20 Restaurant SMS Marketing Texts and 5 Tools Compared

Restaurant SMS marketing puts an offer on a diner's phone in the hour they decide where to eat, and every send can be traced to redeemed codes. Public plans run about $15 to $58 per 1,000 texts, the median text campaign in SlickText's 2026 benchmark got a click from 5.5% of recipients, and the legal rules fit on one page. Below you'll find 20 texts you can copy (with character counts), a month of sends on one calendar, 5 tools priced per 1,000 texts, and a compliance box. If you plan picture texts, you'll also need restaurant food photos that still sell on a 6-inch screen.

Quick Summary: Send about four scheduled texts a month plus a few automated ones (welcome, birthday, win-back), keep each under 160 characters, and only text people who opted in in writing. Toast and Square bundle text messaging into the POS; standalone tools cost roughly $15 to $58 per 1,000 SMS. A photo text (MMS) bills as about three texts, so test whether the photo lifts redemptions before you make it the default.

Is restaurant SMS marketing worth it?

For most restaurants with an opted-in subscriber base, yes. In SlickText's 2026 benchmark of more than 400 million messages, the median campaign click rate was 5.5%. At $15 to $58 per 1,000 texts, that works out to roughly 27 cents to $1.05 per click, before you count the diners who never tap the link and simply walk in.

The reach is close to universal. Pew Research Center's mobile fact sheet puts cellphone ownership at 98% of U.S. adults, and 91% own a smartphone. What's not universal is the 20% click rate vendors like to quote: in the same SlickText study, only about 1 in 8 campaigns beat it.

So give each channel its job in your marketing strategy. Email tells the story of a new menu (email marketing for restaurants covers that side); a text says "tonight, 5 to 9, this code." If you're still choosing which channels to run at all, start with these 50 restaurant marketing ideas and come back once SMS makes the cut.

The cost of getting it wrong is real, too. A promotional text sent without consent can cost $500 under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, and up to $1,500 if a court finds it willful (47 U.S.C. 227). The compliance box further down covers the basics.

20 restaurant text message marketing examples, with character counts

Each template below fits in one 160-character segment. They use plain GSM-7 characters only: one emoji, curly quote or em dash switches the whole text to Unicode, and the limit drops to 70 characters (67 per segment once it splits, per Toast's SMS help center). Every one opens with the restaurant name so people know who's writing, and ends with an opt-out.

The link sits right after the hook on purpose. SlickText's benchmark found links in the first half of the messages got about 45% more clicks than links in the last fifth, and messages of 100 characters or fewer clicked about 50% more than the same senders' 141 to 160 character messages. Swap "Rosa's" and example.com for your name and short link, then recount.

Welcome and list growth

Text 1 carries the disclosures carriers expect in the first message: who you are, how often you'll text, that rates may apply, and how to get help or stop.

Fill slow shifts

Row of brown paper lunch pickup bags on a steel shelf as office workers queue, the order-ahead rush a restaurant lunch text creates

More slow-night deals, with the margin math, are in our roundup of restaurant promotions that fill slow nights.

Launch dishes and specials (MMS)

Tightly cropped bowl of slow-braised short rib pappardelle with gremolata, the single dish photo a restaurant MMS text leads with

These three are the texts where a photo can do the selling, so they're the ones to A/B test as MMS against plain SMS (more on that below).

Loyalty, birthdays and win-backs

Texts 10 to 12 work best when your POS or customer data triggers them instead of a manager sending by hand. If you haven't picked a rewards model yet, compare the 6 types of restaurant loyalty programs first.

Holidays, events and gift cards

The bonus-card idea in text 16 is one of the gift card promotion ideas that also works on receipts and table tents. For the full week-by-week season, see our holiday sales plan.

Direct orders and catering

Text 19 needs a tool that accepts replies. Toast's SMS marketing doesn't (diners can't reply), so on Toast swap "Reply CATER" for a link to your catering form.

How often should a restaurant send texts?

Plan four scheduled sends a month, add automated texts that a subscriber's own behavior triggers, and cap any one guest at six texts a month and one a day. That matches the "Up to 6 msgs/mo" promise in text 1. CTIA's messaging guidelines expect the frequency you send to match the frequency you disclosed at opt-in.

