Restaurant marketing spending is generally holding firm or moving higher, although the available benchmarks measure different groups and accounting categories. Recent surveys show strong intent to maintain or increase budgets, while public-company filings and Census data provide dollar and revenue-based benchmarks.
Contents
- Budget growth and restraint
- Digital, location-based, and loyalty investment
- Restaurant technology spending priorities
- Industry advertising benchmarks
- Public restaurant-chain outlays
- Marketing automation and AI
Budget growth and restraint
Toast reported that 85% of U.S. restaurants surveyed believed they should be doing more marketing than they usually do. The same Toast survey found that 84% planned to spend the same as or more than their previous year’s restaurant marketing budget. These findings come from the survey period reported in Toast’s 2023 article, How to Balance a Restaurant Budget, and describe sentiment and planned spending rather than audited expenditure.
Franchisor planning data points in the same direction for 2024. In the 2024 Annual Franchisor Survey, 62% of surveyed franchisors planned to increase current marketing spend, 34% planned to maintain it, and 3% planned to decrease it in the upcoming year. The survey also found that 73% of sit-down restaurant franchisors planned to increase marketing spend in 2024.
Marketing was especially tied to sales concerns in that franchise outlook: 82% of respondents who identified poor sales as a significant challenge planned to increase their 2024 marketing budget. This is a planning signal from franchise businesses, not a universal restaurant-budget percentage.
One public-company benchmark shows how a chain’s marketing-related spending can change as a share of revenue. BJ’s Restaurants reported marketing-related expenditures equal to approximately 1.7% of revenue in fiscal 2022, 1.8% in fiscal 2023, and 2.0% in fiscal 2024. Its fiscal 2025 forecast called for marketing expenditures of 2.0% to 2.5% of revenue. The figures and forecast are reported in BJ’s Restaurants, Inc. 2024 Form 10-K; the forecast is an estimate, not a completed fiscal-year result.
| Benchmark | Period | Reported result |
|---|---|---|
| BJ’s marketing-related expenditures as a share of revenue | Fiscal 2022 | Approximately 1.7% |
| BJ’s marketing-related expenditures as a share of revenue | Fiscal 2023 | Approximately 1.8% |
| BJ’s marketing-related expenditures as a share of revenue | Fiscal 2024 | Approximately 2.0% |
| BJ’s expected marketing expenditures as a share of revenue | Fiscal 2025 forecast | 2.0%–2.5% |
Digital, location-based, and loyalty investment
The National Restaurant Association’s 2024 survey, summarized in Where operators plan to invest in tech, shows that technology spending is closely connected with customer acquisition and retention. In that survey, 76% of restaurant operators expected technology to give their operation a competitive edge. At the same time, 23% worried that their operation was lagging in technology adoption, while 13% believed it was on the cutting edge.
The intended outcomes were broad. Sixty percent of operators planned technology investment to enhance customer experience, 55% planned investment to boost service-area productivity or efficiency, and 52% planned investment to boost kitchen productivity or efficiency. These percentages describe operators selecting investment purposes; they do not state how much each operator planned to spend.
Digital or location-based marketing was a focus for 64% of surveyed full-service operators and 62% of surveyed limited-service operators. The narrow two-point gap suggests that this category was important across both operating models in the 2024 survey, though the survey results should not be read as a market-wide spending share.
Loyalty investment showed a larger format difference. Sixty-one percent of limited-service operators planned to invest in loyalty or reward systems, compared with 52% of full-service operators. Consumer participation and perceived value were also substantial: 52% of surveyed consumers said they currently participated in a loyalty or reward program at a restaurant, coffee shop, snack place, or deli, and 96% appreciated these programs because they helped them get more for their dining dollars.
The operator and consumer figures measure different things. Operator percentages describe planned investment in 2024, while consumer percentages describe participation and attitudes in the same survey context. Neither establishes a return on marketing investment.
Restaurant technology spending priorities
Marketing technology sits inside a wider technology budget. The National Restaurant Association survey found that 52% of restaurant operators planned to invest in back-office technology. Forty-seven percent expected technology and automation to be increasingly adopted to address the labor shortage; among limited-service operators, that figure was 49%.
