Best Text Message Marketing for Restaurants

Text Message Marketing for Restaurant Reviews

To identify the best restaurant text message marketing software, we evaluated each platform using five major metrics: bulk SMS messaging, two-way messaging, text scheduling and automation, campaign reporting and analytics, and customer segmentation and personalization.

EZ Texting – Best Overall Restaurant SMS Marketing Platform

EZ Texting is a leading SMS marketing solution widely used by restaurants for its simple interface and powerful automation tools. A restaurant can send promotional offers, lunch deals, time-limited discounts, event invitations, and even reservation reminders to hundreds of thousands of people instantly. The platform supports such marketing techniques as keyword campaigns, QR Codes, MMS messages, and AI message creation services. EZ Texting also integrates with popular business platforms, including Toast, OpenTable, Square, and DoorDash, allowing businesses to streamline customer communication, manage contacts, and connect SMS marketing efforts with their existing workflows.

EZ Texting reporting page.

Start Free Visit EZ Texting’s website

EZ Texting features

• Bulk SMS Messaging: Restaurants can send promotional campaigns, coupons, seasonal specials, holiday announcements, and flash sales to large customer lists within minutes.
• Two-Way Text Messaging: Customers can reply directly to messages for reservation questions, event RSVPs, feedback, or customer service inquiries.
• Text Scheduling & Automation: Schedule promotions days or weeks ahead, automate birthday offers, welcome messages, reservation reminders, and recurring campaigns.
• Campaign Reporting & Analytics: Built-in analytics track delivery rates, click-throughs, subscriber growth, opt-outs, and campaign performance.
• Customer Segmentation & Personalization: Customer lists can be segmented by dining preferences, visit frequency, loyalty status, or custom tags to deliver more relevant promotions.

How EZ Texting pricing works

EZ Texting offers several monthly subscription plans based on messaging volume. Businesses can also start with a free trial before purchasing. They also offer a 14-day free trial to test their platform. EZ Texting offers both monthly and annual pricing. Monthly pricing plans are:

• Launch: Starting at $25/month (up to 500 contacts)
• Boost: Starting at $75/month (500–2,000 contacts)
• Scale: Starting at $125/month (2,000–50,000 contacts)
• Enterprise: Starting at $3,000/month (50,000+ contacts)

What markets does EZ Texting serve?

EZ Texting works well for independent restaurants, restaurant groups, franchises, food trucks, cafés, bars, quick-service restaurants, and hospitality businesses looking to increase customer engagement.

Read our full EZ Texting review

SlickText – Best for Customer Loyalty Programs

SlickText’s SMS marketing is a tool that helps companies build customer relationships through SMS campaigns. The loyalty features, mobile coupons, auto-grow campaign features, and customer segmentation provided by SlickText make the company a good choice for restaurants that need to engage their customers repeatedly.

SlickText dashboard.

SlickText features

• Bulk SMS Messaging: Send mass promotional texts, daily specials, holiday promotions, and exclusive deals and offers to subscribers.
• Two-Way Text Messaging: Engage customers through conversations, feedback requests, contests, and support inquiries.
• Text Scheduling & Automation: Automate loyalty rewards, welcome sequences, birthday discounts, and recurring promotional campaigns.
• Campaign Reporting & Analytics: Measure click rates, subscriber growth, redemption rates, campaign performance, and engagement metrics.
• Customer Segmentation & Personalization: Create customer segments based on purchase behavior, loyalty participation, signup source, demographics, or custom fields.

How SlickText pricing works

SlickText offers multiple pricing tiers based primarily on monthly text volume. They also offer a 14-day free trial.

• 500 credits: Starting at $29/month
• 1,000 credits: Starting at $49/month
• 2,000 credits: Starting at $79/month
• 3,500 credits: Starting at $129/month
• 5,000 credits: Starting at $169/month

What markets does SlickText serve?

SlickText is ideal for restaurants, cafés, coffee shops, bars, food trucks, retail businesses, fitness centers, and organizations that prioritize customer loyalty.

