Discovery is local, mobile and immediate
Someone deciding where to eat searches nearby, looks at the map, and chooses from what appears — based on photos, rating, distance and whether the place appears to be open.
That decision happens almost entirely inside Google’s local results, which makes your Business Profile the highest-value asset you have. It is also free, which matters in a trade where margins do not support much else.
Hours that are correct, including holidays. Photos that are recent and show the food well. A menu that is current. Reviews responded to. None of this is sophisticated; it is simply done inconsistently by almost everyone, which is exactly why doing it properly works.
Put the menu in text
A surprising number of restaurant sites publish the menu as a PDF or a photograph of a printed card.
Search engines cannot read either. That means every dish-level search — someone looking for a specific thing nearby — passes you by, and the menu is also awkward to read on a phone, which is where nearly everyone is looking at it.
A text menu, properly marked up, is readable by search engines and by people. It is one of the highest-return changes available to a restaurant site.
Food trucks: location is the content
A truck has an address problem no fixed restaurant has. The profile should be configured as a service-area business rather than a fixed location, and today’s position needs to be current everywhere a customer might check.
The schedule itself is the most valuable content a truck publishes. Regulars want to plan, and a truck that reliably posts where it will be builds a following that turns up deliberately rather than by accident.
Protect the direct channel
Delivery platforms deliver volume and take a substantial cut, and they keep the customer relationship — the next order goes through them again.
Direct ordering is worth promoting properly: on the profile, on the site, on the packaging, and to the people already standing in front of you. A customer who orders direct the second time is worth considerably more than one who never does.
Only once that foundation is in place does paid social make sense, and then usually in small, tightly targeted bursts around specials, events and new locations rather than as a constant spend.