Restaurant marketing is increasingly shaped by digital discovery, customer reviews, loyalty programs, email, and online menus. The 2024 data below shows where restaurant operators planned to invest and which signals diners said could influence their choices.
Contents
- Restaurant technology and marketing investment
- Reviews and reputation
- Loyalty programs and retention
- Email marketing and unsubscribe risks
- Menus, offers, and customer preferences
- Timing, waiting, and occasion-based marketing
Restaurant technology and marketing investment
The National Restaurant Association Restaurant Technology Landscape Report 2024 measured operators’ planned technology investments for 2024. Digital marketing and location-based marketing were the leading marketing-related priority: 63% of all restaurant operators planned to devote resources to it. The figure was similar by service model, at 64% for full-service restaurants and 62% for limited-service restaurants.
Loyalty and reward systems were another major priority. Overall, 57% of operators planned to invest in them in 2024. Limited-service restaurants were more likely than full-service restaurants to plan this investment: 61% compared with 52%.
Other planned investments show that restaurant marketing is connected to the wider operating system. The same National Restaurant Association report found that 52% planned to devote resources to back-office systems tied to payroll, finance, tax compliance, and food-safety compliance. Automated labor-management recruitment and scheduling systems were planned by 37% of operators.
More emerging technologies had smaller planned-investment shares. Sixteen percent planned to invest in artificial intelligence integration, including voice recognition; 5% planned to invest in robotics; and 3% planned to invest in drones or autonomous-vehicle delivery.
Labor pressure was part of the context. In the National Restaurant Association’s 2024 findings, 47% of operators said technology and automation would become more common in their segment because of labor shortages. At the same time, 69% said technology integration would augment rather than replace human labor. A further 25% said temporary just-in-time workers would become more common in their segment.
KPMG Restaurant industry trends for 2024 found similarly broad technology activity among restaurant respondents. Eighty-two percent had started deploying capital toward technology enablement, while nearly 98% said their automation or technology-enabled workflow strategy was at least in progress, getting there, or already mature.
The KPMG findings also show that transformation extended beyond customer-facing promotion. Sixty-one percent of restaurant respondents were actively transforming accounting functions to meet evolving business needs, 50% were actively transforming financial planning and analysis functions, and 53% were actively transforming human-resources functions. Among full-service respondents, 82% were actively transforming HR functions.
For restaurant marketers, these figures suggest that the practical marketing stack is broader than social posts or paid advertising. Location-based discovery, loyalty data, digital ordering touchpoints, staffing workflows, and back-office systems were all part of the 2024 technology picture.
Reviews and reputation
TouchBistro 2024 U.S. Diner Trends Report measured where diners had read restaurant reviews during the previous three months. Google was the most commonly used listed source, with 43% of diners saying they had read Google restaurant reviews. Yelp followed at 31%, while 16% had read TripAdvisor reviews.
Smaller but still measurable shares used other sources: 12% had read OpenTable restaurant reviews, 13% had read restaurant reviews in a local newspaper, and 8% had read reviews on a local blog. Thirty-six percent had not used any of the listed review sources during the previous three months.
Social popularity was not universally persuasive. Sixty percent of diners said a restaurant’s popularity on social media was less important to them, according to the TouchBistro report. That does not make social media irrelevant, but it places reputation and useful information in a more specific context: visibility alone may not be the same as trust.
Some negative signals were especially powerful. Sixty-eight percent said a health inspection warning would deter them from a restaurant, and 63% said negative feedback from friends would deter them. Among Gen Z diners, 64% said a health inspection warning would deter them, while 63% said bad online reviews would deter them.
These results point to a reputation strategy with several parts: maintain accurate business information, monitor major review platforms, respond to customer feedback, and make operational quality visible where diners look. The percentages describe diner responses, not a guarantee that any single review or warning will determine a purchase.
Loyalty programs and retention
Restaurant loyalty participation increased in the TouchBistro 2024 U.S. Diner Trends Report. Forty-six percent of diners said they were members of restaurant loyalty programs in 2024, up from 36% in 2023.
Membership varied by restaurant type. Eighty-one percent of Americans had loyalty memberships with quick-service restaurants, 63% had memberships with full-service restaurant chains, and 23% had memberships with local or independent restaurants. These categories can overlap, so the figures should be read as separate membership measures rather than a single total.
Engagement was also measurable. Thirty-four percent of loyalty-program members engaged with those programs once a week or more often, and 45% engaged at least once a month. For a restaurant, these figures make loyalty communication a recurring relationship channel rather than a one-time enrollment event.
The National Restaurant Association Restaurant Technology Landscape Report 2024 found that 57% of operators planned to invest in loyalty or reward systems in 2024. The planned-investment share was 61% among limited-service restaurants and 52% among full-service restaurants.
