How Much Should a Restaurant Spend on Marketing in Australia?
The short answer
Most established Australian restaurants should be spending somewhere between 3% and 6% of revenue on marketing. A venue turning over $3 million a year sits at roughly $90,000 to $180,000. A new venue, or one trying to shift its position in the market, usually needs 8% to 12% for the first 12 months.
That is the number you came here for, and it is a fine place to start. It is also where most operators stop thinking, and that is the problem.
I spent 11 years as a head chef and venue operator before starting Tableside. I have sat in the office at 11pm doing the roster and looking at a marketing line that felt like money disappearing into a hole. The percentage was never the issue. The issue was that nobody could tell me what the money was doing.
Why a flat percentage misleads you
A percentage of revenue tells you what is normal. It does not tell you what is right for your venue, and three things break it.
Stage. A venue that has been full for five years and a venue that opened in March have nothing in common when it comes to marketing. The first one is defending. The second one is building awareness from zero. Same percentage, completely different job.
Margin moves with volume. A percentage treats margin as fixed. It is not. Your rent, your core roster, your insurance and your lease on the coolroom are paid whether you do 400 covers a week or 600. Once those are covered, every extra table you fill drops far more to the bottom line than the first ones did. A venue running at a thin margin on 400 covers can be running a healthy one on 600, and the only thing that changed was the volume. Marketing that fills those extra tables is not a cost that eats margin. Done properly, it is the thing that builds it.
The cost of doing nothing. This is the one operators skip. If your covers are down 10% on last year, the real cost is not the marketing budget you did not spend. It is the 10%. On a $3 million venue that is $300,000 a year walking out the door while you debate whether $8,000 a month is too much.
I have watched operators cut marketing to protect the bottom line and then wonder why the top line kept sliding. Marketing is one of the few costs on the P&L that is supposed to make the other numbers bigger. Treat it like rent and you will get rent-like returns, which is to say none.
The better question: what is a cover worth to you?
Stop asking what percentage to spend. Start asking what a new customer is worth and how much you would pay to get one. Every good budget we have ever set for a venue came from this, not from a benchmark.
The maths is simple enough to do on the back of a docket:
- Average spend per head. Say $85 including drinks.
- How many visits a year from a regular. Say four. That makes a regular worth $340 a year.
- Gross margin on that spend. Say 65%, so around $220 in contribution per regular per year.
- What you would pay to win one. If you are happy to pay $40 to $50 to acquire a customer worth $220 in contribution, you now have a target cost per new customer.
- How many you need. If you want revenue up 15% on a $3 million venue, that is $450,000, or roughly 1,300 new regulars over the year. At $45 each, that is about $60,000 in paid acquisition.
Now you have a budget that is tied to an outcome. You can look at it in March and ask whether you are on track, instead of asking whether $5,000 a month feels like a lot.
The numbers above are examples. Yours will be different, and the point is that you should know them. If you do not know your average spend, your visit frequency and your margin, that is the first job, before anyone spends a dollar on ads.
Where the money should actually go
For an established venue with a clear idea of who it is, we lean the budget towards paid and the content that feeds it. The $10,000 a month below is the whole marketing budget: media paid to Meta and Google, plus whatever you pay to the people doing the work, whether that is an agency retainer, a freelancer or an in-house marketer's wages. If you are paying an agency, their fee sits inside the content and organic lines, not on top of the $10,000.
| Line | Share | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Meta and Google media spend | 50% to 60% | Money paid directly to the platforms. Getting in front of people who have not been in yet, and bringing lapsed guests back |
| Content (video and photo) | 20% to 25% | What you pay whoever shoots and edits it, agency or in-house. The creative that makes the ads work; ads without good creative are just an expensive way to find out your photos are bad |
| Organic social and email | 15% to 20% | What you pay whoever runs the channels and writes the emails. Keeping the people you already have, and giving new ones a reason to believe the ad |
| Everything else | 5% or less | Print, local sponsorships, the odd event |
Two things to notice. Media spend is the biggest line because it is the only one you can turn up and down and see the result within weeks. And content sits next to it, not on its own, because content that never goes into an ad is a cost without a job. If an agency is running all of it for you, a healthy shape is roughly 40% of the total in fees and 60% in media. If fees are eating most of the budget and media is an afterthought, you are paying for activity, not growth.
