How to Target Restaurant Owners on Facebook

Targeting restaurant owners on Facebook can feel like finding a needle in a haystack, but it’s far from impossible if you use the right approach. Forget generic interest targeting and broad campaigns, reaching these busy entrepreneurs requires a strategic mix of B2B tactics tailored for a B2C platform. This guide will walk you through the exact methods for locating, targeting, and converting restaurant owners using Facebook Ads.

Why Your Usual Ad Strategy Won't Work

Most advertising on Facebook is aimed at consumers. But when you’re selling a POS system, a food purveying service, or marketing automation software, you’re not talking to a casual customer - you're talking to a business owner. Restaurant owners are on Facebook just like everyone else, but they're scrolling through photos of their friends and family, not actively looking for B2B solutions. Your challenge is to intercept them in their off-hours with a message that speaks directly to their professional pain points.

This means your targeting must be precise and your messaging must resonate with the unique challenges of running a restaurant, from managing staff and inventory to attracting more customers. Let’s get into the specifics of how to build an audience that filters out the general public and zeroes in on decision-makers.

Facebook's Core Targeting Layers: Your Foundation

To get started, you need to master the different layers of targeting available in Facebook's Ads Manager. Combining these filters is where you'll find your audience. The goal isn't just to find people who *like* restaurants, but people who *run* them.

1. Job Title & Employer Targeting

This is the most direct way to start building your audience. In the Detailed Targeting section of your ad set, you can input specific job titles. While not every owner lists their exact title publicly, many do.

Start with common variations:

• Owner
• Founder
• Restaurant Owner
• Executive Chef
• Restaurant Manager
• General Manager

However, running a campaign solely based on job titles will produce a very broad audience. Someone might be the "Owner" of a consulting firm or a construction company. You need to narrow this down by adding another layer. Combine the job title with relevant interests. For example:

Rule 1: People who match Job Title: Owner
AND must also match interest: Restaurant management OR Foodservice OR Hospitality

This "AND" condition is critical. It tells Facebook to only show your ad to people who meet both criteria, effectively refining your audience from any business owner to a business owner likely involved in the restaurant industry.

2. The "Page Admins" Goldmine

Here’s a tactic that many marketers miss: targeting people based on their role on a Facebook Page. Nearly every restaurant has a Facebook Business Page, and someone has to be the administrator. Often, especially in small to medium-sized establishments, that person is the owner or a key manager.

In the Detailed Targeting section, look for Behaviors >, Digital Activities >, Facebook Page Admins. From there, you can select specific types of pages.

Select "Food and Restaurant Page Admins."

This immediately targets an audience of people who are directly involved in managing a restaurant's online presence. It’s one of the most reliable indicators of a decision-maker or influential employee in the food industry. This audience is often more accurate and cost-effective than broad job title targeting because it’s based on actual behavior on the platform.

You can even layer this with other signals. For example, if you sell high-end wine preservation systems, you might target:

Rule 1: People who are Food and Restaurant Page Admins
AND must also match interest: Fine dining OR Wine Spectator OR James Beard Foundation

3. Hyper-Specific Interest & Behavior Targeting

Beyond general interests like "food," think like an owner. What tools do they use? What industry groups do they belong to? What software do they rely on? Targeting these niche interests can significantly improve your campaign's performance.

Industry Associations & Publications

Owners and managers serious about their business often follow industry leaders and publications. Target interests like:

• National Restaurant Association
• Restaurant Business Magazine
• Nation's Restaurant News
• Eater
• Bon Appetit (can be broad, but useful when layered)

Software and Technology

This is incredibly powerful if you're a competitor or an add-on service. Someone interested in a specific POS or reservation system is almost certainly in the industry.

Target people with interests in:

• Toast POS
• Square for Restaurants
• OpenTable
• Resy
• TouchBistro
• Upserve

Imagine you sell a loyalty marketing platform that integrates with Toast. You could create an ad targeting Toast users, saying, "Love Toast? Supercharge it with our automated loyalty program." The ad is hyper-relevant and speaks directly to a qualified audience.

