One of the blessings that was born from the pandemic was the Independent Restaurant Coalition. A group of less than two dozen restaurateurs came together to advocate for all of us, and it was through their efforts that over 20 billion dollars was distributed to independents that desperately needed the funds. But, as the fight for survival ends, the fight to thrive begins we sit down with the IRC’s CEO, Erika Polmar, to discuss what’s next for the coalition and for the industry at large.
Full Comp is brought to you by Yelp for Restaurants: In July 2020, a few hundred employees formed Yelp for Restaurants. Our goal is to build tools that help restaurateurs do more with limited time.
We have a lot more content coming your way! Be sure to check out our other shows:
You’ve heard me say it before, as an industry I think there’s a ton to be learned from the experts outside of our industry. Today we chat with Afsheen Afshar, who proves me right.
Afsheen is in the business of taking good companies and making them great and in recent years, has turned his attention to the restaurant industry.
Are you sitting on a great lease for your restaurant? Is your restaurant’s lease about to come up for renewal? Are you grinding away with a lease that’s destroying your profitability? A great lease will make or break a young restaurant, setting you up for long term success or sucking the profit margin out of an already difficult industry. Today we chat with Dale Willerton, the lease coach. In our conversation, Dale lays out best practices and mistakes to avoid when it comes to choosing the right location, signing your first lease, and renegotiating your lease renewal.
Full Comp is brought to you by Yelp for Restaurants: In July 2020, a few hundred employees formed Yelp for Restaurants. Our goal is to build tools that help restaurateurs do more with limited time.
We have a lot more content coming your way! Be sure to check out our other shows:
Chris Tripoli has built major restaurant chains, worked as an independent owner and operator, and eventually found his way into a successful restaurant consulting practice. After working with countless brands over the years, he began to see common problems and common solutions. In today’s conversation, we unpack the most common problems owners face and the practical solutions to solve them.
Full Comp is brought to you by Yelp for Restaurants: In July 2020, a few hundred employees formed Yelp for Restaurants. Our goal is to build tools that help restaurateurs do more with limited time.
We have a lot more content coming your way! Be sure to check out our other content:
Michelin-awarded restaurateur Josh Kopel considers email marketing the single highest-ROI channel for restaurants, with open rates of 40-60% — far outperforming social media. The key is building an owned list and running 9 specific campaign types on a consistent schedule. Here are the exact campaigns and templates Josh recommends to his consulting clients.
Want to get the most out of your next restaurant email marketing campaign? This article aims at showing you how, as we will be exploring all aspects related to it – from setting up an effective list and coming up with convincing subject lines for emails, through crafting attractive visuals in those messages and gauging the outcomes. These strategies are sure to help boost customer frequency in 2026 and beyond.
Restaurant email marketing is the practice of using targeted email campaigns to drive repeat visits, increase guest loyalty, and boost revenue. Unlike social media, email gives restaurant owners a direct, owned communication channel with their guests — one that isn’t subject to algorithm changes or pay-to-play dynamics. The most effective restaurant email strategies combine personalized offers, event announcements, and storytelling to keep guests engaged between visits.
Key Takeaways from Restaurant Email Marketing
Your email list is the single most valuable marketing asset your restaurant owns. Social media followers are rented — your email list is yours. I’ve seen restaurants generate five figures in revenue from a single well-timed email to a list they built intentionally.
Josh Kopel, Michelin-awarded restaurateur and host of the Full Comp podcast
Email marketing is a powerful tool for restaurants to build relationships with customers, increase sales and loyalty.
Personalization and segmentation tactics such as contact forms, popups, referral campaigns are essential for successful email marketing campaigns.
Types of restaurant email campaigns including promotional offers & discounts, special events, announcements, customer appreciation, & loyalty programs.
Effective email strategies can spread the word about special offers, communicate important updates regarding their services/products, or even announce new ones.
In 2026, email is still king when compared to different forms of advertising. With open rates ranging from 40-60%, restaurants have been able to demonstrate a consistent connection between their brand and their target audience.
Building a Solid Email List
In order to increase the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns, having a substantial and interactive database is paramount. Strategies such as contact forms, popups, referral programs and more can help collect customer emails from interested buyers.
Restaurateurs can also leverage their teams to collect data from customers dining in their restaurants.
In addition to name and email address, you should work to collect phone number, birthday, and anniversary, if possible.
Many point of sale systems also enable the collection of data through loyalty programs.
Personalization and Segmentation in Restaurant Email Marketing
When it comes to email marketing for restaurants personalization and segmentation are game-changers. With customer data taken from sources such as restaurant websites, reservation platforms, online ordering services or loyalty programs, you can create emails that your customers would find relevant, based on shared characteristics like interests or behaviors.
