Google Business Profile for restaurants: set up every field that matters

To set up a Google Business Profile for a restaurant, claim and verify the profile, then fill in the fields guests act on: hours, the menu as items with prices, your own ordering and reservation links set as preferred, attributes, photos and posts. It is free (Google), and every step below is as described in Google Business Profile Help on 10 November 2026.

For many guests the profile is the restaurant: they see the photos, check you are open, read the menu and tap order or book without ever reaching your website. This guide goes field by field. How the profile affects ranking is in our restaurant SEO guide, and getting and answering reviews has its own Google reviews guide.

Search for your restaurant on Google or Maps and claim the profile, or create one. Google then asks you to verify, and you don't get to pick the method: it is "automatically determined by Google" from your business type, public information, region and hours. The options are phone or text, email, a live video call, mail, and a video recording where you are eligible, which Google recommends. Verification reviews "take up to 5 business days" (Google).

Once verified, add a second person. A profile has one primary owner; other owners have full control, and managers can do almost everything except add or remove users. Do it under Business Profile settings, then People and access (Google). If an agency or a staff member runs your profile, make them a manager and keep ownership yourself. A profile owned only by someone who has left is one of the hardest problems to fix.

Your name "should reflect your business's real-world name": no taglines, neighborhoods or "best pizza" added, because "including unnecessary information in your business name isn't permitted" (Google). Choose categories that complete the sentence "this business IS a", "as few categories as possible", and "as specific as possible". Google's own example is a fast-food chain that should use Fast Food Restaurant and Hamburger Restaurant, not Dessert Restaurant, even though it sells desserts. So a ramen shop is a Ramen Restaurant first.

The description gets up to 750 characters. Google asks for no URLs or HTML, and for details about the business "instead of details about promotions, prices, or sales" (Google). Write what you serve, what makes you different and how long you have been open, in the words a guest would use. Save the specials for posts. Opening soon? You can add an opening date up to a year ahead, and it shows from 90 days before.

Use a local phone number that rings at the restaurant and is under your control, not a call-center line or a number that redirects away from the business (Google).

Wrong hours cost more than any other field, because a guest who arrives to a locked door does not come back. Google's rule for restaurants is to list "the hours when diners can sit down and dine in", falling back to takeout, then drive-through, with delivery hours only as a last resort (Google).

• Regular hours. Edit profile, Hours, then Open with main hours. If you close between lunch and dinner, enter two time ranges for the same day (Google).
• More hours. For services on their own schedule, such as delivery and takeout hours (Google). Use it when the kitchen takes orders later or earlier than the dining room.
• Special hours. For holidays, events and closures of up to six days. They only show if your main hours are set to Open with main hours. Google says to confirm official holidays "even if they're the same as your regular hours" (Google).
• Temporarily closed. For seven or more days in a row, or when you don't know when you'll reopen. Seasonal restaurants can use it for the off-season (Google, Google).

Put every holiday for the next three months into special hours now, including the ones where nothing changes. It takes ten minutes.

Food and drink businesses get a menu editor. Add a section, then items with descriptions and prices; once it is published you can add photos to items. You can also upload a menu photo or PDF, and Google offers an "experimental" AI tool that turns one into a structured menu, which you should check line by line before publishing. Changes take 24 to 48 hours to show on Maps and Search (Google).

Separately, add your Menu link under Edit profile, Business information, Contact, pointing to the menu page on your own site. Two cautions from Google: if your menu comes in through the Business Profile API, from a POS or listings tool, you may not see the editor at all, and menus across several locations have to be updated through the API (Google). If that is your setup, fix the menu at the source.

Items with prices matter because a photo of a menu can't answer "who has birria tacos near me". Google counts interactions with menu photos, links and structured menu data in its Menus metric (Google). Your guests also add popular dishes with photos in Maps; you can add your own in the Maps app, and dish names you add "get precedence over dish names added by customers" (Google).

Open Food ordering on your profile. Delivery apps that "state they have authorized relationships with your business" are listed there by default. Use Add a link for your own ordering page, then select it and choose Set as preferred for pickup, delivery or both. To hide an app, select it, open Show provider to customers and turn off pickup, delivery or both. Google says changes "typically publish on Google Search and Maps within a few hours" (Google).

