Pinterest for Restaurants: How to Visually Promote Your Business

You probably already have a Facebook and Instagram page for your restaurant (and if you don’t, you should). But have you considered how Pinterest for restaurants can help you promote your business? This visual platform is perfect for food businesses, and despite that, not enough restaurant owners use it. That is excellent news for you since its popularity with users will make you a prime choice.

335 million people use Pinterest every month, and 77% of pinners said they discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest. Moreover, food is the largest category on Pinterest, with more than 15 billion pins.

I’ve put together this guide on how to use Pinterest effectively to boost your restaurant engagement and sales. Let’s start with how to set up a Pinterest business account.

What is Pinterest Marketing?

Pinterest marketing is a type of social media marketing that includes a variety of strategies designed to make your brand more visible on Pinterest, with the goal of reaching new audiences and building awareness for your products.

How to Make a Pinterest Page for Your Restaurant

• Go to the Pinterest login page.
• Click on “Not on Pinterest yet? Sign up” at the bottom of the login box.
• Click on “Create a business account.”

• Input your email address, password, and age, then click “Create account.”

• Enter your restaurant name, website address (if you have one), country/region, and language.

• Next, choose a focus for your brand. In your case, it should be food and drink.

• You will be asked to describe your brand. Here, you need to choose “Local Retail Store or Local Service.”

• Finally, the platform will ask you if you are interested in running ads on Pinterest. I suggest selecting “I’m not sure yet,” at the moment since you can always do it later.

How to Customize Your Pinterest Business Profile

Now that your profile is up and running, Pinterest will suggest some actions you can take next. For now, your main priority should be to add more information about your brand, such as your restaurant location.

Fill in the following information:

• Username (what will show up after www.pinterest.com/).
• A short description (no more than 160 characters).
• Your website URL.
• The email address that will show up for the public.
• Restaurant phone number.
• Restaurant address.

How to Claim Your Website on Pinterest

Next, we advise you to claim your website to get access to Pinterest Analytics. This will help you grow your profile and understand what users want to see.

To claim it, go to your Pinterest business menu and click on “Claim,” then select “Websites.”

You can then choose how you’d like to claim it. Either by pasting a tag into the “head” section of your website, uploading a tag to your website’s root directory, or adding a TXT verification record to your domain host. For more information and detailed instructions on how to claim your website, go here.

Pinterest for Restaurants: 15 Tips on How to Advertise Your Business on Pinterest

1. Post your menu

People stumbling upon your mouth-watering photos of food on Pinterest might also decide to place an order if they have a handy link they can click. So, the first thing you’ll want to do is post your menu on a dedicated board. Here’s how you can add a board:

Now, name your board (most likely using your restaurant name + menu).

Then, start adding pins to it like this:

Each pin should contain a title, a description, and a destination link. So, let’s say you want to add “Pizza Margherita” to your menu:

• Either upload an image from your computer or input your website URL so you can save it directly from the site.
• The title would be Pizza Margherita, and as a description, you can add the ingredients.
• The essential part is the link to where customers can order one.

Make sure the pin is in the right board, then save it. Do the same for the rest of the items on your menu to display your entire restaurant menu on Pinterest and give people a link they can click on to order food.

2. Add these restaurant board ideas to your profile

After you’ve created a Pinterest menu board, it’s time to focus on other boards that will help you grow your restaurant Pinterest profile. The Pinterest food & drink category is brimming with good ideas. Here are some examples of Pinterest boards you can create that restaurant customers will appreciate and be interested in:

• Recipes
• Cooking Tips
• Drinks
• Cocktail Recipes
• Wine Pairings
• Restaurant Decor
• Restaurant Design
• Special of the Day
• Table Setting
• Holiday Centerpieces

Remember that you can also further customize a board by adding a cover photo and a brief description.

3. Start pinning

After creating a variety of boards, you have to populate them with pins. To have an active presence on Pinterest, be consistent with your pins. Don’t add hundreds in a day, and then forget about your profile for a week. Adding some daily is the best way to go.

Now, to add a pin, as we’ve seen, you can upload it from your computer, from a website using the URL, or from websites using the “Pin It” button. To add this button to your browser, go here. Once you’ve added it, it will show up as an extension in your browser.

