Is Facebook still worth it for restaurants?

Facebook is not the young app in town, and for a restaurant that is the point. Pew Research Center asked U.S. adults about each platform in 2025. 71% said they use Facebook. Only YouTube came out higher.

The age split matters more than the total. Facebook peaks with adults in their thirties and forties. 80% of 30- to 49-year-olds use it. Those are the parents booking birthday dinners and the office staff ordering lunch for the team.

Diners still find restaurants there, too. Toast asked U.S. diners how they found new places in October 2025. Word of mouth led at 38%. Facebook was the strongest app on the list, at 27%. Suburban guests leaned harder on neighbors and passing traffic, Toast found. Neighborhood talk is exactly what local Facebook groups carry. Our guide on where diners discover new restaurants walks through every channel.

Think of Facebook as four tools, not one feed. Each does a job your website cannot do alone. None of them needs a post to go viral. Each one also lives on the location’s own Page, so every store can run it.

The feed itself is the weak part. Engagement on business Page posts has stayed flat, as the reach section below shows. So the work moves to the four tools in the table. Once they are set up, each takes a few minutes a week per store. A manager can fit all four into a slow afternoon.

An event is the easiest win. Facebook says all events hosted by Pages are public. Anyone can see them, including people who do not follow you yet. A trivia night or a family night gives neighbors a date to plan around, not just a menu to scroll past.

Make the event repeat. A recurring Page event can run daily or weekly, up to 52 times. One weekly trivia night then covers a full year with a single setup. Location and time zone lock once the event starts, so set them right the first time.

Co-hosting is the quiet multiplier. Page managers can add other Pages as co-hosts when they create an event. Ask the brewery, bookstore or youth league next door. Once they accept, their name sits on the event page. That gives them a reason to share it with their own followers.

Meta has also been pushing local events. In 2024 it began testing a Local tab in ten U.S. cities. It also added a weekly events digest. The digest is a notification listing upcoming events in a user’s area. A public event that repeats every week gives it something to show.

Local groups are where neighbors ask where to eat. Parents’ groups, new-resident groups and town swap groups all get the question. You can answer as your Page rather than as yourself. But group admins control whether Pages can join. Some groups keep Pages out entirely.

If you cannot post as your Page, Facebook’s help page on acting as a Page in groups explains why. One reason it gives is that the admins do not allow Pages. Message the admin and ask. Offering a gift card for the group’s next raffle is often a better opener than an ad. Groups reward patience, not volume. A manager who answers ten questions a month builds more goodwill than one who posts ten coupons. Track which groups send guests by asking at the counter how people heard about you.

Turn on recommendations first. Facebook says recommendations help customers learn more about your business and may make your Page easier to find in Facebook search. The switch sits in the Page’s settings, under Page and tagging.

A star rating takes time. A Page shows a rating only if recommendations are on, and it may show none before at least 5 reviews. Only public recommendations count toward it. Facebook also says it does not verify that reviewers bought anything. Reply to every review, the unhappy ones first.

Messages are where a Page turns into bookings. Large-party, catering and hours questions land there. Facebook shows a Very responsive to messages badge on Pages that answer fast. It requires a response rate of 90% and a response time of 15 minutes, over the last 7 days.

Automatic messages help guests, but they do not earn the badge. Instant replies are not counted in response rate or response time. Away messages are not counted either. A person still has to answer.

Not on their own. Socialinsider studied 25M Facebook posts from more than 130K business pages. Average engagement stayed flat from a year earlier. Brands now average 39 posts per month, and the number is falling. That is not a reason to stop posting. It is a reason to post fewer, more useful things. Socialinsider found albums earned the most engagement for smaller pages. A set of photos from last night’s event fits that well. Then put a little money behind the posts that sell a date.

Meta lets you boost posts from your Facebook business Page and pick the duration and daily budget. Boost from a computer. Meta says an Apple service fee of 30% may apply when you boost in the iPhone app. Our guide to running Facebook ads for a restaurant covers radius, offers and testing. If a boost names an offer or a price, your franchisor may need to approve it first.

Start by asking who owns the Page. Some brands run one main Page and give each franchisee a location Page. Others keep every Page and post for you. Your franchise agreement or the brand’s marketing team will tell you which. Get admin access to your own location Page in writing.

Keep one person per store on it. A district manager can look over every Page once a week and flag the quiet ones. Where the brand’s rules allow it, nearby stores can co-host one shared event.

Facebook is not for every store. Young diners spend their time elsewhere. Most adults ages 18 to 29 use Instagram, Pew found. Toast found Gen Z discovers restaurants on TikTok more than through any other channel. For a campus store, short local videos often reach those guests faster than a Facebook event. If you are weighing paid posts against creator videos, read food influencers vs Facebook ads.

Either way, an event page needs something worth sharing. A short video from a food creator gives every store one. CreatoRain’s in-house team finds, invites and pays creators from its food-creator network for your stores. It follows up until each video is posted. A video costs $300, creator pay included.