How do I get more customers for my restaurant in Ireland?

Get found where people decide where to eat, give them a specific reason to come this week, make booking or ordering take one tap, and then bring the first-timers back. Most restaurants spend on the first step and ignore the last, when keeping a customer who already likes you costs far less than finding a new one.

Here is each step, in the order that pays.

Start where people already look for you

Somebody choosing where to eat tonight checks a few things in about a minute: is it open, what is on the menu, what does the food look like, and what do other people say. If any of those is missing or wrong, they move on and you never know it happened.

So before you spend a cent on marketing, fix the free things:

• Your listings. Your Google Business Profile and anywhere else you appear should carry the right opening hours, including holiday changes, a phone number that gets answered, and recent photographs of food.
• Your menu, online, with prices. People want to know what they would eat and roughly what it costs. A menu that is a blurry photo of the board loses them.
• Photographs of dishes, not the room. A plate makes someone hungry. An empty dining room does not.

On Mosey, your business may already be listed from public data. Claiming it is free and lets you add your own menu, photos, hours and replies. You can photograph your existing menu and have it read for you, then correct anything it got wrong, which removes the job most owners put off for weeks.

Make one dish famous

People rarely go out for "a restaurant". They go out for the chowder, the ramen, the Sunday roast, the cardamom bun. A single dish that people talk about will bring in more strangers than any amount of general advertising.

Pick the dish you would want to be known for, photograph it well, and make sure it is on every listing you have. On Mosey, customers rate individual dishes as well as the place, and a well-rated, photographed dish shows up on its own when people search for that food, so somebody looking for a good bowl of ramen can find yours without ever having heard your name. See how customers find your business.

Give people a reason to come this week

"We are still here" is not a reason. A new menu is. So is a supper club next Thursday, a set lunch that only runs midweek, a roast that sells out by two, or a dish that is only on for the summer.

Every week, you want one specific, dated thing worth telling people about. That is what gets shared, and it gives your regulars a reason to bring someone new.

On Mosey you can sell an event as tickets (4% commission), sell a capped set menu in advance as a promotion (4.5% commission), or post a free daily special that shows to people nearby and disappears when it ends.

Make saying yes take one tap

Every step between "that looks good" and a confirmed table or order loses people. Count the taps from your Instagram bio to a booked table. If the answer involves a phone call during service, you are losing customers at the moment they wanted you.

• Bookings: put a booking link in your bio and on your listings. Mosey reservations are free up to 75 bookings a month, and a diner booking through your website widget does not need a Mosey account.
• Orders: if you do takeaway, let people order ahead for collection. Mosey's Order Ahead runs at 1.5% commission, while delivery apps commonly charge around 30%.
• Walk-ins: if you do not take bookings, a walk-in queue lets people join from their phone at the door and wait somewhere else. It is free.

Are new customers or regulars worth more?

Regulars, by a distance. Here is a rough way to see it, using illustrative numbers. Say a regular comes in twice a month and spends €20 a time. That is €480 a year from one person, and they bring friends. A first-time customer who never returns is worth one visit.

So the second visit is the one to design for:

• A loyalty programme with a reward people can actually reach. Frequency-based (a number of visits in a month) suits cafés, spend-based suits restaurants. Loyalty on Mosey is free on every plan, and visits record themselves when customers pay or order through Mosey.
• A message to people who have drifted. Mosey's automations can send a win-back to customers who have not been back for a number of days you set, with no per-message charge.
• Remember them. A name and a "the usual?" do more than any discount.

Where does word of mouth actually come from?

From ratings, from replies, and from neighbours.

Ask happy customers to rate what they ate. Reply to every rating, good and bad, calmly and in public: the reply is for the next person reading, not only for the one who wrote it. On Mosey, the Gold mark is earned from ratings alone and cannot be bought or boosted.

Then look next door. Hotels, guesthouses and B&Bs get asked "where should we eat?" every evening. A friendly introduction and a short list of what you do well costs nothing. So does working with other independents on your street, for example on a shared food trail.

What should you spend money on, and what should you skip?

Spend last, and spend where the person seeing it is already deciding where to eat. Paid reach in front of people scrolling for something else is a guess about whether they are hungry.

On Mosey, a Boost or a sponsored post shows a dish, an event or your venue to people nearby while they are choosing, and you see the estimated audience and the price before you pay. Boost one dish rather than the whole venue. And decide before you start what success looks like (twenty more covers, ten new ratings) so you can tell afterwards whether it worked.

Skip anything you cannot measure, and anything that promises reach without saying who it reaches.

Fix the free things first, then work down this list. Claim your business free or See pricing.