Quick answer: Google Ads for a restaurant has two costs: the ad spend you pay Google for clicks, which you set yourself, and the cost of managing the campaign, whether that's an agency fee or your own time. In the latest WordStream by LocaliQ benchmarks, restaurant and food search ads averaged $2.05 a click and $30.57 a lead in the US. UK costs depend heavily on your area and how many restaurants are bidding, so the useful number to watch is cost per call or booking, not cost per click.
Last updated: November 2026. Restaurant Genie prices are per month, plus VAT.
How Google charges you
With search ads you pay when someone clicks, not when the ad is shown. You set an average daily budget for each campaign, and Google spends around it:
- On a busy day, a campaign can spend up to twice its average daily budget. Google calls this overdelivery.
- Across a month, you won't be charged more than 30.4 times the average daily budget, because 30.4 is the average number of days in a month.
So a campaign set at £20 a day has a monthly limit of £608. The amount is entirely up to you, and you can change it whenever you like.
What restaurants pay per click
WordStream by LocaliQ publishes yearly benchmarks from thousands of search campaigns. Its 2026 report covers 13,474 US campaigns that ran between April 2025 and March 2026. For restaurants and food it found:
- Average cost per click: $2.05, against $5.42 across all industries
- Average click-through rate: 6.83%
- Average conversion rate: 8.05%
- Average cost per lead: $30.57, against $66.69 across all industries
Two things to keep in mind. These are US figures in dollars, so treat them as a rough guide rather than a UK price list. And the report says its averages are medians, so half of campaigns paid more and half paid less.
Why your clicks might cost more or less
- Where you are. A city centre with dozens of restaurants bidding on the same searches costs more than a market town.
- What people search for. "Restaurant near me" is competitive. "Private dining for 20 in Bedford" is narrower, cheaper and often worth more per booking.
- The quality of your ads and landing page. Google runs an auction where relevance matters as well as your bid, so a well-matched ad and page can pay less for the same position.
- Timing. Running ads when you can't take a booking, such as the middle of the night, wastes clicks. Schedule ads around your opening hours and booking patterns.
A worked example
These numbers are illustrative, to show how the maths works. Say you set £20 a day, so a maximum of £608 a month. If your clicks average £1.50, that's around 405 clicks. If 8% of those clicks turn into a call, booking or request for directions (close to the benchmark conversion rate above), you'd get around 32 enquiries, at roughly £19 each.
Whether £19 is good depends on what a booking is worth to you. If an enquiry typically becomes a table of four spending £30 a head, that's £120 of revenue from £19 of ad spend, before your food and staff costs. Our ROI calculator lets you try your own numbers.
What management costs
Someone has to choose keywords, write ads, set up call tracking, cut wasted searches and move budget to what works. You have three options.
- Do it yourself. No fee, but it takes regular time, and Google's automated suggestions tend to spend more rather than less.
- A freelancer. Often cheaper than an agency. Check they track calls and bookings, not just clicks.
- An agency. Usually a fixed monthly fee or a percentage of ad spend. A percentage means the agency earns more when you spend more, so ask which model they use.
Whoever runs it, make sure the ad account is in your name and that you can see the spend and results yourself.
How to stop wasting money
- Add negative keywords. Stop paying for searches like "restaurant jobs" or "recipe" that will never become a booking.
- Target the right area. Show ads to people within a sensible distance, plus visitors searching for your town.
- Track calls and bookings. Without tracking, you can't tell which searches pay for themselves.
- Send clicks to a page built for bookings. One clear button to call or book converts better than a homepage with a PDF menu.
- Fix your reviews and profile first. Ads bring people to your listing; if the rating puts them off, the click is wasted.
What our clients see
We measure Google Ads on calls and bookings rather than clicks. La Boca and Mango Lounge cut cost per call from £5 to around £1.50, and Mango Lounge in Windsor brought it down from £5 to £1.30. Results depend on your area, competition and budget, so we agree a realistic target with you at the start.
What we charge
Every one of our plans includes Google Search Ads. Found is £599 a month and covers the campaign, landing pages, call and booking tracking and a monthly review. It runs month to month, with a £300 setup fee waived on a three-month term. Found Plus at £1,499 adds local SEO and AI search, so you build positions that keep working without paying per click. Ad spend is charged by Google directly to your account. We never take a percentage, and our fee covers managing up to £10,000 a month. See Google Ads for restaurants for the details.
FAQs
How much should a restaurant spend on Google Ads?
Enough to get meaningful data, then adjust on results. Work back from what a booking is worth to you and what you're prepared to pay for one, and review it monthly.
How quickly will I see results?
Early signals usually show within two to four weeks, with better results from the second month as the campaign learns which searches turn into bookings.
Is Google Ads better than SEO?
They do different jobs. Ads put you at the top today and stop when you stop paying. SEO takes months but keeps working without a cost per click. Most restaurants benefit from both.
Sources: WordStream by LocaliQ, 2026 Google Ads benchmarks (US data, April 2025 to March 2026); Google Ads Help, Manage your spend in Google Ads; Google Ads Help, About overdelivery and your average daily budget. Restaurant Genie prices and client results from our pricing page, November 2026.
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