Here's a typical month for a full-service restaurant:

Server setting a candlelit tiramisu in front of a smiling diner in a corner booth, a birthday text offer being redeemed at the table

Four rules keep this calendar effective:

• Land before plans are made. Aim for 11 a.m. for lunch deals and 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. for dinner.
• Favor Monday and Thursday. In SlickText's data, Monday campaigns clicked about 12% more than the same senders' Wednesday campaigns, and Thursday about 8% more. The hour of day mattered little.
• A same-day text replaces that week's scheduled send. It doesn't add to it.
• Segment instead of blasting. Each doubling of audience size came with a click rate about 13% lower, even for the same sender.

SMS vs MMS: is the dish photo worth three texts?

A picture text (MMS) costs about three times a plain text: Toast, Square, SlickText and SimpleTexting all bill one MMS as three texts. In SlickText's 2026 benchmark, MMS sends also clicked about 17% less than the same senders' SMS (4.1% vs 5.7%), with no difference in opt-outs. So the photo has to earn its keep in redemptions, not clicks.

Clicks undercount a photo. A diner who sees a glossy plate of short rib pappardelle may skip the link and order it at the table. SlickText makes the same point: MMS can drive more conversions even with a lower click rate. The only way to know is to count redeemed codes.

Run the break-even before you test. On Square Plus, the photo adds $60 per 1,000 recipients. With a $30 average check, that's two extra orders per 1,000 to cover it in sales, or about seven if each order only contributes 30% after food and labor.

Two glass jars of redeemed paper coupon slips at a restaurant host stand, one fuller, tracking an SMS versus MMS offer test

How to test it:

1. Split your subscribers randomly in half and send the same deal, deadline and send hour to both halves.
2. Give each half its own code (PHOTO10 and TEXT10) so redemptions are countable at the POS.
3. Compare redemptions and revenue per dollar spent, not clicks. Repeat on two or three launches before you decide, because one send to a small list is noisy.

The photo itself decides the test. The most effective MMS photo shows one dish, tightly cropped, in square or 4:5 portrait framing. Export it as a JPEG under 600 KB: Twilio recommends that ceiling for picture texts sent over AT&T from a standard number, and larger files can get resized or fail. A dim shot taken at the pass is unlikely to beat plain text. FoodShot is built for this exact job: upload the phone photo, pick one of 200+ styles, and get a 4K, menu-ready image in about a minute, or a poster version with the offer laid out in about 2 minutes. Plans start at $15 for 25 photos, which is less than the photo surcharge on a single MMS send to 1,000 guests.

Restaurant SMS marketing software: 5 tools compared

If you run Toast or Square, start with the SMS tool built into your POS: opt-ins, coupons and redemptions tie back to sales without extra setup. Pick SlickText or SimpleTexting if you need two-way replies, keywords and automations on any POS, and Klaviyo if your online ordering and email already live there. Prices below were checked against vendor pages on November 13, 2026, except where noted.

Restaurant POS terminal and card reader on a counter at opening, where SMS marketing software connects opt-ins to sales

Three details the vendor pages bury:

• Toast is bare-bones by design. Its help center lists one URL per text, no replies, U.S. numbers only, and targeting limited to location plus three automatic audiences (new sign-ups, lapsed diners, big spenders).
• Klaviyo won't import consent from Toast. Klaviyo's help docs say the Toast integration syncs order events but not email or SMS consent, so marketing opt-ins have to come from Klaviyo's own forms or a documented import.
• Carrier fees sit outside some prices. SlickText passes them through at cost (about $21 on 5,000 texts in its own example); Klaviyo builds them into its rates.

You'll also see Textedly, EZ Texting, Attentive, Popmenu and SpotOn on shortlists. Price them with the same columns. For the rest of the stack (reviews, loyalty, email, social), our roundup of the best restaurant marketing tools covers 15 picks.

What 1,000 guests and 4 texts a month cost

Four SMS sends to 1,000 opted-in customers is 4,000 texts a month. On public prices:

• Square Plus: 500 come with the plan, then 3,500 at 3 cents = $105, on top of the $49 plan you may already pay for the POS.
• Square Premium: 1,500 over the plan's 2,500, at 1.5 cents = $22.50, on top of $149.
• SlickText: the $169 plan (5,000 credits) plus about $17 in carrier fees = about $186.
• Klaviyo: about $60 of mobile spend, plus an email plan.
• Toast: 500 per location come with it; the other 3,500 need a quoted add-on.

Make one of the four sends an MMS and usage jumps from 4,000 to 6,000 credits. That's $60 more on Square Plus, and it pushes SlickText from the $169 plan to the $319 plan.

