 shows the reach behind those numbers. Facebook was one of the two most used platforms in the country. Half of U.S. adults said they use Instagram.

One Ads Manager account buys space on both. So a single campaign can reach the regulars on Facebook and their kids on Instagram. You set the radius once.

The Boost button is the quick route. It turns a Page post into an ad. It asks for a goal, an audience, a duration and a daily budget. That suits a one-off push for a weekend event.

Boost from a computer, not from an iPhone. Meta warns that Apple may charge a service fee of 30% of the ad payment. It applies when you boost in the Facebook app on iOS. Apple keeps that fee, not Meta.

Ads Manager splits the work into three layers. The campaign holds the objective. The ad set holds the audience, the budget and the schedule. The ad holds the picture and the words. That makes it easy to change one thing at a time.

Ads Manager offers six objectives. Three of them fit one restaurant. Awareness reaches the people most likely to remember the ad. Traffic sends people to a page you choose. Leads collects messages, phone calls or sign-ups.

Pick Traffic for most first tests. Send people to a page with the offer, the address and the hours. Use Awareness for an opening, when the goal is simply to be known nearby. Meta folded its old store traffic objective into Awareness, with store location features turned on.

Sales finds people likely to buy, such as through an online store. A first test at one store does not need it. Leave it for later.

Set the location at the ad set level, under Audience. Drop a pin on your address or type it in. Meta picks a default radius. A slider changes it.

Size the circle to how far a guest will drive for your kind of meal. A lunch counter draws from close by. A dinner spot with a wait draws from farther. Exclude areas you cannot serve, such as towns past your delivery zone.

Run one offer, written so a cashier can count it. A code word, a coupon on a phone or a named item all work. A line like great food nearby gives the staff nothing to count.

Keep the offer the same for the whole test. A new offer in the second week resets what you learned. It also leaves you two small counts that cannot be compared.

Show food from your own menu, shot where it is served. A phone photo of a real plate in good light beats a stock image. Put the offer in the first line of text. Put the neighborhood in the second.

Make one vertical video as well. Facebook and Instagram both run full-screen placements, such as Stories and Reels. A short clip of the dish being plated fits them better than a square photo.

Check any automatic creative setting before you publish. Advantage+ creative can deliver its own variations of your ad. A franchisee should know what it changes before it touches the brand’s photos.

Take $15 a day as a working example. Meta treats a daily budget as a target across a calendar week, Sunday to Saturday. On a busy day it may spend up to 75% more. Over the week it will not pass 7 times the daily budget.

Restaurants buy Facebook clicks cheaply. LocaliQ’s benchmarks put the average cost per click for restaurants and food at $0.45 in traffic campaigns. The average across all industries was $0.60. Restaurant ads also drew a click-through rate of 2.68%.

At that average, $420 buys about 930 clicks. That is enough to learn whether one offer moves people. It is not enough to judge three offers at once.

Every new ad set starts in a learning phase. Meta says an ad set usually leaves it after about 50 results in the week after its last significant edit. Until then, delivery is less stable and costs run higher.

That rule shapes a small budget. At $105 a week, each of those results must cost $2.10 or less. Link clicks can get there. Online orders rarely will at that price. So optimize for link clicks or landing page views first.

Ads Manager counts clicks, not diners. The counter has to count the rest. Give the offer its own register button or code. Brief every shift on it, the weekend crew included.

Compare like with like. A Tuesday with the offer goes beside a Tuesday without it. A big game or a holiday can swamp a small test, so mark those days.

Ask the franchisor before the first dollar, and get the answers in writing. Many systems already pay into a brand advertising fund. Some want local offers and pictures approved. Some limit how a store may use the brand name.

The last question matters more than it looks. Meta says a boost needs a Facebook Page and access to it. If the brand owns the Page for your store, ask for that access first.

Spend more once the cost per counted guest holds for two weeks in a row. Raise the budget in small steps. Meta warns that frequent budget changes can send an ad set back into learning.

Then copy the setup, not just the budget. Each new store gets its own pin, its own code and its own count. Check the total against the share of sales you spend on marketing. Add search ads for one location for people already looking.

Ads work best with a video worth stopping for. A clip from a food creator often is. CreatoRain makes those videos for chains and franchises, done for you. It costs $300 a video, and the creator’s pay is included.