Location, Location, Location

Don't forget the basics. If your business serves a specific geographic area (like a food supplier or local marketing agency), use precise location targeting. You can target by city, zip code, or even drop a pin and create a radius around dense restaurant districts. Layering location targeting on top of these other methods is essential for any local B2B business.

Advanced Strategies: Reach High-Intent Owners

Once you’ve mastered the core targeting options, you can move on to audiences that perform even better because they’re based on your own data.

1. Custom Audiences: Your Untapped Resource

A Custom Audience is built from contact information you already have. If you have an email list of leads, prospects, or current customers, you can upload it to Facebook. Facebook will then match those emails (or phone numbers) to user profiles on its platform, allowing you to target your known contacts directly.

Why is this so powerful?

• Nurture Leads: Show targeted ads to people who downloaded an ebook or signed up for a webinar.
• Upsell Customers: Introduce existing customers to new products or features.
• Re-engage Cold Leads: Remind inactive prospects of your solution with a special offer.

This removes all the guesswork. You *know* these people are in the restaurant industry because they're already on your list.

2. Lookalike Audiences: Scale What Works

A Lookalike Audience is an audience Facebook builds for you based on a "source" audience you provide. Essentially, you give Facebook a list of your best customers, and it goes out and finds thousands of other users with similar characteristics, demographics, and interests.

A 1% Lookalike Audience of your customer list is one of the highest-performing ad audiences you can create. This is Facebook's algorithm doing the heavy lifting for you. You're telling it, "Go find me more people who look exactly like the restaurateurs who already love our product." It’s an incredible tool for scaling your B2B advertising efforts and finding new, highly qualified leads.

3. Retargeting: Don't Let Warm Leads Slip Away

How many people visit your website but don't fill out a form or request a demo? A lot. Retargeting allows you to bring them back. By installing the Meta Pixel on your site, you can create audiences of people who have performed specific actions:

• Visited your website in the last 30 days.
• Viewed your pricing page.
• Watched 50% of your product demo video.
• Started a checkout process but didn't finish.

You can then run ads specifically for these warm leads. Since they’ve already shown interest, your message can be more direct. For example, an ad shown to someone who visited your pricing page could offer a free, personalized demo call. This strategy focuses your budget on people who are already familiar with your brand and much closer to making a decision.

Ad Creative & Copy That Actually Connects

Perfect targeting means nothing if your ad doesn't grab their attention and speak their language. A busy restaurant owner is scrolling quickly, and your ad needs to stop them in their tracks.

Ad Copy Best Practices:

• Acknowledge Their Pain: Start with a hook that addresses a core problem. "Tired of wasting hours on staff schedules?" or "Are rising food costs eating into your profits?"
• Focus on the Outcome: Don't sell features, sell the benefit. Instead of "We offer advanced inventory tracking," say "Cut your food waste by 20% and save thousands."
• Use Their Language: Use industry terms like "covers," "front-of-house," "back-of-house," and "COGS" to show you understand their world.
• Provide Social Proof: Mentioning you work with hundreds of other restaurants or including a quote from a happy client builds immediate trust.

Ad Creative That Works:

• Video Testimonials: A 30-second clip of another restaurant owner praising your service is pure gold. It’s authentic and highly persuasive.
• Quick Demos: Short videos that show your product solving a specific problem are far more effective than static images. Show, don't just tell.
• Benefit-Driven Graphics: Use simple, bold text overlays on images to call out a key benefit, like "Save 10+ Hours Per Week."

Avoid stock photos of smiling, generic restaurant staff. Use imagery that looks real and relatable to an actual restaurant environment.

Final Thoughts

Targeting restaurant owners on Facebook is a solvable challenge. It requires a thoughtful, multi-layered approach that moves beyond basic interests. By combining job titles, Page Admin roles, niche software interests, and your own data through Custom and Lookalike Audiences, you can build a highly effective advertising machine that consistently puts your business in front of the right people.

Of course, once your ads start driving engagement, managing all the comments and DMs from interested owners becomes its own challenge. At Postbase, we designed our platform to solve this by bringing all your social media conversations into one unified inbox. Instead of constantly switching between apps, you can manage your community and nurture leads from a single, organized place. Our visual calendar also makes it simple to plan and schedule all your content, helping you maintain a consistent presence and turn targeted followers into loyal customers.