For instance, through an email promotion of a new burger aimed at those who already purchased burgers, a restaurant newsletter offering special discount codes for inactive patrons in the past 30 days, even sending personalized birthday messages with gifts (discounts, coupons) as tokens of appreciation!
You can also segment by customer frequency, segmenting your list into the following categories:
Frequent (once a week to once a month)
Infrequent (have dined in the last 60 days)
Lost (have not dined in over 60 days)
Incorporating these elements into any strategy increases open and conversion rates & as well as clicks.
Crafting Compelling Subject Lines
Crafting effective email subject lines are a critical component for successful email campaigns.
To maximize the impact of your emails, here are some tips: ensure each line remains concise, use emojis, ask questions relevant to them and place key terms at the beginning, personalize where appropriate, create an atmosphere of urgency/excitement with language & capitalization choices as well as incorporating enticing calls-to-actions. Utilizing A/B testing will also help you discover what resonates best with subscribers.
Crafting eye-catching emails that pique subscribers’ interest and draw them into your content is a critical component of successful restaurant email marketing strategies.
Incorporating High-Quality Images & Videos
Visuals are a must. Utilizing high-quality images and videos that highlight your restaurant’s ambiance, food offerings and special events gives viewers a sneak peek of what awaits them when they visit your establishment. Cooking and cocktail demos as well as behind the scenes sneak peeks are effective tactics to create engagement.
Optimizing these pictures and videos for all types of devices is also essential in order to maximize the impact of this email marketing strategy further.
Utilizing Clear Call-to-Actions
To boost engagement and conversions in your email marketing campaigns, a well-crafted call-to-action (CTA) is essential. Here are some of the best practices to bear in mind when creating effective CTAs:
Provide concise instructions on what action you desire recipients to take. Make sure it’s understood without any ambiguity.
Provide temporal words that let them know when you want them to take the action “Sign up TODAY.”
Make the button text stand out by increasing its size for better legibility among other elements of design surrounding it .
Utilize hover effects such as color change and background overlays – this makes CTA buttons more attractive visually.
Incorporate bulletproof emails – this ensures your buttons work despite different kinds of mail clients used by subscribers
Only use one call to action.
Types of Restaurant Email Campaigns
To maximize the impact of restaurant email marketing strategy, utilizing various restaurant emails campaigns ensures that content remains interesting and up to date with what subscribers are looking for.
Promotional and Limited Time Offers
Using limited time offers, promotional offers and discounts can help to draw in customers both new and existing to your restaurant.
To maximize the impact of these promotions, you could tailor them specifically for loyalty members based on criteria like order spending, frequency of visits and other diner activity information gathered from past experience with them. By utilizing these tactics within your digital marketing channel will increase bookings significantly as well as build strong customer connections over time.
Special Events and Announcements
Using email campaigns to announce special events and updates can help your customers stay informed about all the exciting things happening at your restaurant. By sharing details such as new menu items, offers, seasonal promotions or upcoming occasions, you can create a buzz among subscribers that will lead them back to experience everything firsthand.
Customer Appreciation and Loyalty Programs
Creating email marketing campaigns to reward loyal customers is a great way to express appreciation and build lasting relationships. Restaurant email marketing examples of this nature include offering personalized promotions, conducting customer surveys, requesting reviews or providing loyalty program updates.
These email marketing efforts help nurture familiarity among subscribers while also increasing satisfaction which ultimately leads them back to more purchases in the future.
Measuring Email Marketing Success
The effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns can be monitored by analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) such as open rate, click-through rate and conversions.
By regularly tracking these KPIs and modifying existing email strategies accordingly, you will consistently increase the efficiency of your overall marketing plans.
Selecting the Right Email Marketing Platform
When choosing the right platform, features, pricing and usability are all factors that should be taken into account. There are several self-service options available which offer an inexpensive way to reach prospective customers. Mailchimp, Constant Contact and MyEmma are among them.
Tips for Avoiding Common Email Marketing Mistakes
For the best results of your email marketing strategies, adhere to great practices and avoid common errors.
A tidy list is vital, so segment dormant members, launch re-engagement messages and delete bad email addresses. Enforce a secure approach by employing cleaning services as well as double opt-ins for safety reasons.
Comply with anti-spam legislation such that all subscribers have given permission. Having an exit button on each message plus physical address available too!
Summary
Of all of the marketing channels at your disposal, few will grant you a greater return on investment than email marketing.
Email marketing is an excellent way for restaurants to scale customer frequency, strengthen customer loyalty and raise awareness of special services.
What’s Changed in 2026: Notes From My Coaching Practice
Email is still the conversion workhorse for every restaurant I coach — but how we build lists and structure sends has evolved. Here’s what I’m teaching in my masterclasses this year.
