Market a new restaurant or cafe in its first 90 days

A new food business wins its first 90 days by doing four things in order: be easy to find before you open, earn the first honest ratings in the first month, give the people who came once a reason to return in the second, and measure what worked in the third. None of it needs an advertising budget. It needs a complete listing, good photographs, a team that asks, and the discipline to follow up.

Weeks 1 and 2: how do you make sure people can find you?

Before you serve a customer, get the basics right in every place a hungry person looks.

• Claim your listing. Search for your business on Mosey and claim it free, then add your name, address, opening hours, cuisine and a short description in your own voice. A listing with hours and photographs is shown more fully than a bare one.
• Photograph the food properly. Daylight, a clean plate, the real portion. Ten honest photographs beat one hundred rushed ones. Put your best three dishes first.
• Scan your menu in. Scan your paper menu so every dish has a name, a price and a place on the page, and add allergens before you open.
• Switch on the tools you will use. Bookings if you take them, ordering if you will cook for collection. Leave off anything you cannot do well in week one.
• Tell your street. A card through the neighbours' doors, a sign in the window with the opening date, a word with the nearest offices.

Check your listing as a stranger would: search for your type of food near you, find yourself, and read what a hungry person would read. Fix what confuses you.

Weeks 3 to 6: how do you earn the first ratings?

On Mosey, people find places by what they ate, and they rate the dish and the visit. The first ratings matter more than any later ones, because they are the first thing a stranger reads.

You cannot buy ratings and you must never fake them. You can make rating easy, and ask. Train the team to say one sentence at the end of a good meal: "If you enjoyed it, a rating on Mosey helps a small place like ours." Put a small card at the till. Thank people who rate, and reply to every one, good or bad; the guide to replying to ratings shows how. Read how to get more reviews for more ways.

A Mosey Gold badge is earned from ratings alone, and nobody can pay to outrank you. Read how a venue earns Gold so you know what it takes and aim for it.

Weeks 7 to 10: how do you bring people back?

A first visit is expensive to win and cheap to repeat. Give people a reason to return that is better than a discount.

1. Start a loyalty programme. It is free on every plan: a free coffee after ten, or a dessert after five dinners. See running a loyalty programme.
2. Use quiet times. A Deal Hour on a slow afternoon puts a price on a time that would otherwise be empty. The Deal Hours guide shows how.
3. Run one event. A supper club, a tasting or a Sunday special sold as tickets gives your regulars a date. Read about selling event tickets.
4. Write to the people who came. Thank them, tell them what is new, and ask what they would like to see.
5. Plan a membership for the regulars you already know by name, once you have a few weeks of data. The pricing guide shows how to test it.

Weeks 11 to 13: what should you measure?

Look at five numbers, once a week, at the same time.

• Covers or orders per day, by day of the week.
• Your average spend per head.
• How many customers came more than once.
• Your rating and how many ratings you have.
• Where new customers say they heard of you.

Ask every new customer how they found you, in a way that takes four seconds. The answers tell you which of your efforts to repeat. The analytics guide shows what the dashboard can tell you.

What should you not do?

• Do not discount the opening. A launch discount fills the room with people who will not come back at full price. Offer a free coffee on the next visit instead.
• Do not hide the bad review. Reply with a fact and an offer, once.
• Do not chase every platform. One or two places done well beat six done badly.
• Do not forget the team. A team that is proud of the food tells people about it. Share the good ratings at the pre-service briefing.

By day 90, you should know your best dish, your best day, your most likely regular and the one thing that costs you customers. Write them down. Then look at your cash: the cash flow guide covers what a new place needs, and the pricing page lists the cost of every tool.