Compliance box: opt-in, STOP and quiet hours

You need written opt-in before the first promotional text, a STOP that works by any reasonable wording, a registered sending number, and sends between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the recipient's time zone (8 p.m. in some states). Most platforms handle registration and STOP for you; consent and timing are on you.

Dining room after close with chairs upturned on tables under a wall clock at 9 p.m., the federal quiet-hours cutoff for promotional texts

Compliance box (not legal advice; ask a lawyer before your first send)

• Get written consent for marketing. Federal Communications Commission rules require prior express written consent for marketing messages sent through automated platforms (47 CFR 64.1200). A number given for a reservation or an order is not consent to promotions.
• Say what they're signing up for. CTIA's Messaging Principles and Best Practices expect the sign-up for a messaging program to name it, what you'll send, how often, "Msg & data rates may apply," HELP and STOP, and links to your terms and privacy policy. Consent can't be bought, sold or shared.
• Register your sending number. Carriers have blocked unregistered 10DLC (local-number) business traffic since February 2025, and toll-free numbers need verification. Allow days to a few weeks.
• Honor STOP fast. Under the Federal Communications Commission's 2024 order (FCC 24-24, in force since April 11, 2025), guests can opt out by any reasonable means; replies of stop, quit, end, revoke, opt out, cancel or unsubscribe always count. You have 10 business days at most, and you may send one confirmation within 5 minutes with no promotion in it. The stricter "revoke-all" piece was delayed to January 31, 2027.
• Respect quiet hours. Federal rules allow solicitations from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. recipient time. Florida, Oklahoma and Maryland stop at 8 p.m. and cap solicitations at three per 24 hours on the same subject. An 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. window clears those limits on weekdays; some states restrict weekends further (Texas starts at noon on Sundays), so check yours before a Sunday send.
• Treat alcohol as restricted. Carriers group alcohol with the "SHAFT" content categories, which need age-gated opt-in. Promote the happy hour food, or ask your platform before texting drink specials.
• Keep the records. Store each opt-in's date, source and wording for at least four years, the TCPA's limitation period.

How do restaurants build an SMS list?

Ask at the moments guests already hand you their number, with a separate, unchecked marketing box and a reason worth joining for, like text 1's garlic knots.

• Online ordering checkout: an unchecked "Text me deals" box with the disclosure next to it.
• Text-to-join: "Text JOIN to (your number)" on table tents, receipts and the host stand, with the disclosure in small print.
• Waitlist and reservations: the number that gets "your table is ready" isn't marketing consent, so add the separate box.
• A staff line at the register: "Want a dessert on the house? Join our texts." One sentence, no pressure.

Don't upload your POS or reservation contacts in bulk. Toast warns it can suspend SMS access when an upload triggers a wave of unsubscribes, and carriers filter numbers with high opt-out rates.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is SMS marketing legal for restaurants?

Yes, when guests opt in. Promotional texts need prior express written consent, a clear opt-out, a registered number, and sends between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. recipient time (8 p.m. in Florida, Oklahoma and Maryland). The risk is per text: $500 per violation under the TCPA, up to $1,500 if willful.

How much does restaurant SMS marketing cost?

Expect $15 to $58 per 1,000 plain texts on public plans: about $15 on Klaviyo or Square Premium overage, $30 on Square Plus overage, $34 to $49 on SlickText and $58 at SimpleTexting's entry tier. A picture text (MMS) bills as about three texts. Toast doesn't publish its price.

How many texts a month should a restaurant send?

Four scheduled texts plus automated welcome, birthday and win-back texts is a solid default. Cap each subscriber at six a month and one a day, and match whatever frequency you promised at sign-up. If opt-outs rise after a send, cut the volume before you cut the deal.

Can I text guests who gave their number for a reservation or order?

You can send texts about that reservation or order, such as confirmations or "your table is ready." You can't send promotions to that number without separate written marketing consent. Add an unchecked marketing box to booking and checkout forms so diners can say yes.

Can a restaurant text happy hour drink specials?

Carefully. Carriers treat alcohol as restricted content and expect age-gated opt-in for it, and a platform may reject drink promotions on a standard program. The safe version promotes the food side ("half-price flatbreads, 3 to 6 p.m.") or runs through a program your provider has approved for alcohol.

Should restaurant texts use emojis or first names?

Neither helped much in SlickText's 2026 data. Emojis had no measurable effect on clicks, and they cut a segment from 160 to 70 characters. First names lifted clicks about 13% (not statistically significant) but raised opt-outs about 26%, which was significant. Lead with the dish and the deadline instead.