Attentive – Best SMS Marketing Platform for Customer Engagement

Attentive is an effective SMS marketing tool that enables restaurants to develop customized campaigns through automated customer communication and enhanced customer relationship management, while tracking click-through rates. Through sophisticated segmentation, bidirectional messaging, and behavioral targeting, Attentive helps restaurants deliver promotions that drive higher customer retention.

Attentive AI text campaign.

Attentive features

• Bulk SMS Messaging: Restaurants can send promotional campaigns, limited-time promotions, loyalty rewards, and event announcements to large groups of customers through targeted SMS messages.
• Two-Way Text Messaging: Customers can respond directly to messages, allowing restaurants to answer questions, collect feedback, and create more personalized interactions with guests.
• Text Scheduling & Automation: Restaurants can create automated messaging journeys, including welcome messages, birthday offers, abandoned-cart reminders, and loyalty campaigns, all triggered by customer actions.
• Campaign Reporting & Analytics: Attentive provides insights into campaign performance, including engagement metrics, conversions, revenue generated, and customer behavior.
• Customer Segmentation & Personalization: Restaurants can segment audiences based on purchase history, preferences, engagement levels, and other customer data to deliver more relevant promotions.

How Attentive pricing works

Attentive uses custom pricing based on each business’s needs, including audience size, messaging volume, and selected features. Restaurants typically receive a personalized quote after contacting Attentive’s sales team. A free trial is not publicly advertised.

What markets does Attentive serve?

Attentive is designed for restaurants, hospitality brands, retailers, e-commerce businesses, and multi-location organizations that need advanced SMS marketing tools. It is particularly suited for restaurants looking to create personalized customer journeys, improve loyalty programs, and drive repeat business through text messaging.

Textedly – Best Budget-Friendly SMS Marketing Solution

Textedly provides an easy SMS marketing system for companies that want reasonable costs without sacrificing essential features. It allows restaurants to use mass texting for promotions, schedule recurring messages, and communicate with customers via a user-friendly interface that requires no special training. Its low cost gives it additional advantages over other services for small restaurants.

Textedly contact page.

Textedly features

• Bulk SMS Messaging: Restaurants can quickly distribute promotional offers, coupon codes, grand-opening announcements, and seasonal specials to their subscriber lists.
• Two-Way Text Messaging: Supports customer replies for reservations, order questions, feedback, and customer service.
• Text Scheduling & Automation: Schedule promotional campaigns in advance and automate welcome messages, recurring offers, and reminders.
• Campaign Reporting & Analytics: View message delivery, response rates, subscriber activity, and campaign summaries.
• Customer Segmentation & Personalization: Organize customers into subscriber groups and personalize messages using contact information and custom fields.

How Textedly pricing works

Textedly offers several monthly plans based on messaging volume along with a 14-day free trial.

• 50 messages: Starting at $0
• 500 messages: Starting at $29/month
• 1,000 messages: Starting at $49/month
• 2,000 messages: Starting at $79/month
• 3,500 messages: Starting at $125/month
• 5,000 messages: Starting at $169/month

What markets does Textedly serve?

Textedly is best suited for small restaurants, cafés, bakeries, food trucks, local chains, and businesses looking for affordable SMS marketing without complex setup.

Mailchimp – Best Omnichannel Marketing Platform

Mailchimp is popular for email marketing, but its SMS capabilities allow restaurants to integrate text messaging, email marketing, journey building, and audience management into a single software application. This makes it very important for restaurants seeking a consolidated marketing strategy.

Mailchimp marketing dashboard.

Mailchimp features

• Bulk SMS Messaging: Restaurants can send promotions, event announcements, and special offers through SMS campaigns.
• Two-Way Text Messaging: Customers can respond to messages, allowing restaurants to collect feedback and engage with guests.
• Text Scheduling & Automation: Build automated customer journeys that combine SMS and email for welcome campaigns, loyalty offers, and follow-ups.
• Campaign Reporting & Analytics: Track open rates, click-throughs, conversions, revenue attribution, and customer engagement across channels.
• Customer Segmentation & Personalization: Create highly targeted campaigns using purchase behavior, demographics, engagement history, and custom audience data.