The comparison below places selected loyalty findings side by side.
| Measure | Share | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| Diners who belonged to a restaurant loyalty program | 46% | TouchBistro, 2024 |
| Loyalty members engaging weekly or more often | 34% | TouchBistro, 2024 |
| Operators planning loyalty or reward investment | 57% | National Restaurant Association, 2024 plans |
| Limited-service operators planning loyalty investment | 61% | National Restaurant Association, 2024 plans |
| Full-service operators planning loyalty investment | 52% | National Restaurant Association, 2024 plans |
Email marketing and unsubscribe risks
The TouchBistro 2024 U.S. Diner Trends Report also measured why diners might subscribe to restaurant emails. Coupons or discounts were the strongest listed incentive, selected by 33%. The ability to collect rewards or free items followed at 29%.
Fifteen percent said learning about new menu items or menu updates would influence them to subscribe. Smaller shares cited general business or venue updates at 12%, upcoming promotions at 5%, exclusive content at 4%, and upcoming events at the venue at 1%.
The same report identified reasons diners might unsubscribe. Thirty percent said too-frequent emails would cause an unsubscribe. Seven percent cited irrelevant offers, 5% repetitive content, 4% poorly designed emails, and 3% poorly written emails.
The contrast is useful for planning: the largest stated subscription incentive was a concrete value exchange, while the largest stated unsubscribe risk was excessive frequency. Email performance therefore depends on both the offer and the experience of receiving it. The report’s figures do not specify an ideal sending schedule, so restaurants should not infer a universal frequency from them.
Menus, offers, and customer preferences
Online menu visibility was common in the TouchBistro 2024 U.S. Diner Trends Report. Eighty-five percent of diners said they usually look at a restaurant’s menu online before visiting a new restaurant. For marketing, the menu is therefore part of the pre-visit decision process, not only an in-restaurant document.
Food positioning also influenced restaurant choice for substantial shares of diners. Sixty-nine percent said locally sourced ingredients could influence them to choose a restaurant. Thirty percent said diet-specific offerings such as keto or paleo could influence their choice.
Other stated influences included vegetarian offerings at 29%, gluten-free offerings at 29%, vegan offerings at 25%, and halal or kosher offerings at 25%. These figures measure potential influence, not guaranteed visits or demand for every offering.
KPMG Restaurant industry trends for 2024 reported that 70.0% of fast-casual operators said customer counts were down year over year, compared with 44.4% of the total restaurant sample. The same KPMG survey table reported that 91.7% of quick-service operators said menu changes based on customer trends involved one specific menu action. Because the supplied result does not identify that action, it is best treated as a quantified survey-table result rather than translated into a more specific claim.
KPMG also reported that 79.5% of the total sample was digitally enabling restaurants in at least one way. In the same survey table, 53.8%, 43.6%, 66.7%, 23.1%, and 5.1% of the total sample selected separate listed digital-enablement actions. Among full-service respondents, 36.4% and 9.1% selected two listed digital-enablement actions. The table labels supplied for these figures do not specify the individual actions, so the percentages should not be assigned to particular channels.
Timing, waiting, and occasion-based marketing
Diner patience is a marketing consideration because promises about speed shape conversion. TouchBistro 2024 U.S. Diner Trends Report found that diners would wait 22 minutes on average for a table before leaving. For delivery, diners would wait 30 minutes on average before canceling.
The delivery distribution was mixed: 21% would not wait more than 15 minutes before canceling, 45% would wait 16 to 30 minutes, 4% would wait up to 60 minutes, and 36% would wait more than 60 minutes. These ranges describe different respondents’ stated thresholds, so they should not be added or treated as a single customer journey.
OpenTable Diners Have Spoken: America’s Top 100 Romantic Restaurants measured Valentine’s Day planning and booking behavior. Seventy percent of surveyed diners planned to spend the same or more on Valentine’s Day dining than in the prior year. Twenty-eight percent wanted an experience, compared with 23% who wanted a tangible gift.
Booking timing was also notable. Fifty-two percent of reservations were made at least six days out in the prior year, indicating early booking behavior. Diners set 13 times the number of alerts on Valentine’s Day compared with non-holidays. Cost was the most stressful part of planning where to dine for 20% of survey respondents.
The same OpenTable source reported that its 2024 Top 100 Romantic Restaurants list spanned 34 states plus Washington, D.C., with California accounting for 12 restaurants on the list. In a separate OpenTable publication, OpenTable Serves Up 2025 Dining Predictions, the 2024 Top 100 Restaurants in America list was compiled from more than 14 million diner reviews. Fifty-three cities were represented, Chicago accounted for 10% of the list, and OpenTable Icons were featured by more than 20 restaurants.
These occasion-based figures support practical timing decisions: promote bookable experiences ahead of major dining dates, make availability visible, and communicate price or value clearly. The OpenTable results are specific to the cited lists, survey context, and Valentine’s Day behavior; they are not forecasts for every restaurant or every holiday.