This is the most valuable five minutes on the profile. A guest who searched your name and taps order is already yours; sending them through an app costs a commission. Our DoorDash and Uber Eats fee guides show what each app order costs, and the online ordering guide covers setting up ordering that feeds your kitchen.

Google is also starting to place orders for guests. In the US, Ask Maps can find an open restaurant that serves a dish and add it to the guest's cart, who then reviews and completes the order. It launched with Square and Toast, with Uber Eats "coming soon" (Google). If you order online through either POS, keep that menu identical to the one on Google. The Order with Google section of Google's help is for ordering companies that want to integrate, not for restaurants (Google).

There are two ways to take bookings from your profile. The first is a booking provider: select Bookings, then Get started, and choose your provider; providers "show up on your Business Profile within a week", and "your provider might charge you" (Google). Waitlists are available only to restaurants, and are removed through the provider.

The second is your own link. Under local business links you can add up to 10 links each for "Make a reservation" and "Place a food order", plus one menu link. With more than one, choose Set preferred link and yours shows as "Business preferred" (Google). One catch: you can't delete a third-party booking or reservation provider from the profile yourself. Ask the provider to remove it, and report it to Google if it is still there after 5 business days (Google).

Attributes are the yes-or-no facts: outdoor seating, Wi-Fi, payments such as cash-only, accessibility, and identity attributes such as women-owned. Find them under Edit profile, then More. Some are filled in from what customers who visit tell Google, so they can change without you. Be exact on accessibility: for wheelchair-accessible seating, Google says "if the tables are high at standing level, select No". Edits are usually reviewed in about 10 minutes, sometimes up to 30 days (Google). Go through every category once, then check them each quarter.

Add a logo, a cover photo and real photos of the room, the outside, the team and your top dishes. Photos must be JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, at least 250 by 250 pixels, ideally 720 by 720. Videos can run up to 30 seconds, 75 MB, at 720p or higher. Google asks that photos "represent reality", without heavy filters, and may show a customer's photo instead of a weak cover photo. New media can take 24 to 48 hours, and only shows once you are verified (Google).

Shoot in daylight on a phone, on the plates people actually order. Add a few photos a month rather than fifty once: each new photo is a reason for the profile to look current.

Posts come in three kinds: Updates with a button such as order online or book, Offers with dates and an optional coupon code, and Events with start and end times. You can schedule a post or set it to repeat, and posts older than six months are archived unless they carry a date range (Google). Single-location food and drink businesses in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand may see featured posts, which show in place of reviews on mobile.

Two rules catch restaurants. A phone number in the text can get a post rejected if Google can't tie it to the business. And businesses in regulated industries such as alcohol "should not include content about those products" (Google), so post the food, the event or the room, not the drinks special. One post a week is plenty: this week's special, the next event, holiday hours.

Q&A is "available only for select business categories and regions", and Google says its look and function may change. Verified US businesses in Google's pilot answer attribute questions with Yes, No or Skip from the Q&A button in the mobile app; those answers can't be edited or deleted on mobile, so answer carefully (Google). If you have Q&A, check it weekly and answer what guests actually ask: parking, kids, gluten-free, private rooms.

Reviews are the field guests read most. Our Google reviews guide covers how to ask every guest with your review link, what Google and the FTC allow, reply scripts for every rating, and how to report a review that breaks Google's policies.

The performance report shows interactions, searches and the terms used, views, directions, calls, website clicks, messages, bookings, menus and offers. Search data updates at the start of each month and can take up to five days to appear (Google). Note calls, direction requests, website clicks and menu views each month, and compare them with the same month last year to allow for seasons.

Work through the checklist at the top in one sitting: claim and verify if you haven't, add a second owner, set holiday hours for the next three months, add the menu as items, and set your own ordering and booking links as preferred. Then add five new photos. If you would rather have it run for you, our Google Business Profile service does this every month and is part of the Starter plan at $299 a month (pricing). The free restaurant audit shows what your profile gets right and wrong today.