Restaurant marketing

Restaurant Email Marketing in Canada: How to Build a List You Actually Own (Without Breaking CASL)

15+ years in local marketing; Google Ads certified; Shopify Partner.

You have 400 customers who've eaten at your restaurant in the last 90 days. How many of them can you contact right now, today, without paying DoorDash or Meta a single dollar?

If the answer is "I'm not sure" or "maybe a few hundred on Instagram," that's the real problem. Not your food. Not your service. The fact that you don't own the relationship.

That's what restaurant email marketing is really about. Not newsletters. Not "staying top of mind." It's about building a direct line to the people who already like you, so you can fill seats and drive orders on your terms, not on a platform's terms. This article covers how to build that list the right way in Canada, what CASL actually requires (it's not as scary as it sounds), and what a real email + SMS setup looks like week by week. For the broader picture of channels, commissions, and what a full marketing setup looks like for a Canadian independent, see our complete guide to restaurant marketing in Canada.

Why Email Still Beats Every Other Channel for Direct Revenue

I know. Email sounds boring. Everyone's talking about TikTok and Instagram Reels. And look, social media has its place , but organic Instagram reach has collapsed to under 2% for most business accounts. You're essentially renting an audience from Meta and paying every time you want to actually talk to them.

Email is different. You own the list. A subscriber you collected is yours whether Mailchimp changes its algorithm or not.

Here's what the math looks like in practice. Per Mailchimp's published industry benchmarks for restaurants, the average email open rate in the food and beverage category sits around 21-25%, with click-through rates around 2-3%. Those numbers sound modest until you compare them to a Facebook post that reaches 1-2% of your followers organically.

Say you have 1,000 subscribers. You send a "Tuesday night is slow, here's a $10 off coupon for tonight only" email. At a 22% open rate, 220 people see that offer. If 3% click through and half of those actually come in, that's about three or four covers you wouldn't have had. Not huge. But it cost you nothing except the time to write the email, and you're building toward a list of 5,000, 10,000 people over time.

That's the piece that compounds. Social media reach doesn't compound. Email lists do.

CASL Explained in Plain Language (Without the Legal Panic)

CASL, the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation, gets talked about like it's a minefield. Operators either ignore it completely or get so scared they never build a list at all. Both approaches are wrong.

Here's what CASL actually requires for restaurant email and SMS marketing:

Express consent. You need the person to actively agree to receive marketing messages from you. A checkbox on your online ordering checkout that says "I'd like to receive offers and updates from [Restaurant Name]" , checked by the person, not pre-ticked , is express consent. Fines start at $1M per violation for serious breaches, so this matters.

Identification. Every email you send must clearly identify who's sending it. Your restaurant name, your physical address or mailing address, and a way to contact you.

Unsubscribe mechanism. Every single email needs a working unsubscribe link. And you have 10 business days to honour it once someone clicks.

That's genuinely the core of it. The complication comes with implied consent, which CASL allows for existing business relationships. If someone placed an order with you in the last 24 months, you have implied consent to market to them. But implied consent expires, and it's harder to document. My honest recommendation: go for express consent from the start. It's cleaner, it's more defensible, and your list will be better quality anyway because the people on it actually want to hear from you.

For SMS specifically, the same rules apply, but the stakes feel higher because texts feel more personal. Make sure your opt-in language on any SMS collection point explicitly says they're signing up for text messages, not just "updates." If you're using a tool like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or a restaurant-specific platform like Owner.com or Popmenu, they'll have CASL-compliant opt-in flows built in. Verify that before you trust it.

One thing most US-based email marketing tools handle badly: CASL is not the same as CAN-SPAM. US vendors often build their compliance flows around CAN-SPAM, which is weaker. If your email platform tells you "we're compliant," ask them specifically about CASL. If they go quiet, that's your answer.

How to Actually Build the List (The Mechanics, Week by Week)

This is where most restaurant email marketing advice falls apart. Everyone tells you to "collect emails." Nobody tells you exactly how.

Here's what a real list-building setup looks like over the first 60 days.

Week 1: Set up your collection points.

Pick your email platform. For most independent restaurants, Mailchimp's free tier (up to 500 contacts) is fine to start. Once you're past 500, Klaviyo is worth the upgrade because its segmentation is genuinely better. If you're on Toast or Square, their built-in marketing tools pull order data automatically, which is a real advantage.

Set up a CASL-compliant opt-in form. Put it in three places: your online ordering checkout (this is your highest-converting spot, because the person is already buying from you), your reservation confirmation email if you're on OpenTable or Resy, and your website footer.

Do not buy a list. Ever. Beyond the CASL problems, a purchased list is garbage. Those people don't know you, don't want to hear from you, and will mark you as spam fast enough to tank your sender reputation.

