Meta Ads for Restaurants: A 2026 Playbook for Full-Funnel Results

TL;DR: Meta ads for restaurants work best when built around funnel stages — Reels for awareness, carousels for menu consideration, lead ads for reservation capture. A 3-8 km geo radius, a €300-€800/mo budget, and UGC-style food video are the three levers that matter most for a single-location restaurant in 2026.

Most restaurant owners who try Meta ads once and give up made the same mistake: they ran one "boost post" campaign with no targeting, no clear objective, and no way to measure whether it drove a single reservation. That's not a Meta ads failure — it's a setup failure.

Meta ads for restaurants do work. A 2023 Meta SMB study found that restaurants and food & beverage businesses are among the top verticals for local awareness campaigns on the platform. The mechanics are straightforward once you understand them. This playbook covers the full funnel — awareness to reservation — with specific format, budget, and targeting guidance for local operators.

Why Restaurants Are a Good Fit for Meta

Meta ads work particularly well for restaurants for three structural reasons.

Visual product. Food photographs and films exceptionally well. A 15-second Reels clip of a burger being assembled or a pasta dish plated live has intrinsic watch-completion pull that most B2B or SaaS products cannot achieve. You are not fighting for attention against competitors who also have beautiful products — most categories on Meta are uglier than yours.

Local delivery radius. Restaurants have a defined geographic conversion zone. You can place a 5 km pin on your address and show ads only to people who can reasonably visit. That precision makes your budget efficient in a way it isn't for national e-commerce brands — every impression has potential walk-in or delivery value.

Emotional purchase. Dining decisions are emotional and often spontaneous. Someone scrolls past a Reels ad showing your new brunch menu at 11am on a Saturday and thinks "that looks good" — and they're 4 km away. The gap between ad impression and purchase decision can be under 45 minutes. That speed of conversion is unusual in paid social and it's a genuine advantage for local restaurant ads.

The Restaurant Ad Funnel in Three Stages

Before configuring any campaign, map what you're trying to accomplish at each stage. Meta's campaign objectives mirror a purchase funnel, and mismatching objective to intent is the most common budget waste in local restaurant advertising.

Stage 1 — Awareness: You want new people within your delivery radius to know you exist and feel something positive about your brand. Objective: Reach or Video Views. The success metric is impressions and video view rate, not clicks or reservations.

Stage 2 — Consideration: You want people who've seen you once to engage more deeply — visit your website, view your menu, or follow your Instagram page. Objective: Traffic or Engagement. The success metric is link clicks or page follows.

Stage 3 — Conversion: You want people who know you to take action — make a reservation, place an order, or fill out a catering inquiry form. Objective: Leads or Conversions. The success metric is cost per conversion — specifically, cost per reservation or cost per order.

For most independent restaurants, I'd suggest running Stage 1 and Stage 3 simultaneously. Skip Stage 2 unless you have an unusually complex menu or event calendar that requires a research phase before someone commits. The two-campaign structure keeps the account simple and gives Meta's algorithm clear optimization signals. See the Meta bid strategy guide for how to configure bid caps per stage.

Geo Targeting: Setting Up the Local Radius

This is where most DIY restaurant ad setups lose money. Default Meta ad targeting is far too broad for a local food operator. Here is the exact setup.

In Meta Ads Manager, under Audience, go to Locations. Choose the option "People living in or recently in this location" — not "People traveling in this location" (too narrow) and not "Everyone in this location" (too broad, includes tourists who may not return).

Enter your restaurant address. Set a radius. The right radius depends on urban density:

• Dense urban (city center, walkable neighborhood): 3-4 km. You're competing with dozens of alternatives; people generally stay within 15-20 minutes of home for casual dining.
• Suburban or mid-density: 5-8 km. Driving intent is higher; people will cross a longer distance for a destination restaurant.
• Destination or drive-to restaurant (countryside, unique cuisine): 10-15 km or city-level targeting.

For delivery operations, set a second ad set with a 10-15 km radius targeting meal-delivery-relevant interests (DoorDash, UberEats, food delivery).

You can also use AdLibrary's geo filters to research what ad formats competitors in your specific city are running — useful for benchmarking creative strategy before you spend your own budget. Filter by restaurant category and your city; sort by longest-running ads to find what's working.