How Mailchimp pricing works

Mailchimp offers separate pricing for email and SMS marketing, as well as a 14-day free trial. Restaurants can start with a free email plan and add SMS capabilities as needed.

• 0–500 contacts: Starting at $20/month
• 501–1,500 contacts: Starting at $45/month
• 1,501–2,500 contacts: Starting at $60/month
• 2,501–5,000 contacts: Starting at $100/month
• 5,001–10,000 contacts: Starting at $135/month
• 10,001–15,000 contacts: Starting at $230/month

What markets does Mailchimp serve?

Mailchimp is ideal for restaurant brands, multi-location restaurant groups, cafés, hospitality businesses, and brands that want integrated email and SMS marketing.

Textline – Best for Two-Way Customer Communication

Textline focuses heavily on conversational messaging, making it an excellent choice for restaurants that handle reservations, catering inquiries, customer support, and guest communication through text. The platform offers shared inboxes, team collaboration tools, and CRM integrations that help restaurants manage customer conversations efficiently.

Textline mailbox.

Textline features

• Bulk SMS Messaging: Send promotional messages, announcements, and updates to customer groups.
• Two-Way Text Messaging: Textline’s strongest feature is real-time customer conversations, making it ideal for reservations, catering requests, and support.
• Text Scheduling & Automation: Schedule campaigns and automate common responses, reminders, and follow-up messages.
• Campaign Reporting & Analytics: Monitor response times, conversation metrics, delivery rates, and customer engagement.
• Customer Segmentation & Personalization: Organize contacts into groups and personalize communications using customer information and tags.

How Textline pricing works

Textline offers tiered pricing based on the number of users, messaging volume, and features. They also offer a 14-day free trial.

• Essential: Available by quote (600 messages)
• Pro: Available by quote (2,000 messages)
• Enterprise: Available by quote

What markets does Textline serve?

Textline works well for restaurants, catering companies, hospitality businesses, healthcare providers, and customer-service-focused organizations.

Compare the Best Text Message Marketing for Restaurants Side-by-Side

What Is Restaurant Text Message Marketing?

Text message marketing in the restaurant industry is a form of SMS marketing that allows restaurants to contact their customers via text messages. These platforms enable the sending of promotional information, special offers, appointment reminders, rewards, event updates, orders, and other communications that help the restaurant track its customers and encourage them to visit again and again. These SMS marketing campaigns usually support automation, customer segmentation, two-way messaging, and analytics, enabling effective measurement and conversion rate of marketing performance.

What Is an Example of Text Message Marketing?

One instance of text message marketing used by restaurants is sending a promotional offer to entice customers to visit the restaurant. For instance, a pizza parlor may send the following message: “Limited time offer! Get 20% off any large pizza with this text. Valid until 9 PM today.” Other types of SMS marketing used by restaurants include sending booking reminders, offering loyalty rewards to customers, announcing birthday discounts, announcing events, and sending exclusive offers to opted-in subscribers.

What Does Text Message Marketing Do?

Text messaging is another marketing method that businesses can use to reach their customers. Text message marketing involves sending promotional messages to consumers via SMS messages. Firms employ text messaging to announce special flash deals, promote new menu items, direct communication about events, and remind consumers of scheduled reservations or pickups. Moreover, text message services may also include features such as personalization, automation, customer segmentation, and analytical capabilities that enable the company to evaluate the success of its marketing campaigns.

How Much Does Text Message Marketing for Restaurants Cost?

The pricing for text messaging marketing for restaurants varies depending on the service provider, the number of text messages to be sent monthly, and the features the restaurant needs. Providers offer subscription plans starting at $20–$30 per month for a basic text messaging marketing package; mid-level packages, which include automation, segmentation, and analytics, start at $50–$150 per month. Larger-scale restaurants and multi-unit chains that require more text messaging and marketing will be charged more than $200 monthly or through custom enterprise solutions.

