Menu
Back in January, Google hosted the 2025 Restaurant Industry Influencer Summit. The event brought industry leaders and voices together to reveal the latest trends shaping the landscape of restaurant search and marketing. Although the event focused on global and US insights, several key trends raised during the summit are already making an impact in the UK, too. So, this seems like the perfect time to review these trends and what they mean for the restaurant scene here.
Back in January, Google hosted the 2025 Restaurant Industry Influencer Summit. The event brought industry leaders and voices together to reveal the latest trends shaping the landscape of restaurant search and marketing.
Although the event focused on global and US insights, several key trends raised during the summit are already making an impact in the UK, too. So, this seems like the perfect time to review these trends and what they mean for the restaurant scene here.
One of the headline insights from Google’s Restaurant Industry Influencer Summit is that restaurant-related searches are up 33% YoY in 2025. Despite economic pressures, the demand for eating out continues to grow, as does ordering to-go. In fact, the UK’s food-to-go market is projected to outpace its eating-out market in 2025 with a +3.3% growth rate, vs +2.5% respectively.
Delving a little into the search insights, the two highest-growth keywords for restaurants over the past 12 months are “fast food deal” and “order takeaway near me”. Searches for “fast food deal” have increased by +1,650% over the past year and searches for “order takeaway near me” by +750%.
If we look at the top restaurant-related queries for the UK over the same 12-month period, this is what we get:
Source: Google Trends
The good news for smaller and independent businesses is that “restaurant” and “restaurants” offer the biggest organic opportunity, especially for local searches. Unsurprisingly, the big-name brands dominate the rest of the top-10 queries while pizza and burgers are the top menu items people are searching for in the UK.
Google isn’t the only platform people use to find places to eat, either.
Food delivery apps have become a way of life in the UK while younger demographics, in particular, increasingly use social media apps like Instagram and TikTok to find places to eat.
Restaurant-related searches continue to grow on Google while bookings through social media and food delivery apps are at record levels. So what can restaurants do to make the most of these opportunities?
Industry Insights from Zonal and CGA find that 48% of UK consumers look on social media for places to eat and drink out. The same report also finds that 33% use social media to book tables at pubs and restaurants.
Other reports reveal that 55% of TikTok users visit restaurants after discovering them on the platform while 38% of Instagram users actively follow and browse food content. Short-form video dominates the TikTok experience while Instagram users spend 50% of their time on the app watching Reels.
Creating short-form video might be daunting for inexperienced restaurants but the results are clear. Short-form video delivers the highest ROI among the top content formats.
Industry experts echoed this at Google’s Restaurant Industry Influencer Summit. They paid particular attention to YouTube Shorts, highlighting three key ways restaurants can use them to drive visibility and local business:
Google’s Farah Shirzadi recommends restaurants implement Shorts into their marketing strategy, starting with the following steps:
If you’re new to short-form video, implementing YouTube Shorts into your local SEO strategy is the perfect place to start. Most of what you do, learn and produce will carry over into social media and any other channel where short-form video drives results.
Short-form video is also the perfect format for connecting with creators and YouTube is making this easier for businesses. YouTube BrandConnect helps you connect with creators on the platform and manage partnership campaigns through Google Ads.
Managing campaigns in Google Ads gives you full access to performance insights. You can also create audience segments to separate insights for organic and paid views. Again, if you’re using YouTube Shorts to scale up your short-form video strategy, this is the perfect place to start with influencer marketing.
Visual content plays a key role in Google Business Profiles for restaurants. People want to see your restaurant interior, get a sense of what it’s like to dine there and see what your food looks like – both on the menu and on plates.
For some customers, the quality of food and service is their absolute priority. For others, the Instagramability of your interior, table arrangements and dishes are just as important. Whatever their priorities, showcasing the best of your business with quality images and video is crucial for attracting your ideal customers.
At the Restaurant Industry Influencer Summit, Google Product Manager Michael Gnagy also highlighted the importance of keeping Business Profiles up to date. Above all, customers rely on accurate information like opening times and menu information to make informed decisions. They don’t want to turn up, only to find out the dishes they looked at are no longer on the menu.
Michael Gnagy raised a different point, though – that keeping profiles up to date is more important than ever in the age of AI. In December, Google rolled out AI-organised results for restaurant-related queries. Meanwhile, AI Overviews are showing for more queries and the technology is powering a growing range of search features.
Gnagy says Google’s AI uses all available data and that even small changes to menus and opening times can impact how a business appears in search results. So, keep your profile 100% updated with accurate information and supporting resources. If you change opening hours, update your profile. If you change your menu, update your profile with the latest dishes and images to showcase them. Give Google’s AI and potential customers all the information they need to work with.
In January, Google launched a new Local Promotions in Maps ad format as part of Performance Max for shop goals. The format allows you to add promotions, including money-off vouchers, visible to users in Maps through local ads.
With Performance Max for Shop Goals, you can also use your Business Profile page to highlight in-store offers to encourage visits. Google has expanded its offering of local ads significantly in recent years.
In addition to local ads on Maps, Google has launched a series of local ad formats for search, capable of pulling information and media assets from your Business Profile – yet more reason to keep everything updated.
Take a look at the following Google Ads Help pages for further info:
With plenty of change expected throughout the rest of the year, 2025 will raise a lot of new challenges for restaurant marketers. But every challenge also raises new opportunities to gain ground on your closest competitors, as well as the slow responders to the latest trends.
Call us on 023 9283 0281 or send us your details below to start working with our specialist team of restaurant marketing experts.
Dave is head of SEO at Vertical Leap. He joined in 2010 as an SEO specialist and prior to that worked with international companies delivering successful search marketing campaigns. Dave works with many of our largest customers spanning many household names and global brands such as P&O Cruises and Harvester. Outside of work, Dave previously spent many years providing charity work as a Sergeant under the Royal Air Force Reserves in the Air Cadets sharing his passion for aviation with young minds. He can often be found in the skies above the south coast enjoying his private pilot licence.
Website under-performing but not sure why? Our free review will reveal a list of fixes to get it back on track!
Categories: SEO
Categories: Events
Categories: PPC, SEO