Audience Strategy: Who You're Targeting Beyond Location

Geo radius is the outer boundary. Inside that boundary, layer your audience to reach people most likely to convert.

Cold audience (Awareness campaigns): Broad within the radius. Age 24-55 (the majority of restaurant-decision-making income bracket). Interest categories: Dining out, Restaurants, Food & drink, [your cuisine type], Friday night, Weekend activities. Do not narrow too hard — let Meta's algorithm find the best-converting sub-segments within your radius. Broad targeting combined with good creative works well here.

Warm audience (Retargeting campaigns): Create a Custom Audience from website visitors (30-day window), Instagram profile visitors (60-day window), or video viewers (75% watch rate from your Awareness campaign). This is your highest-intent pool. The retargeting spend-to-conversion ratio on warm audiences is typically 2-4x better than cold traffic for local restaurants.

Lookalike expansion: Once you have 100+ customers in a Lookalike Audience seed (email list, pixel events, or purchasers), create a 1-2% Lookalike within your radius. This finds people who share behavioral characteristics with your existing customers. At smaller radii, the overlap between the lookalike and the geo can be thin — especially in smaller cities — so test this only after the cold and warm audiences are performing.

Also see the audience segmentation guide for a deeper breakdown of how to structure these layers without cannibalizing delivery across ad sets.

Ad Formats by Funnel Stage

Top of Funnel: Reels (Vertical Video)

Reels is the highest-reach format on Meta in 2026. It appears in Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, and in-feed video placements simultaneously. For restaurants, it's the format with the best food-visual alignment.

What works in restaurant Reels:

• 10-20 seconds. Hard cut to the food in the first 2 seconds — no brand intro, no logo animation.
• Preparation or plating process content (the "food build" format) holds watch time better than finished product shots.
• Authentic over polished. Smartphone-shot video with good lighting consistently outperforms produced studio content for local restaurant awareness. The UGC-style aesthetic signals realness and drives more saves and shares.
• Captions on-screen (80% of Reels play muted on first view).
• Sound design matters when it's on — the sizzle, the clink, the pour. Don't use stock music; use ambient kitchen audio.

The UGC ads guide covers the production approach in detail. The short version: your cook filming themselves plating a dish on a €400 smartphone is your best creative asset, not a €2,000 production shoot.

Mid-Funnel: Carousel for Menu Showcases

Carousel ads show 2-10 cards, each with its own image, headline, and link. For restaurants, the format is ideal for "showcase menus" — presenting multiple dishes or a prix-fixe offering in a swipeable format.

Effective restaurant carousel structure:

• Card 1: Hero dish (best photograph, most craveable)
• Cards 2-4: Supporting dishes, seasonal specials, or pairing suggestions
• Card 5: Offer card ("Book a table for two, get a free dessert" + CTA)

Each card links to a relevant page — the menu, a reservation form, or the ordering platform. Keep headlines under 40 characters. Use the dish name as the headline ("Slow-braised short rib"), not a marketing phrase ("Our signature dish!"). Specificity converts better than enthusiasm. See carousel ad examples for format benchmarks across verticals.

Bottom of Funnel: Lead Ads for Reservation Capture

Lead ads are Meta's native form format — the user taps the ad, a pre-filled form opens within the app (name, email, phone number auto-populated from their Facebook profile), and they submit without leaving Meta.

For restaurants, this removes the single biggest conversion-friction point: the redirect to a third-party reservation system (OpenTable, Resy, or a custom booking page). Reducing that step typically increases reservation form completion rates by 30-50% versus a click-to-website campaign.

Lead ad form fields to include:

• Preferred date/time (date picker, optional field)
• Party size (dropdown: 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7+)
• Special occasion (optional: birthday, anniversary, business dinner)
• Phone number (for confirmation call-back)

Follow-up is on you: leads from Meta lead ads hit your CRM or a connected email/SMS tool (Zapier → your booking system). Set up an auto-confirmation within 15 minutes of submission — lead intent cools fast.

Budget Allocation: What to Spend and How to Split It

Restaurant Meta ad budgets vary widely, but most independent operators are working in a specific range. Here is how to think about it.

Minimum viable budget: €300/month. Below this, the algorithm doesn't accumulate enough conversion data to exit the learning phase efficiently. You'll also hit frequency caps — showing the same ad to the same small pool more than 5-6 times per week, causing ad fatigue without building reach.