First, the Essential Monthly Newsletter. One send, one offer, one call to action — if you ask people to do two things, they’ll do no things. The structure never changes: two personal lines of context, a behind-the-scenes video that shows the effort behind the effortless, a “give” like a recipe or an employee spotlight, and a single button. It informs, it entertains, and it converts.
Second, the subject line is the whole game. Thursdays get the highest open rates I see, and adding an emoji to the subject line lifts opens by around 30% in my experience. Time your sends to intent: top of the month for a limited-time offer, about a week before an event — because more people are booking day-of than ever before.
Third, list growth. The birthday lure is the fastest play I know: capture first name, last name, email and birthday in exchange for a complimentary bottle of bubbles and a hosted party on their birthday. Enormous perceived value, roughly $8 of real cost. Every guest you’ve ever served has a birthday, so a 1,000-person list is 1,000 built-in occasions spread across the year.
Finally, list health beats list size. Clean your list every 30 days. A client of mine scrubbed hers and it shrank by half — and she sold twice as many gift cards on her very next campaign. A smaller list of real buyers will outperform a big list of ghosts every time.
Email marketing is a powerful online advertising technique for restaurants, with an average return of $36 per dollar invested in the email campaigns. Research indicates that restaurant email initiatives have had great success when it comes to establishing customer loyalty. Thus, using this type of restaurant marketing strategy has proven effective and profitable for restaurants.
How do I create a restaurant email list?
One tactic to obtain email addresses from restaurant guests is to set up free wifi and gate the network with a landing page that needs an email address or invites visitors to register for unique deals. Customer email addresses are incredibly valuable. Clean your list frequently and leverage the best practices mentioned above.
How do I legally send marketing emails?
Ensure that you receive consent before sending any marketing emails. Provide an opt-out option and never send spam. The messages should be labeled as advertisements, have a honest subject line/header information, and always include your business address.
What are some effective strategies for building a solid email list for my restaurant?
To draw in customers, try utilizing contact forms, popups marketing email and referral campaigns coupled with lead magnets like exclusive discounts or deals.
How can I implement personalization and segmentation in my restaurant email marketing campaigns?
For successful, restaurant website and email marketing campaigns, it is important to gather customer data and segment the corresponding email list. Subsequently, use this info for personalizing your messages according to customers’ preferences.
About the Author:Josh Kopel is a Michelin-awarded restaurateur, restaurant consultant, and host of the Full Comp podcast — the voice of the restaurant industry. He has helped hundreds of restaurant owners build profitable, scalable businesses. Explore free restaurant resources →
Do you ever wish you had a crystal ball that could tell you what your customers will care about in the future? Candace Macdonald and Andrew Freeman have built that crystal ball. Today they run us through their 2024 industry trends report so that we can stay ahead of the curve and at the forefront of our guests minds.
Full Comp is brought to you by Yelp for Restaurants: In July 2020, a few hundred employees formed Yelp for Restaurants. Our goal is to build tools that help restaurateurs do more with limited time.
We have a lot more content coming your way! Be sure to check out our other content:
Imagine a world without promotion. Advertising of the past feels insensitive. Customers become allergic to pushy salesman tactics. They stop reading marketing emails. Maybe they even withdraw from social media altogether for a while.
Well, we don’t have to imagine. Those were very real side effects of quarantine this year. I had never seen anything like it.
All the more at sea were the restaurateurs, chefs, and managers, not quite knowing what to say.
What could we say?
My customers love transparency but I don’t want to tell them how much all this emotionally, psychologically, and financially affected me – do you?
So here lies the problem.
How do we communicate with our customers in a post-quarantine world?
Is there a place for promotion?
And, how do we go about promoting ourselves sensitively and respectfully?
I spoke to the PR experts who introduced Starbucks – yes, the Starbucks – to the world, Jeff Smith and Jill Sandin from JS2 PR. They shared their tips on how we as hospitality leaders can communicate effectively post-Covid.
That One Story
“We always start a client relationship with their USP. What makes them different? What makes them special? That is really the core,” Jeff revealed.
I believe a restaurant’s soul is their story. My restaurant was born from a love for the South as a humble Baton Rouge kid. Southern hospitality has always been a part of me; I wanted to spread that warmth with my customers. That authentic experience is what I believe what set us apart in the crowd of LA restaurants.
Jill then added a golden tip that really made me think.
“Getting the story is extremely challenging and competitive. We need to peel the onion back to reveal that one story. Look for the love. Look for the passion as that is where the stories lie.”
And this really resonated with me.
As I build Full Comp Media, what is the core message I want to put out into the world?
What is the personal story – that one story – that will inspire folks I am trying to reach?
Definitely food for thought.
A World in Mourning
The COVID19 crisis has been likened to 9/11. I see the parallels. The world in shock. A stillness and confusion of what to do next.
During this time, I think customers want a sense of community and belonging. Restaurants have been those pillars of the community for so long.