Text Message Marketing for Restaurants FAQs

What is SMS marketing for restaurants?

SMS marketing by restaurants refers to sending promotional texts or messages to customers who have voluntarily enrolled to receive them. Restaurants send such messages to inform customers about special offers, discounts, bookings, events, loyalty programs, and more. Due to their direct connection to mobile phones and immediate readability for consumers, SMS marketing can be useful for increasing consumer engagement and boosting sales.

What is the best text messaging service for restaurants?

The best choice of text messaging tool for your restaurant will depend on your goals, budget, and marketing requirements. Platforms such as EZ Texting, SlickText, and Attentive are popular choices for their features, including bulk SMS campaign management, automated messaging, customer segmentation, and analytics. It is important for the restaurant to evaluate the pricing, usability, integration, and marketing tools offered by each platform.

How do restaurants build an SMS subscriber list?

An SMS subscriber base for restaurants can be established by encouraging customers to subscribe via the online ordering web forms, the loyalty program, the reservation form, the receipt, in-store messaging, and the text-to-join campaign. Using incentives such as discounts and offers is recommended to attract more subscribers. Restaurants must always obtain permission before sending marketing SMSs to meet SMS regulations.

How do I get customers to opt in to restaurant texts?

Restaurants can encourage customers to opt in to text messages by offering valuable incentives, such as discounts, loyalty rewards, special offers, or early access to promotions. Businesses can promote SMS sign-ups through online ordering pages, websites, social media, email campaigns, QR codes, and in-store signage. Making the benefits clear and keeping the sign-up process simple can help increase subscriber growth and prioritize SMS compliance.

How can restaurants effectively use SMS marketing to increase customer engagement?

SMS marketing campaigns can help restaurants enhance communication by delivering promotions, personalized messages, event invitations, loyalty program updates, and reservation confirmations. Using customer segmentation based on their preferences and behavior will make it easier for restaurants to target their audience with more relevant information without bombarding them with too many messages.

What types of restaurant promotions work best through SMS?

The most effective text message promotions by restaurants are those that deliver instant value and benefits, such as limited-time discounts, complimentary meals, loyalty program rewards, birthday promotions, and subscriber-only deals. Restaurants may also use text messages to advertise their seasonal promotions, happy-hour specials, new menu additions, and availability on short notice. Promotions that are personalized and time-sensitive tend to work best to increase foot traffic.

How We Chose the Best Text Message Marketing for Restaurants

The top text message marketing services for restaurants were selected through a standardized review of leading SMS marketing platforms, restaurant communication tools, and customer engagement solutions. We evaluated each platform across four equally weighted categories.

• Features and Functionality: Each text message marketing service was compared with the others, considering their ability to meet the marketing requirements of restaurants, including bulk SMS marketing, auto-messaging, client segmentation, two-way texting, scheduling, loyalty programs, and campaign analysis. Leading text message marketing platforms were those offering advanced personalization options, integrations, easy campaign management, and tools that enable increased customer interaction and repeat visits.
• Pricing and Fees: We considered each platform’s pricing strategy, including monthly subscriptions, pay-per-use options, message limits, and any additional charges. Those text message marketing services that provide transparent pricing, various plan options, and good value for money due to their feature availability were rated highly.
• Ease of Use and Support: We analyzed each provider’s ease of setting up the platform, user interface, automation options, integrations, and customer support. Platforms with an intuitive dashboard, easy campaign creation, onboarding materials, and good customer support via phone, email, live chat, and a knowledge base received high scores.
• Reliability and Reputation: We paid attention to customer feedback, reputation of the platform in the industry, reliability of the platform, security measures, and experience of vendors. Text message marketing providers with positive user feedback, reliable platforms, and a strong reputation for helping businesses manage SMS campaigns received high ratings.