Standard single-location budget: €500-€800/month. This supports 2-3 simultaneous campaigns (one Awareness, one Conversion, one Retargeting) with enough daily budget per campaign to gather signal. Split roughly: 50% Awareness/Reach, 30% Conversion (lead ads), 20% Retargeting.

Multi-location or delivery expansion budget: €1,200-€3,000+/month. At this level, separate campaigns per location or delivery zone make sense, each with their own geo pin and creative set. Automate budget allocation using Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) if managing 4+ ad sets simultaneously.

Use the Facebook Ads Cost Calculator to estimate reach and frequency for your specific city and budget. Urban CPM rates vary significantly — Paris, London, and New York run 2-4x the CPM of secondary cities. The Ad Budget Planner can model how many impressions and estimated new-customer exposures a given monthly spend generates in your market.

Do not use Meta's "Boost Post" button. It defaults to engagement objective (likes and comments) not conversion, and it typically targets too broadly. Every campaign should be built in Ads Manager with explicit objectives, placements, and budget controls.

Creative Strategy: The Restaurant Ad Creative Stack

A working restaurant Meta ad creative stack has four asset types, each serving a specific function. You don't need all four on day one, but you need at least two to test properly.

Type 1: The "Crave" Video A 10-20 second Reels clip showing your best dish being made or plated. No voiceover. Ambient sound or subtle music. Hook in frame 1 (the most visually appealing moment). This is your awareness driver. Refresh every 4-6 weeks or when frequency hits 3+ in a 7-day window.

Type 2: The Social Proof Static A single image combining a dish photo with a real customer review quote overlaid as text ("Best brunch in the neighbourhood — we'll be back every Sunday"). This is your mid-funnel trust signal. Source reviews from Google Business Profile or TripAdvisor — real specificity is more persuasive than anything you could write yourself.

Type 3: The Offer Carousel A 3-5 card carousel built around a specific offer: lunch prix-fixe, weekend tasting menu, group booking discount. Include a time constraint when genuine ("Available through June 30") — urgency in restaurant ads is well-supported as a click driver when the offer is real.

Type 4: The Event/Occasion Ad Single image or short video built around an upcoming event or cultural moment: Valentine's Day menu, Ramadan Iftar set meal, New Year's Eve reservation announcement. These have higher inherent relevance and creative engagement than evergreen ads in the weeks around their occasion. Build these 3-4 weeks ahead of the date.

For competitive benchmarking before building your own creative, run a 20-minute research session in AdLibrary's unified ad search. Filter by food & beverage category, your city (using geo filters), and your relevant platform (Instagram for Reels, Facebook for carousel). Sort by ad duration — ads that have been running for 30+ days are almost always profitable. Save the strongest examples to a saved ads collection for your creative brief. This session replaces hours of intuition-based guessing with market-proven format evidence.

Installing the Meta Pixel and Measuring What Matters

Without the Meta Pixel, you're flying blind. The pixel is a small JavaScript snippet placed on your website that reports conversion events back to Meta — so the algorithm can optimize delivery toward people most likely to take that action.

Installation: In Meta Business Manager → Events Manager → Pixels → Add New. Install via the base code snippet in your website's <head>, or through your website platform's native Meta integration (Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, Shopify all have one-click Meta Pixel setup). For restaurant websites that don't have e-commerce, set a Lead event on form submission (reservation, inquiry, or order form completion).

If your website doesn't support pixel events (older restaurant sites, static pages), use the Conversions API via your CRM or booking platform. Many reservation systems (OpenTable, Resy, SevenRooms) have direct Meta Conversions API integrations — enabling server-side event matching that is more reliable than browser-based pixel in a post-iOS 14 environment.

Key metrics to track per campaign type:

Benchmark: for a casual dining or neighbourhood restaurant, a cost per lead (reservation inquiry) of €3-€6 is a healthy baseline in most European cities. In London or Paris, expect €6-€10 due to higher CPM. If your CPL exceeds 2x your average cover (meal value), the funnel economics don't work at current spend — fix the creative or the offer before scaling.

UGC and Influencer Content: What Actually Scales

User-generated content in restaurant advertising is not a trend — it is a structural format advantage. Meta's own research shows UGC-style creatives (shot on a phone, unproduced, authentic-looking) consistently outperform produced creative on cost-per-result for local food businesses.

