Reopening the dining room? Fix the listing first

The calls we get from restaurant owners changed tone in spring 2021. For a year the question was how to keep takeout alive. Now it is how to tell people the dining room is open again, the patio is back, and the menu is not quite the one they remember.

Most of that answer lives in one place. Before anyone reads your website or your Instagram, they see your Google My Business listing in the map, and plenty of listings still describe the restaurant as it was in December 2020. Here is the pass we are running on every restaurant listing we manage this month, in the order we do it.

Hours: undo the workarounds

A year of shifting rules left most listings carrying some kind of patch. Special hours entered for weeks that never ended. Regular hours cut back to a takeout window. A “temporarily closed” status left on a location that has been serving through the window for months.

Go through them one at a time:

• If the listing is still marked temporarily closed, mark it open. Guests read that label as closed, full stop, and choose somewhere else without calling to check.
• Put the real dining room hours in the regular hours field. If the kitchen stops seating before the bar closes, say which is which rather than picking the more generous number.
• Keep the separate takeout and delivery hours you set up in 2020 if they still differ. Plenty of restaurants will run a takeout window that starts earlier or ends later than the room, and customers have learned to rely on it.
• Look through the special hours list for future dates you entered as a workaround and remove the ones that no longer apply.
• Enter Memorial Day hours well before the weekend. It is the first big patio weekend of the year, and Google shows the holiday hours you give it.

Attributes and the menu

The attributes you set in spring 2020 were the right answer for that month. Most restaurants now need to flip several of them back.

Turn dine-in on. Turn outdoor seating on the day the patio opens, not before. If you take reservations again, say so and add the reservations link so people can book from the listing. Keep takeout, curbside and delivery on only if you are really keeping them. A lot of owners are quietly dropping curbside, and the listing needs to say so the same week the sign comes down.

The health and safety attributes deserve a fresh look too. Whether masks are required, whether staff wear them, whether a reservation is needed to get a table: these move with the local rules, and guests coming back for the first time in a year read them carefully. Set what is true today, and put a date on the calendar to check them again in June.

Then the menu. Many restaurants cut their menus to what travels well in a box, changed prices at least once, and are now bringing dishes back. The menu on the listing has to match the menu on the table. A guest who comes in for a dish your listing still shows, and hears it was cut in summer 2020, has just been handed the first line of their review. Update the listing’s menu editor or point the menu link at the current version on your site, and check it on a phone.

Photos: show the room again

For a year the most useful photos on a restaurant listing were the pickup counter and the food in its container. Those photos did their job. Now they are quietly telling people the dining room is still shut.

Add a new set this month, taken on a phone in good light:

1. The dining room set for service, with the spacing guests will actually find.
2. The patio from the entrance, so people can see whether there is shade.
3. The three or four dishes people order most, on the plates they are served on.
4. The front door from the street, especially if outdoor seating changed how people come in.
5. The bar, if it is open, because “is the bar open” is one of the first things guests ask before they make plans.

Post the reopening as an update on the listing too, with the date and what is back. It is a small thing, but it tells anyone scrolling that somebody is paying attention.

Reviews from the guests who come back

The first weeks of a reopening are the best review window a restaurant will get all year. The guests coming through the door are mostly regulars who stuck with you through takeout and are glad to be sitting down again. They have something to say, and it is usually warm.

Most of them will not write it unless someone asks. What works:

• Ask in person at the end of the meal, when the guest says thanks. The person asking should be someone the guest recognizes, the server or the manager who has been there all year.
• Put the listing’s review link on the check presenter or the receipt as a short link or a QR code. After a year of contactless menus, most guests know how to scan one.
• Ask every table, not only the ones that look happy. Choosing who gets asked is against Google’s rules, and so is offering a free dessert or a discount in return for a review.
• Ask guests to mention what they ordered. A review that names the short rib or the patio does more work in search than one that says “great place”.

And reply to the reviews already there, including the ones from the takeout months. A short, specific answer to a winter complaint about a late delivery tells a new guest the restaurant has moved on.

What to do this month

• Mark the listing open, clear out stale special hours, and set regular hours for the dining room.
• Turn dine-in, outdoor seating and reservations on as each one actually returns, and remove attributes for services you have dropped.
• Update the menu on the listing so every dish and price matches what is served.
• Add five new photos: the room, the patio, the entrance and the plated food.
• Put a review link or QR code on the check presenter and ask every table.
• Enter Memorial Day hours before the weekend arrives.

Reopening is the first time in a year that the listing gets to sell the evening rather than the logistics. We run this pass as part of our restaurant marketing, and nearly all of it happens on the Google My Business listing you already control.