How do you set up Google Ads for a restaurant location?

Google Ads offers two campaign types that suit a restaurant. Search shows a text ad when someone types words you chose. You pick the keywords and read the searches that triggered each ad. Then you block the ones that waste money.

Performance Max spreads one budget across many Google placements, Maps and YouTube among them. Google picks where each dollar goes. Its store-goals version is built for brands with several addresses. Google recommends at least five locations for campaigns that chase calls and directions. It recommends ten for campaigns that track store visits.

So start on Search with one campaign for one address. Move to Performance Max when the brand has enough locations to feed it.

A few things save a week of back and forth. The most important is access to the Business Profile that lists your address. Google Ads reads the address, phone number and hours from it. Without that access you cannot add the location to your ads.

Franchisees should ask the franchisor before spending a dollar. Some systems run one brand account and limit what a single location may buy. Bidding on the brand name can compete with the franchisor’s own ads. A short email now saves a takedown request later.

Google’s default targeting is called Presence or Interest. It reaches people in your area and people who have shown interest in it. Google’s own example is a bakery in Paris. Its ads can show to anyone who has looked into Paris bakeries, wherever they happen to be.

Reach like that helps a business that sells to visitors planning ahead. It rarely helps a lunch spot. Switch the setting to Presence in the campaign’s location options. Presence shows ads to people who are in the area you target or regularly there. Google warns that most campaigns get fewer impressions after the switch. For one address that loss is mostly people who were never coming.

• Draw a radius around the address instead of picking a whole city.
• Size it to how far a guest would really travel for your food.
• A quick lunch counter may draw from a few miles. A dinner destination draws farther.
• Exclude neighborhoods you cannot deliver to if delivery is part of the pitch.

Location assets add your street address, distance and a Call button to the ad. Link the Business Profile once in the Location manager under Tools. Google pulls the address, phone and hours from it. To fix a wrong detail, edit it in Google Maps or the Business Profile. The fix flows into the ad account.

Mark the location closed in Business Profile during a remodel or a closure. Google then stops showing that address in your ads. Turn on call reporting when the setup offers it. Google recommends it, and it lets the account log each call.

Add a call asset as well, and schedule it to your staffed hours. Google suggests showing it only while someone answers the phone. A group with several addresses can set up location groups. Each campaign then shows only the address it pays for.

Google Ads creates a call conversion named Call from ads on its own. Keep it. Add a website call conversion if your location page shows a number. That one counts a call only when it lasts longer than a minimum you set. Short calls and wrong numbers drop out.

Count direction taps too. For one address they are the closest thing to a counted visit. Google turns store visit tracking on only when an account meets its eligibility rules. Do not plan around it for a single location.

Give each goal a dollar value so the bidding weighs them sensibly. Google’s example values a call at $10. Use your own numbers instead. A catering inquiry is worth more than a question about parking.

Buy the words a hungry person types when ready to go. Pair your food with a place, such as your neighborhood or near me. Leave out broad food words with no place attached. They spend fast on people still deciding what dinner is.

Use phrase and exact match while the budget is small. Broad match is the default and casts the widest net. If you keep it, read its searches every week. Buy your own name only if the franchise rules allow it.

A negative keyword keeps your ad off any search that contains it. Google’s example is an eyeglasses shop that adds wine to dodge wine glasses. Restaurants have their own version of that problem, and it starts on day one.

Negative keywords do not match close variants. Google says to add synonyms and singular or plural forms yourself. So recipe and recipes are two entries. Casing and misspellings are handled for you.

Keep one shared list at the account level. Google applies account negatives to all Search and Shopping inventory, Performance Max included. In Performance Max they stop only Search and Shopping placements. A video or display placement can still run.

LocaliQ and WordStream pulled these averages from their clients’ campaigns on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. Restaurants and food came in near the bottom on cost per click.

Google spends a daily budget unevenly. On a busy day it can spend up to double what you set. Over a month it stops at 30.4 times your average daily budget. Take $20 a day as a starting point. A busy day can spend up to $40. The month tops out at $608. At $2.05 a click that buys about 296 clicks. At $30.57 a lead it buys about 20 leads.

Campaigns show ads all day by default. A restaurant rarely needs that. Set an ad schedule that matches opening hours, plus a little time before each meal. That catches people deciding where to eat. Give the call asset its own tighter schedule.

Bid adjustments by hour come later. First learn which hours bring calls and direction taps. The reports show that after a few weeks of data.

Open the search terms report once a week. It lists the searches that triggered your ads. Add every irrelevant one as a negative keyword. Google leaves out low-volume searches for privacy, so you will never see them all.

1. Read the search terms and add the irrelevant ones as negatives.
2. Compare calls and direction taps with the same week before.
3. Check that hours and the phone number are right in Business Profile.
4. Pause keywords that keep spending with no calls or directions.
5. Move any holiday hours into the ad schedule before the holiday.

Avoid big changes in the first weeks. A restaurant week has its own rhythm, so compare a Friday with a Friday. Change one thing at a time so you can tell what worked.

Try it when the brand has five or more locations in one account. Link the Business Profile, then pick local actions as the goal. Google counts call clicks and direction clicks among them. It recommends running a store-goals campaign for at least 30 days. Then wait a full conversion cycle or two before judging it.

Search ads catch people who already want your kind of food nearby. They do not create the want. People who have never heard of you will not search for you. Short videos from local food creators can reach them first. A one-month creator campaign is a simple way to start.

CreatoRain, which publishes this guide, makes those videos for chains and franchises, done for you. It charges $300 a video, with the creator’s pay included. Run the ads for people searching and the videos for people who are not.