For restaurants, the practical UGC stack is:

Staff-generated content (SGC): Your cook films a 15-second dish prep video. Your manager shoots a 20-second walkaround of the restaurant before service. These film in under 5 minutes per asset, post to your Instagram Story, and then get repurposed as Reels ad creative. No equipment beyond a smartphone required. Cost: €0.

Customer-generated content: Offer a 10% next-visit discount in exchange for a Google review + photo submission via a post-meal SMS link. Collect 20-30 photos per month. Use the best ones (with written consent from the submitter) in Social Proof static ads. Cost: marginal discount value.

Micro-influencer partnerships: A local food blogger with 8,000-40,000 followers in your city costs €150-€500 for a visit + content post. Request usage rights in the brief — this content is worth more as paid ad creative than as an organic post. At €200 per asset with proven local engagement, the CPA on influencer-originated creative typically beats produced content by 30-50%.

For a full production workflow, see UGC ads guide and best AI UGC ad generators if you want to supplement authentic content with AI-assisted variants.

Seasonal and Event-Based Campaign Cadence

Restaurant ad spending shouldn't be flat year-round. A seasonal cadence concentrates budget around high-intent moments while reducing waste in low-traffic periods.

High-ROI restaurant ad windows (northern hemisphere calendar):

• Valentine's Day (Jan 28 – Feb 14): Couples dining intent peaks. Run 3 weeks ahead. Use romantic plating visuals, prix-fixe offer language.
• Mother's Day (late April – May 12): One of the highest group-dining search spikes of the year.
• Summer outdoor dining (May – August): Terrace or garden visuals. Lunch targeting on weekend mornings.
• Back-to-school / corporate events (September): Business dining and team events. Shift to LinkedIn-adjacent copy for corporate lunch targeting.
• Holiday season (Nov 15 – Dec 31): Christmas parties, New Year's Eve, gift vouchers. Highest CPM period — start campaigns early, before CPM spikes in early December.

Schedule campaigns to launch 2-3 weeks before each window. This gives the algorithm time to exit the learning phase before peak-intent days. If you start a Valentine's Day campaign on February 12, the learning phase hasn't finished and you've wasted the highest-intent days.

For researching how competing restaurants approach seasonal campaigns — which creative formats they run, how early they start, what offers they lead with — AdLibrary's ad timeline analysis shows the exact dates ads started and stopped running for any searchable brand. That's direct evidence of seasonal strategy, not inference. Combine it with media type filters to filter by video vs. static to understand which formats competitors double down on in high-value windows.

Competitor Research: What Other Restaurants Are Running

Before launching any Meta ad, spend 30 minutes on competitive intelligence. This is not optional — it saves you from testing formats your market has already eliminated and finding offers that work from first principles.

The Meta Ad Library (free) lets you search any restaurant brand by name and see all their active ads. For broad category research — "what are restaurants in Berlin running right now" — it doesn't have category-level filtering, which limits its usefulness for local market scans.

For systematic competitive research, AdLibrary's geo filters and platform filters let you filter the ad library by geography (city or region), platform (Instagram only, Facebook only, or both), and media type. You can scan dozens of competitor restaurant ads in one session, sorted by run duration. Export the strongest ones to your creative brief using saved ads.

What to look for in competitor restaurant ads:

1. Which format runs the longest? Duration is a proxy for profitability. A video ad that's been running for 6 weeks is almost certainly generating reservations or orders.
2. What hook structure do they use? Does the first frame show the food, the venue, a customer reaction, or an offer price?
3. What CTA do they use? "Book a table," "Order now," "See the menu" — each signals a different conversion path. The CTA used most consistently in long-running ads in your category is the proven one.
4. How often do they refresh creative? If a competitor refreshes every 3 weeks, they're experiencing ad fatigue fast. If they run one ad for 8 weeks, their creative is durable.

For a structured approach to this research, see how to monitor competitor ads and the competitor ad research use case.

Meta's free Ad Library is fine when you know the specific restaurant you want to research. When you want to understand what the top-performing restaurants in your area are doing without already knowing their brand names, you need category + geo filtering. That's where AdLibrary's Pro plan (€179/mo) becomes the right tool — 300 credits per month covers regular research sessions for a full team. For a single restaurant owner running monthly campaign sprints, the Starter plan at €29/mo gives 50 credits — enough for focused pre-campaign research without ongoing subscription pressure.