Then, every time you visit a website, and you find a photo you’d like to save to your Pinterest board, just hover over it, and you will see a “Save” button. Click on it and choose the board where you want to save it.

4. Start repinning

Pining is not the only way to save pins to your Pinterest boards. You can also repin images from other boards. You are guaranteed to get some really cool Pinterest restaurant ideas if you go through other food boards on Pinterest. And not just food. Pinterest restaurant design is a trending topic as well.

Use Pinterest’s search bar to search for keywords that are relevant to your restaurant. For example, if you own an Italian restaurant, you could search for “Italian food,” “Pasta,” “Pizza,” etc. Let’s say you’ve searched for Italian food, and you found a pin you’d like to add to your board. Hover over it, select the board you want to add it to and click “Save.”

5. Interact with people in the industry

While searching for pins relevant to your restaurant, you will also stumble upon other Pinterest profiles from people in the industry. They might be other restaurant owners or chefs, salespeople, food bloggers and influencers, event planners, digital marketers, and so on.

To grow your online presence on Pinterest, and attract people to your profile, interact with other similar profiles. Leave likes to pins that you’ve found interesting and even comment if you have something to say.

You can also get inspired by other restaurants’ Pinterest menu ideas, but you shouldn’t outright promote your competition, of course.

I also recommend following people that truly strike you, not only because you’ll be exposed to quality content all the time but also because they might follow you back. Ultimately, you might be able to forge a relationship with them.

For instance, you could follow food bloggers, recipe critics, or food influencers that you like. Then, suggest a partnership in which they promote your menu items to their Pinterest followers. Don’t underestimate the power of this social media platform to forge connections that last.

6. Use Pinterest SEO

Don’t let the notion of Pinterest SEO scare you. If you have any sort of experience with search engine optimization, optimizing your Pinterest profile shouldn’t be hard. You’re one step ahead of the game already because you’ve personalized your profile and claimed your website.

You can start slow by adding relevant keywords in the titles of the boards and pins you save. An organized and optimized board collection will take you one step closer to getting your Pinterest profile discovered on Google.

Read more:

• SEO for Restaurants Or How to Sell More Food Online (Best-selling Expert Tips for Newbies)
• The SEO Saga: 4 Tips That Can Boost Your Local SEO for Restaurants

7. Create a blog board

Do you have a restaurant blog? Then you should promote your articles on all social media profiles, including Pinterest. Create a board called either “[restaurant name] Blog,” “Restaurant Industry Tips,” or something similar that encompasses the essence of your blog.

Then, each time you post a new article, pin the featured image in that board, add a brief description (you can use the meta description), and link your article for people who want to read more.

Related: 20 Restaurant Blog Ideas That Will Bring More People to Your Website

8. Add user-generated content to your profile

Another neat way to get additional content for your restaurant Pinterest page is to repost content generated by your customers on other social media platforms. However, remember to always ask for their consent before you do so.

If people post photos from your restaurant on Instagram or tag you in pictures of them devouring your delicious food, pin them to a board called “Our Customers” or “People Love [restaurant name].” The same goes for Facebook or other social media sites.

9. Create holiday boards

Around the holidays, people tend to look for inspiration on Pinterest. Whether that’s inspiration on what to cook or how to decorate their Christmas table, you can lend a helping hand by offering some suggestions.

Remember to use relevant keywords when naming your holiday boards. A simple search in Pinterest’s search bar starting with the word “holiday” will suggest terms like “holiday desserts,” “holiday appetizers,” “holiday baking,” “holiday decor,” or “holiday cookies.” These are popular terms that people regularly search for, so you should target them in your board and pin names.

The search bar is a handy little tool that can give you plenty of keywords for your profile. Just search for words like “Christmas,” “Thanksgiving,” or “New Year’s,” and the bar will suggest viable options.

10. Create giveaways to increase engagement

If your Pinterest restaurant profile is new and you want to gain some traction, one of the best ways to do that is by hosting a giveaway or a unique contest. This will incentivize people to interact with your Pinterest profile.

