25 September 2026
Restaurants are among the businesses people ask AI assistants about most, and the questions keep getting more specific: “a seafood restaurant in Brighton for a group of ten”, “where to have dinner in York with vegetarian options”, “a cheap pub near the cathedral”. AI answers with two or three names. To be one of them, a restaurant needs information that answers these questions.
1. Your menu as text, not a PDF or a photo
It's the most common mistake. A menu in a PDF or a photo is hard for AI to read, and without a menu it doesn't know whether you serve fish, have vegetarian dishes or what a meal costs. Put the menu on a page of your website, as text, with prices. You can keep the PDF for anyone who wants to download it.
2. Say what makes you different, in your customers' words
Questions come with details: outdoor seating, a river view, parking, groups, children, dogs, gluten-free, open on Sunday evenings. If your restaurant has these, write them on your website and your Google profile. AI will only recommend a restaurant for “a group dinner” if it knows the restaurant takes groups.
3. Your restaurant's details for AI
schema.org markup of type Restaurant brings together, in a format machines read without mistakes, the cuisine, price range, reservations, menu, address and opening hours. It goes in the home page's code and isn't visible. An example:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Restaurant",
"name": "Example Kitchen",
"url": "https://www.examplekitchen.co.uk",
"telephone": "+44 161 000 0000",
"servesCuisine": ["British", "Small plates"],
"priceRange": "££",
"acceptsReservations": true,
"menu": "https://www.examplekitchen.co.uk/menu",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "10 Example Street",
"addressLocality": "Manchester",
"postalCode": "M1 1AA",
"addressCountry": "GB"
},
"openingHours": ["Tu-Sa 12:00-15:00", "Tu-Sa 18:00-23:00"]
}
</script>4. The right opening hours everywhere
Different opening hours on your website, Google and Facebook make AI hesitate, and a restaurant recommended for a Sunday when it's closed is a bad experience for the customer and for the AI. Update your hours everywhere at once, including holidays and bank holidays.
5. Recent, detailed reviews
AI reads reviews and articles about your restaurant, and what they say shapes how it describes you. Reviews that mention specific dishes (“the fish pie”, “the Sunday roast”) help the restaurant show up when someone asks for those dishes. Ask happy customers to leave a review, and reply to the ones you get.
6. Be where AI looks
Restaurant guides, local press, food blogs and “best of” lists are sources AI consults to answer. A mention in a local paper can be worth more than dozens of social media posts. Suggest your restaurant to the people who write about food in your city.
How to tell whether AI already recommends you
Ask ChatGPT for your kind of restaurant in your city and see if you show up. Since answers vary, a single question tells you little. The free Chatlisted scan asks several questions like your customers', to ChatGPT and Perplexity, and shows how many answers your restaurant appears in, who shows up instead and what your website needs to fix.
For the steps that work for any business, read the guide How to show up in ChatGPT answers.