Common Mistakes That Drain Restaurant Ad Budgets

These five errors account for the majority of wasted spend in restaurant Meta ad accounts.

Mistake 1: Running "Boost Post" instead of Ads Manager campaigns. Boosted posts default to engagement objective (likes, comments, shares). Engagement doesn't pay a bill. Every restaurant campaign should be built in Ads Manager with explicit objectives. The Boost button is a shortcut to the wrong goal.

Mistake 2: Too-wide geo targeting. Defaulting to "your city" (e.g., all of London, all of Berlin) burns budget on people who will never visit your neighbourhood restaurant. Use the radius pin. Every 2 km added to your radius reduces audience relevance and increases your effective CPM for your actual conversion zone.

Mistake 3: Running only awareness without conversion campaigns. Awareness alone builds recognition but not reservations. You need at least one campaign with a direct-response objective (Leads or Conversions) running in parallel with your awareness effort. The warm audience from your awareness campaign feeds the retargeting pool for your conversion campaign — they work together.

Mistake 4: Using the same creative for 3+ months. Meta's frequency cap decay is real. After a warm audience member sees your ad 4-6 times in a 30-day window, click-through rate drops sharply. Refresh the creative — not the entire campaign structure, just the ad-level asset — every 4-6 weeks.

Mistake 5: Not installing the Meta Pixel. Without the pixel, Meta's algorithm optimizes for proxy signals (clicks, video views) rather than your actual business goal (reservations, orders). The learning phase exit takes longer. CPA is higher. The Pixel is a 20-minute setup task that pays for itself in algorithm efficiency within the first campaign cycle.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much should a restaurant spend on Meta ads per month?

A reasonable starting budget for a single-location restaurant is €300-€800 per month. This covers enough impressions within a local radius to build awareness and generate reservation or walk-in intent. Below €300/mo the algorithm has insufficient data to optimize delivery efficiently. Above €800/mo, most independent restaurants see diminishing returns without scaling to multi-location or delivery campaigns. Use the Facebook Ads Cost Calculator to model reach estimates for your city.

What is the best Meta ad format for restaurants?

Short-form vertical video (Reels) is the strongest top-of-funnel format for restaurants because food content performs exceptionally well visually. Carousel ads work best for mid-funnel menu showcases. For direct reservation capture, lead ads with a pre-filled form reduce friction versus sending traffic to a third-party booking page.

How do I target local customers on Meta ads for my restaurant?

Use Meta's location targeting set to "People living in or recently in this location" with a 3-8 km radius around your restaurant. Layer in demographic targeting (age 24-55) and food/dining interest categories. For delivery operations, expand to 8-15 km and add delivery-platform interests.

Should restaurants use Facebook or Instagram for ads?

Both, via Meta Ads Manager's Advantage+ placements, which automatically optimizes delivery across Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed, Reels, and Stories. Instagram tends to outperform for food visuals, while Facebook Feed can be effective for local awareness and events. Advantage+ placements let Meta's algorithm find the best-performing surface for your specific creative.

How do I know what Meta ad creatives are working for competing restaurants?

Meta's free Ad Library at facebook.com/ads/library lets you search any active advertiser by name. For broader category research — scanning multiple competitors in your city without knowing their names — AdLibrary's geo filters and media type filters let you filter by city, format, and platform, sorted by ad duration as a performance proxy.

Start With the Fundamentals

Meta ads for restaurants don't require a large budget or a specialist agency. They require three things: a clear objective per campaign, a geo-targeted audience that matches your actual customer radius, and creative that leads with food.

The operators who compound results month over month are the ones who also frontload competitive research — spending 30 minutes before each campaign sprint understanding what's already working in their category and geography. That research eliminates the trial-and-error phase and lets you allocate budget to formats with market proof.

For a single-location restaurant starting out, the Starter plan at €29/mo gives you the competitive intelligence layer without a major subscription commitment. For a restaurant group, franchise operator, or agency managing multiple food clients, the Pro plan at €179/mo — 300 credits, full geo and format filtering, saved ad collections — is sized for consistent monthly research cadence.

For a practical next step on measuring your ad results against industry baselines, see the campaign benchmarking use case and Facebook ads targeting best practices.