Here’s an idea you can use: ask customers to take a photo of themselves enjoying your food and upload it to their Pinterest account with the hashtag #loverestaurantname. You can then repin them in a special board, which will give you even more content for your page. Then, select a winner at random and give them a full meal at your restaurant for free.

11. Promote your neighborhood

Businesses supporting other businesses make customers tick. As a restaurant owner, you can promote other companies in your area while also sharing exciting things to do in your neighborhood with your customers.

Create a board titled “Things to Do in [City/Area]” and add pins linking to local businesses and attractions. Search for “things to do in” using the Pinterest search bar. You will see the platform suggests “things to do in Denver Colorado,” “things to do in Savannah Georgia,” and so on.

12. Add collaborators to your Pinterest boards

As a restaurant owner or manager, you might not have time to do Pinterest daily. Or, you might want this to be a collaborative experience where everyone from the chef to the photographer chips in. Regardless, you’ll be happy to know you can add collaborators to your boards so they can add their own pins, without giving them full access to your Pinterest business profile.

To do that, click on the “Edit board” button and scroll down until you see the collaborators field. Click on the + icon to add one.

Keep in mind that they need to have a Pinterest account already so you can search them by name. You can also edit permissions to decide on the amount of control you want to give them, such as adding pins, commenting, or adding other people to the board.

13. Use Pinterest Analytics

Analytics is a surefire way to figure out what your audience responds to and what you could improve to get even more engagement. To have access to Pinterest Analytics, you need to claim your website first, so make sure you don’t skip that step.

Naturally, you need to have some activity on the platform before seeing any data in your analytics. However, once the data starts pouring, you will be able to see which photos got the most repins, which pins got the most engagement, and which have made people click on the link and visit your restaurant website. Take those winning pin ideas and try to replicate their success in the future.

14. Use rich pins

Rich pins are pins that contain extra information taken automatically from your website. They are a good way of making your pins more special. The pins will have a bolded title and some additional information above and below the image. They were created to bring added value to posts by businesses that want to advertise their products.

There are three types of rich pins: product pins, recipe pins, and article pins. If your restaurant also sells pre-packaged food, you can use the product rich pins to automatically include the pricing and a purchase link. When anything changes on the source website, the information gets updated automatically no matter where the pin appears on Pinterest.

If you want to share some of your recipes with your customers, use the recipe rich pins to list ingredients, serving sizes, and cooking time. Suppose you also post your blog articles on Pinterest. In that case, the article rich pins will help you display the headline, a description, and the author.

These rich pins don’t appear on everybody’s profile. First, you need to claim your website. Then, you have to request them. Follow these steps to apply for rich pins.

15. Try promoted pins

If you want some extra oomph on a pin, especially pins that redirect to your website, like your Pinterest restaurant menu pins, you can try to promote them. According to the platform, you will get a $4.30 gross return for every dollar you spend on advertising. With a return on investment such as this one, it couldn’t hurt to promote some pins.

An added benefit of Pinterest promoted pins is that even after the promotion ends, the pin will still be in all the boards it got added into when you boosted it. So, if people pin your promoted pins to their boards, they will stay there indefinitely.

Here’s how to promote a pin:

• Select the pin in question and click on the “Promote” button.

• Fill in a destination URL, the daily budget, and the duration.
• You can leave the targeting automatic or expand it and customize it according to interests, gender, and age.
• Pinterest will show you the potential monthly audience size.
• If everything is in order, after setting up billing, you can click on “promote” to create your first promoted pin.

When Is the Best Time to Post on Pinterest?

Here are the best times to pin on Pinterest:

• 8–11 PM (with a peak at 9 PM).
• 2–4 AM
• 2–4 PM
• 1–3 PM.

As for the best days to post on Pinterest, Fridays and Saturdays take the cake.

Luckily, even if you can’t be active on the platform at those specific times, you can schedule up to 30 posts two weeks in advance. All you need to do is choose “Publish at a later date” when editing the pin.

Final Thoughts

Conquer the great unknown that is Pinterest for restaurants, and you will find a treasure trove of easy things you can do to promote your restaurant and get more people to order from you online.

Knowing how to use Pinterest to promote your business is necessary in this day and age, especially since restaurants already overcrowd other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Do you have any other cool Pinterest ideas that worked for your restaurant? I’d love to hear about them!