How much should a restaurant spend on marketing is a question about one line: the money you set aside to be found and to be remembered. It is not the whole budget. Rent, food, labor, and the card machine still have their own lines. This page stays on the marketing line, then puts ordering fees beside it so a marketplace cut does not get mistaken for an ad.
The full monthly plan, jars and all, is how to budget a restaurant. The path from a first search to a second order is the restaurant sales funnel. What to do online without an agency retainer is how to market a restaurant online. Stay here for the share of sales, and for the ordering bill that should not hide inside it.
Start with a share of sales, then replace it
A common rule of thumb for an established independent is about 3 to 6% of sales for marketing. A shop in its first year, or one pushing a new neighborhood for a season, often uses a wider rule of thumb, closer to 5 to 10% of sales. Those bands are not a law, and they are not a study of your block. If a precise average arrives without a page you can open, treat it as a rumor.
Your own last twelve months beat either band. Add what you spent to be found: the boosted post, the flyer, the photographer, the sponsorship, the email tool, the SEO help. Divide by sales for that year. A holiday month is a bad stand-in for the year.
On $40,000 of sales, 3% is $1,200 and 6% is $2,400. That is arithmetic on your month, not an industry finding. If the month was a holiday, do not lock the year to it.
What belongs on the marketing line
Put a cost on the marketing line when its job is to bring a guest in, or to bring a known guest back, and it is not the fee for taking the order. The test is simple. If you stopped paying it, would the order still ring, and would fewer people know you exist? The second half is marketing. The first half is the door.
Keep the list short enough to say out loud on a Tuesday. A long chart that nobody opens is not a budget. One owner, one sheet, a few lines you can point at.
- Ads you pay for, including a boosted post or a search ad, with the amount from the receipt.
- Print that leaves the building: a box topper, a flyer, a sponsor sign.
- Photos of your food, when you pay someone or block a shift to shoot.
- A local partnership you pay for, not a favor you trade.
- Email or SMS tools you pay outside the ordering plan.
- Help you hire for the listing, the site, or the keywords, with the invoice.
Leave these off the marketing line
Food, labor, rent, utilities, insurance, and repairs are not marketing. A discount that lowers the price of a plate is a sales choice. Do not bury it in the ad percentage.
Card processing is not marketing. A marketplace fee is not marketing. Both can be larger than the ads, so they get a neighbor line. Rent, food, and labor stay on how to budget a restaurant.
Put ordering fees beside the ads
Marketplaces such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub often charge 15 to 30% of the sale. Your contract beats that range. If the rate in the contract is 20% and $10,000 went through that door, the fee is $2,000. That $2,000 is the cost of the door. It is not part of the 3 to 6%. Mixing them makes a quiet ad month look extravagant, and it hides a channel that may be the real leak.
A direct ordering plan is the other door. It is also not an ad. Write the monthly amount on one line and any percentage on the next, using the sales that actually ran through your site. Then you can see three numbers: ads, marketplace, and your own site. The marketing question is the first number. The channel question is the other two.
What a zero monthly price still charges, in per-order fees, card rates, and menu markups, is free online ordering system. Read that before you treat 'free' as a marketing win. A fee the guest pays through a higher menu price is still a fee.
MicroSky Food pricing on the ordering line
MicroSky Food is not a free ordering system, and it is not a claim that every plan skips a percentage. On pricing, Standard is $249 per month plus 5% commission on net sales, or $499 per month with no commission. Only that $499 per month Standard option has no commission. Commission on the $249 option applies to net online order sales through the storefront, after refunds and voids. Growth is $499 per month plus 7% commission on net sales. Growth Plus is $999 per month plus 10% commission on net sales. Growth and Growth Plus require 3 months on Standard. A 30-day free trial does not replace those 3 months.
Hardware is $500 once if you need a mini PC print server and a receipt printer. There is no long-term contract. On a $40 storefront order, 5% is $2. A marketplace rate at the top of a 15 to 30% band is $12. The monthly plan sits on top of either figure. Write both before you pick.
Apple Pay at online checkout is on Growth and Growth Plus, through Authorize.net, and not on Standard. Bring Stripe, Authorize.net, or Electronic Payments. That card rate is the processor's line, separate from the plan percentage.
What the plan buys, and what it does not
The monthly plan is the ordering door. Do not drop the whole invoice into the 3 to 6% and call it ads. Do not pretend the ads are covered because you pay for ordering. If a plan includes marketing work you would otherwise hire, note that piece in the margin and keep the rest on the ordering line.
Standard includes the branded storefront, accounts, loyalty points you set, a Google Business Profile order link, and the technical SEO already on the site. It does not include a monthly keyword package, email, or SMS. The order link is a door, not a campaign.
Growth, at $499 per month plus 7% of net sales after 3 months on Standard, adds a website redesign, monthly organic SEO for 5 keywords, a branded iOS app, and push to people who installed that app. That push is not email or SMS. Growth Plus, at $999 per month plus 10% after the same 3 months, adds email, SMS, segmentation, campaign analytics, and monthly SEO for 10 keywords. Those sends, in restaurant SMS and email marketing, go to guests who already ordered. They do not replace an ad aimed at people who have never heard of you.
Set next month's number in four steps
Write last month's sales and the real marketing invoices. If you are new, mark the guesses. Turn 3 to 6%, or 5 to 10%, into dollars. If those dollars cannot buy one thing the kitchen can support, lower the promise.
Name the jobs. One photo set. One neighborhood sponsorship. One message to people who already order, and only on a plan that can send it. Then write the ordering lines beside it: the marketplace statement, and the MicroSky Food plan you intend to run. Pricing is the published math. How it works is the trial, the wizard, and the first ticket.
After the month, replace the guess with the receipt. If ads were small and the marketplace line was huge, talk about which door regulars use. If the ads were spent and the storefront did not move, read orders in restaurant admin before you buy the same thing again.
A Tuesday check, then the phone
Once a week, on a quiet morning, look at three lines only: marketing dollars spent, marketplace fees, and your own site's plan plus percentage. If you cannot point at them, the sheet is still a wish. Restaurants already on the platform are on clients. A storefront you can click before you commit a month is the live demo. Questions go through contact.
The marketing line is allowed to be modest. A clear $1,200 that matches a photo and a link will beat a vague 8% that nobody can explain. Keep ordering fees beside it. Keep rent and labor on the other page. Then start a 30-day free trial if the ordering line is still a blank. Start 30 Day Free Trial. Call (888) 960-1359.