That nostalgia for feeling connected made me excited to have my first bite of a gourmet burger or warming bowl of my favorite ramen after lockdown. Customers are also feeling that way. It’s easy to see that after the reopening of restaurants this summer.
Even with this excitement in the air, Jeff and Jill still advised caution with communicating during the crisis. They proposed a four-phase plan for promotion.
“Our strategy has evolved from first focussing on strictly informational PR like health and safety precautions, who is open, who is delivering etc…And then dipping our toes into individual stories, connecting our clients’ reinventions with the media. The third phase was the human interest side. How are restaurants supporting their communities? Phase four is how do we communicate the restaurant reopening?”
Great question.
Meticulous Messaging
So it seems the slow, authentic, human approach is the way to connect most with consumers.
Messaging has to be treated with care and consideration.
That gentle method isn’t always ideal for a launch or relaunch though – or is it?
After all, during this delicate time, a launch could be make or break for folks looking to save their restaurant businesses.
I questioned Jill and Jeff about their thoughts on launching or reopening in a sensitive way.
“In a post-Covid world, PR will be tricky and extremely nuanced,” Jill said, “I say less bravado and salesmanship, and even more storytelling. The more personal, the better.”
Their advice of focusing on the individual journey of the restaurant and/or restaurateur speaks volumes to me. Our customers want to connect with us as much as we want to connect with them. The road ahead is long. I think allowing customers to take that journey with me in an open and honest way is pretty terrifying. But that could be the key to welcoming customers back to our tables.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last several months thinking about legacy.
I can’t help but wonder if my efforts will result in a lasting impact on our industry. Am I able to move the conversation forward? Can I improve the day to day lives of my peers?
I look to guys like Ben Leventhal for inspiration. Ben’s contributions to food media and tech are undeniable. On the heels of him stepping down as GM of Amex’s Global Dining Team, we look back at his legacy and what comes next for him and for the restaurant industry.
Today, I might come off as a little hypocritical. I’ve had the good fortune of having my brands grace the pages of almost every food publication in the country. But I also spent years out of the spotlight and I remember how cold and frustrating those days were.
When you’re in you’re in. When you’re out, you’re out. Those days and that kind of journalism need to be done.
Today we chat with Antonio Diaz, founder of Life and Thyme, an independent food media magazine determined to highlight the people behind the products. It’s a big publication telling small stories and today we hear Antonio’s story and how he’s taking professional responsibility for the recovery of our industry.
Wantto streamline your front-of-house operations and increase sales? Head over tohttp://restaurants.yelp.com/fullcomppodcasttoclaim your free page and learn more about these powerful tools for your business.
Today’s guest is one in a million. Chef Brian Landry has thrived as a chef and restaurateur in one of the most competitive culinary environments in the world, New Orleans, Louisiana. Not only that, Brian has managed to scale his restaurant group into other markets nationally. Today we sit down to discuss how he’s managed to grow despite the growing labor crisis, rising food costs, and a global pandemic.
Full Comp is brought to you by Yelp for Restaurants: In July 2020, a few hundred employees formed Yelp for Restaurants. Our goal is to build tools that help restaurateurs do more with limited time.
We have a lot more content coming your way! Be sure to check out our other content:
Have you chosen your customers or have they chosen you? In an effort to achieve profitability many of us refuse to clearly state who is and who is not our target customer.
Kevin Tan chose a different path. In having a maniacal focus on his target customer, he’s built a platform that’s grown to over half a million users in just a couple of years. What’s his revolutionary idea? Skipping the line at restaurants.
There are restaurateurs out there who just seem to have the golden touch. Everything they open gets patronized by celebrities and there are lines out the door from day one. Today we sit down with Mark Birnbaum of Catch Restaurant Groupto to discover the tools and strategies he’s used to create success after success.
Full Comp is brought to you by Yelp for Restaurants: In July 2020, a few hundred employees formed Yelp for Restaurants. Our goal is to build tools that help restaurateurs do more with limited time.
We have a lot more content coming your way! Be sure to check out our other content:
Leverage Digital Media to Drive Traffic to Your Restaurant
This free (and highly detailed) guide will outline how to tell your story in the most compelling way possible and how to share that story with the masses.
(Yep, even if you’re not a “tech” person!)
FREE DOWNLOAD
Lead Your Team Instead of Managing Them
This free (and highly detailed) guide will give you everything you need to know to build and lead a world class team from scratch, ensuring you work less and earn more. (Yep, even if you know nothing about leadership.)
FREE DOWNLOAD
Ready to Optimize, Manage and Grow Your Restaurant’s Profit Margin But Not Sure Where to Start?
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you everything you need to know to set up your restaurant to maximize profitability. (Yep, even if you’re not a “business” person!)