What to stop paying for: agencies that report on reach and impressions. Followers for their own sake. A $4,000 photoshoot every quarter for images that only end up on a grid. If a dollar cannot be traced to a booking, a cover or a sale, it is on probation.
The one exception is brand, and it is earned, not assumed. Not every piece of content will show up in attribution, and it should not have to. Most people who see your ad do not click it. They see it three times, then Google you on Friday, book through your website or walk in, and the platform never gets the credit. The more visible and consistent you are, the more of that you get, through every channel at once. That is why the scorecard is total revenue against last year, not what Meta says it drove.
But brand spend comes after acquisition is working, not instead of it. Once your paid channels are performing and the cost of each new customer starts creeping up, that is the signal to put more into brand: the content that makes people want to be there, not just know you exist. And you still measure it, just over quarters rather than weeks: branded search, direct bookings, repeat visits, and whether your ads are getting cheaper because people already know who you are.
Signs you are underspending, and signs you are overspending
You are probably underspending if:
- Revenue is flat or down on last year and your marketing line has not moved
- Your ads are profitable but you cap the spend at a round number that someone picked two years ago
- Most of your new guests come from walk-past or word of mouth, and you have no idea how to make more of them
- You are running a second venue off the same budget as the first
You are probably overspending if:
- Nobody in the business can tell you what last month's spend returned in bookings or sales
- Your agency reports on reach, engagement and followers, and revenue is not on the page
- Your ads are feeding bookings, but the kitchen and floor cannot hold onto the people who turn up
- You are paying for content you are not using in ads
That third sign on the overspending list is the one chefs and operators know in their gut. Marketing cannot fix a venue that is not ready. If reviews are sliding, the roster is thin and the product is inconsistent, spending more just introduces more people to the problem faster. Fix the room first, then pour fuel on it.
Where to start this month
You do not need a strategy deck to get this right. You need four numbers and a habit.
- Pull last year's revenue by month. Year on year is the only comparison that matters in hospitality. Month on month tells you about the weather.
- Work out your average spend, visit frequency and margin. Rough is fine. Ten minutes with your POS and your bookings platform will get you close.
- Set a budget off the maths above, not off a benchmark. Decide how much growth you want and what you will pay for a customer, and let the budget fall out of that.
- Track it back to revenue every month. Spend, bookings, covers, sales, and year-on-year growth on one page. If your agency cannot give you that page, that tells you something.
We run this exact model for the venues we work with. The clients that have grown most are not the ones spending the most. They are the ones who knew what a cover was worth before they spent a dollar, and could see every month whether the dollars came back. One Melbourne restaurant we work with is up around 20% year on year on that basis, with a budget that would make most operators nervous because of how much of it sits in ads. It works because every dollar has a job.
If you want a second opinion on your own numbers, that is what a Tableside growth roadmap is for. Bring your P&L and your bookings data, and we will tell you where the money should go and what it should return.
Frequently Asked Questions
We work exclusively with hospitality venues and groups doing $3M-$1OM in revenue. Whether you're running a single high-performing venue or scaling multiple locations, we're built for operators who need serious marketing results, not just pretty posts
You don't get one person trying to do everything. You get a full team of strategists, content creators, photographers, videographers, and ad specialists who've actually run venues. Agency firepower with operator instincts.
Brand strategy, professional photo and video content, social media management, paid advertising, email and SMS campaigns, and monthly reporting tied to real revenue. Every campaign is built around our SEAT System, designed to fill seats and increase spend per head.
Most venues see measurable improvements within 30 to 60 days. We move fast because we don't need to learn your industry from scratch. The biggest wins compound over time as your brand, content, and paid campaigns build momentum.
No. We work with venues across Australia. We have a national Creative Network of photographers and videographers on the ground, with strategy, ads, and account management handled by our core team.
A lot of venues come to us because what they've been doing isn't moving the needle. We'll show you where the gaps are and either replace the existing setup or work alongside your team to handle strategy, content, and paid media.
