Isn't Instagram still where new customers find restaurants?

For people who already follow food accounts, sometimes. For the family that just moved into the neighborhood and searched 'dinner near me,' no — they're in Google Maps, and your profile is the storefront they see first. Instagram reaches the people who already know you. Google reaches the ones who don't yet.

How often do I actually need to touch the Google profile?

Photos and a Google Post weekly. Reply to every review within 48 hours. Update hours before every holiday and every menu change. That's fifteen minutes a week, not a project. The profile rewards consistency, not effort spikes.

We have great reviews already. Isn't that enough?

Reviews you don't answer are worth a fraction of reviews you do. A profile where the owner replies — to the four-star and the one-star — reads as a place that's paying attention. Silence reads as a place that's coasting. The diner deciding between you and the spot next door notices which one is which.

Your neighbors decide where to eat on Google, not Instagram.

You posted to Instagram eleven times this month. Carousel of the new menu. A reel from the patio. A story poll about the next special.

The family that moved in three blocks over saw none of it.

They don't follow you. They've never heard of you. On Thursday at 5:40 they were standing in their kitchen with two hungry kids, and one of them picked up a phone and typed "dinner near me."

That search is where they met you. Not Instagram. Google.

The storefront you forgot you have

Every operator I talk to has an Instagram strategy. Almost none of them have a Google strategy, and Google is the one strangers actually use to decide.

Your Google Business Profile is a storefront. It's the window the neighborhood walks past before they ever reach your door. Photos, hours, reviews, the menu, the "popular times" graph, the little Q&A nobody answers. When someone searches your category near your address, that profile is the first thing they see — bigger and earlier than your website, and your Instagram doesn't even enter the frame.

And most of these storefronts are half-built.

The hours say you're open when you closed an hour ago. The newest photo is from 2023 and it's a blurry shot of a table someone else took. There are nine reviews with no reply from the owner. The menu link is broken. The profile is technically there, the way an empty shop with the lights off is technically there.

The diner with the hungry kids opened three profiles. Yours. The place next door. The place around the corner. They spent ninety seconds. They picked the one that looked open, looked good, and looked like someone was home.

Why this beats the feed for finding new people

Instagram is a retention channel dressed up as an acquisition channel.

It reaches people who already chose to follow you. It's good for that — reminding regulars you exist, showing the room you've already won that the patio's open. But the algorithm doesn't put your reel in front of the family that moved in last week. It puts it in front of the people who liked your last six posts.

Google does the opposite. It shows up at the exact moment a stranger has decided to spend money on dinner and is choosing where. That's not awareness. That's intent. Someone searching "tacos near me" at 6pm is not browsing — they're buying in the next twenty minutes, and the profile that looks alive wins the table.

You can spend two hours making a reel that reaches four hundred people who already know you, or fifteen minutes making your profile win the people who don't. One of those is marketing. The other is decoration.

The play

Treat the Google profile like the front window, because it is one.

Photos every week → not staged food-photographer shots. Real ones. The actual plate that went out tonight, the room at golden hour, the patio full on a Friday. Profiles with fresh photos get more clicks than ones frozen in the past, and the diner can tell the difference between "this is what we serve" and "this is what we served two years ago."

Reply to every review, good and bad, inside 48 hours → the reply isn't for the person who wrote it. It's for the next forty people reading it while they decide. An owner who answers reads as a place that's paying attention. The four-star with a warm reply does more for you than the five-star you ignored.

Get the boring fields right and keep them right → hours, holiday hours, the menu link, the phone number, the category. One wrong "open now" turns a hungry stranger into a one-star before they ever taste the food. Update hours before every long weekend without being reminded.

Use Google Posts like the bulletin you'd put in the window → tonight's special, this weekend's hours, the new patio. It takes a minute and it shows up right where the decision happens.

Answer your own Q&A → if a stranger asked "do you take walk-ins" and nobody answered, you let the next hundred strangers wonder. Seed the questions you get asked anyway and answer them.

Start with the window test

Tonight, search your own category near your address from a phone that isn't logged into your account. "Brunch near me." "Pizza near me." Whatever you sell.

Look at your profile the way a stranger would. Are the hours right? Is the newest photo from this season? Is there a single unanswered review sitting there? Now look at the two places that came up next to you and ask which window you'd walk toward.

That ninety-second test is the same one your next regular runs before they've heard your name. Win the window, and they walk in already deciding to like you.

The feed is for the room you've already got. Google is for the neighbor who hasn't met you yet.

Fill the window.

— Damon