Measuring Ad Performance: The Restaurant KPI Stack

Once your campaigns are live, you need a measurement rhythm. Weekly check-ins; monthly optimization decisions. Here's what to look at and when.

Weekly (operational check):

• Frequency: if any ad set exceeds 6 impressions per person in 7 days, pause the creative and swap in a new asset.
• CPM trend: if CPM is rising week over week without a corresponding increase in conversions, you're hitting audience saturation. Expand your radius slightly or add a new interest layer.
• Lead form completion rate: should be above 50%. Below that, simplify the form or change the offer framing.

Monthly (strategic review):

• Cost per lead (CPL) vs. your average cover value. A €5 CPL on a €35 average cover is excellent. A €5 CPL on a €12 lunch special is marginal.
• Best-performing creative by objective. Which asset generated the most leads at lowest CPL? That format gets the next sprint's budget.
• Audience overlap: if your warm retargeting audience is growing relative to your cold audience, your awareness campaigns are working. If it's flat, you need more top-of-funnel reach.
• Competitor creative refresh: run a 20-minute AdLibrary scan to check whether competitors have launched new creative. If they're refreshing, there's a reason — often a new offer or seasonal campaign that's converting.

For a full paid social measurement framework that goes deeper than these basics, the media buyer workflow covers the full operational stack used by professional media buyers running restaurant and food & beverage accounts at scale.

Multi-Location and Franchise Considerations

If you operate more than one restaurant location, the single-account approach breaks down quickly. Each location has its own delivery radius, its own peak hours, and potentially its own creative style. Running them all under one ad account with one geo-targeting setup wastes budget and muddies performance data.

The right structure for 3+ locations:

Separate ad sets per location, each with its own geo pin. If you're running a Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) campaign, Meta will allocate more budget to the ad set with the best current performance — which may mean one location cannibalizes budget from others. For locations with different average covers or different competitive environments, use manual budget per ad set instead.

Shared creative assets, localized copy. The food photography and video assets can be the same across locations. The headline, address reference, and CTA should be localized: "[Location name] — Reserve your table" performs better than a generic brand message.

Consolidated reporting in a single Business Manager account. Run all locations under one Meta Business Manager with separate ad accounts per location. This lets you compare cross-location CPL and performance benchmarks without mixing data.

For agencies managing multiple restaurant clients, AdLibrary's Business plan (€329/mo) adds API access — letting you pull competitor intelligence programmatically across multiple markets simultaneously, rather than running manual research sessions per client. Meta's own API is free but requires app review and developer setup; AdLibrary's API returns richer creative metadata across 8 platforms without that friction.

The 90-Day Restaurant Meta Ads Roadmap

For a restaurant launching Meta ads for the first time, here is a practical 90-day build sequence.

Days 1-14 (Foundation):

• Install Meta Pixel on your website
• Set up Meta Business Manager and Ads Manager
• Create your first Awareness campaign: Reels video, 5 km radius, €10/day budget
• Run a 30-minute competitive research session in AdLibrary — save 5-10 reference ads
• Build your first creative asset: a 15-second food video shot on your phone

Days 15-45 (Learning Phase):

• Your Awareness campaign is in its learning phase (Meta needs 50 optimization events to exit). Don't change targeting or budget during this period.
• Build your Conversion campaign (Lead ads, reservation form) — launch it in week 3, €8/day
• Monitor frequency, CPM, and video view rate weekly
• Collect first 20-30 customer photos via post-meal SMS request

Days 46-90 (Optimization):

• Review which creative performed best in the Awareness campaign. Double budget on the winner; pause the underperformers.
• Your Conversion campaign should have 50+ leads by day 60. Calculate your CPL and compare to your average cover value.
• Build your first Social Proof static ad using a customer photo + review quote
• Launch a Retargeting campaign targeting your 30-day video viewers (the warm audience built from your Awareness campaign)
• Run a second competitor research session — have any new ads appeared that are outperforming what you saw in Week 1?

By day 90, you should have a three-campaign structure (Awareness, Conversion, Retargeting), a baseline CPL, and at least one validated creative format. That's the minimum viable Meta ads setup for a restaurant. Everything from here is iteration.

For the full targeting detail on setting up your first campaign correctly, see Facebook ads targeting best practices. For managing the operational rhythm as you scale, Facebook ads for small business covers the account management patterns that apply directly to a restaurant operator's workload.