Operational systems were also prominent priorities. Thirty-seven percent expected to invest in automated labor-management, recruitment, or scheduling systems. Inventory-control and management technology was identified as a spending priority by 52% of operators, while point-of-sale technology was a priority for 48%. The point-of-sale figure was 53% among limited-service operators and 43% among full-service operators.
TouchBistro’s State of Restaurants Report 2025 provides a more recent six-month outlook. Seventy-one percent of surveyed restaurant operators planned to spend more on technology in the next six months: 20% planned to spend significantly more and 51% planned to spend somewhat more. Twenty-five percent planned to spend about the same, while 3% planned to spend less.
Among operators who planned to increase software or other technology spending, 32% intended to invest in marketing software. Other intended destinations included online-ordering software at 35%, loyalty software at 29%, and physical or digital cards at 24%. These are conditional percentages among spend-increasing operators, so they should not be compared directly with the percentage of all operators planning technology investment.
Industry advertising benchmarks
The U.S. Census Bureau provides a broad dollar benchmark for advertising and promotion. In 2023, U.S. food-services and drinking-places employer firms reported $14,492,997,000 in purchased advertising and promotional services. The same firms reported $744,791,096,000 in operating expenses. Both figures appear in Selected Sectors: Detailed Operating Expenses for Employer Firms in the U.S.: 2023.
These Census figures cover purchased advertising and promotional services and operating expenses for U.S. food-services and drinking-places employer firms. They are industry-wide totals, not a recommended budget for an individual restaurant, and the categories do not represent every possible marketing cost. They also should not be treated as a direct measurement of the percentage of revenue spent on marketing.
The scale of the totals helps put individual chain disclosures in context. The Census benchmark covers the U.S. industry in 2023, while annual reports below cover particular public companies and their own reporting definitions. Differences in scope, fiscal calendars, franchise structures, and expense classification matter when comparing them.
Public restaurant-chain outlays
McDonald’s reported $355 million in advertising costs for company-owned and operated restaurants in 2024, up from $347 million in 2023 and $335 million in 2022. Its 2024 Annual Report also reported $90 million in production and other marketing-related expenses included in selling, general and administrative costs in 2024. The corresponding figures were $42 million in 2023 and $64 million in 2022.
The advertising-cost series and the production-and-other-marketing series are separate disclosures. They should not be added together without a clearly defined accounting basis, and the figures relate to company-owned and operated restaurants for the advertising line.
Brinker International reported $146.6 million in advertising expenses included in restaurant expenses for the fiscal year ended June 25, 2025. Its comparable figures were $130.2 million for the fiscal year ended June 26, 2024, and $58.2 million for the fiscal year ended June 28, 2023. These amounts are reported in Brinker International, Inc. 2025 Form 10-K.
Brinker also recorded advertising contributions from franchisees in franchise revenues: $6.5 million for the fiscal year ended June 25, 2025, $6.0 million for the fiscal year ended June 26, 2024, and $3.0 million for the fiscal year ended June 28, 2023. Those contributions are a different line from advertising expenses included in restaurant expenses, so the two series should remain distinct.
Marketing automation and AI
AI adoption is emerging as another marketing-spending signal among independent full-service restaurants. TouchBistro’s 2025 report found that 27% of surveyed independent full-service restaurant operators were using AI content creation for marketing purposes.
The same report found that 95% of surveyed independent full-service restaurant operators reported using some form of AI in their restaurant. Among those not yet using AI, 89% felt extremely or somewhat positive about AI use in restaurants. The 27% marketing-content figure is therefore a specific use case within a broader AI-adoption measure, not a share of marketing budgets.
Taken together, these statistics show three distinct forms of restaurant marketing investment: planned budget changes, technology purchases that support customer relationships, and reported advertising or marketing expenses. Survey intentions, public-company accounting disclosures, and Census industry totals answer different questions. Keeping those measurement types and periods separate is essential when using restaurant marketing spending statistics to plan a local restaurant marketing program.