Week 2: Train your front-of-house staff.

This is the one most operators skip. Your POS is capturing email addresses at checkout , but only if your staff actually asks. Write a simple script: "Can I grab your email for our loyalty updates? We send maybe two emails a month, nothing spammy." Most people say yes if it's asked genuinely.

In my experience, restaurants that train their staff to ask at the POS consistently collect 15-25 new subscribers per week per location. Over a year, that's 750-1,300 new contacts. That's a real list.

Weeks 3-4: Set up your welcome sequence.

Before you start sending campaigns, build a two-email welcome sequence. Email 1 goes out immediately when someone subscribes: thank them, tell them what to expect, and give them something worth having (a small discount, a behind-the-scenes note, a genuine story about the restaurant). Email 2 goes out five to seven days later with something that reinforces the relationship , maybe your most popular dish, a seasonal menu preview, or an invitation to follow you on one social platform.

The welcome sequence is the highest-open-rate moment you'll ever have with a subscriber. Per Mailchimp benchmarks, welcome emails average open rates around 50%, more than double a typical campaign. Don't waste it with a generic "thanks for subscribing."

Month 2: Start your regular cadence.

Two emails a month is the right frequency for most restaurants. One promotional (a specific offer, an event, a new menu item), one relational (a story, a staff spotlight, a seasonal note). More than twice a month and you'll see unsubscribes climb. Less than once a month and people forget who you are.

Keep subject lines short. "Tuesday is slow. Here's $10." outperforms "Exciting news from [Restaurant Name]!" every time. The more your subject line sounds like a person wrote it, the better it performs.

Segmentation: The Part That Makes Email Worth Your Time

Here's the thing about restaurant email marketing that most guides skip: a list of 2,000 undifferentiated subscribers is less valuable than a list of 800 people you've split into three groups.

Segmentation means sending different messages to different people based on what you know about them. The most useful segments for a restaurant are:

Frequency segments. People who've ordered or visited in the last 30 days (your active customers), 31-90 days (at risk of drifting), and 90+ days (lapsed). Your lapsed segment gets a win-back campaign. Your active segment gets your best offers and early access. These are different messages.

Order type segments. If you're running both dine-in and delivery, the person who always orders delivery is a different customer than the one who always comes in. The delivery customer might respond to a "skip the delivery fee, pick it up yourself" offer. The dine-in regular might respond to a "bring a friend" deal. Sending the same email to both is a missed opportunity.

Spend segments. If your POS is connected to your email platform (Toast and Square both do this natively), you can see average order value per customer. Your high-spend customers are worth treating differently. Early access to a new menu, a private event invite, a handwritten-feeling note from the owner. These people are your best customers. They should feel like it.

Most email platforms support basic segmentation. You don't need to build anything complicated. Start with the 30/31-90/90+ split and go from there.

For building the loyalty side of this, where you're tracking visit frequency and rewarding repeat behaviour, see our breakdown of restaurant loyalty programs as a margin strategy. Email and loyalty work best when they're connected.

The SMS Layer: When Texts Make Sense (and When They Don't)

SMS has higher open rates than email. Most texts get read within three minutes of delivery. That sounds great until you send a promotional text at 10am on a Tuesday and someone unsubscribes because they're annoyed.

SMS works for restaurants in specific situations:

Time-sensitive offers. "We have 12 tables left for Saturday night. Book before noon and get a complimentary dessert." That's a text. Not an email.

Order status updates. If you're running direct online ordering, order confirmations and pickup-ready notifications via SMS are genuinely useful and welcomed by customers. This is transactional messaging, which has different CASL treatment than promotional messaging, but still requires consent.

Event reminders. Trivia night tonight at 7. Doors open at 6:30. That's a text.

What SMS is not good for: newsletters, long-form content, anything that requires a click to make sense. Keep texts under 160 characters when possible. Include your restaurant name at the start because the number won't be in their contacts. And never, ever send a text after 9pm.

The CASL rules for SMS are the same as email: express consent, identification, unsubscribe mechanism. For SMS, your unsubscribe is typically "Reply STOP to unsubscribe." Make sure your platform handles this automatically.

What a Real Email Setup Costs (And What You Should Actually Pay)

Let me give you honest numbers.

Email platform: Mailchimp free tier handles up to 500 contacts and 1,000 emails/month. Paid tiers start around $17 CAD/month for up to 500 contacts with full features. Klaviyo's restaurant-relevant tier starts around $45 CAD/month for up to 1,000 contacts. If you're on Toast, their marketing add-on is approximately $75 USD/month (roughly $100 CAD given current exchange). Square Marketing is built into Square for Restaurants at various tiers.

SMS: Most platforms charge per-message or per-subscriber for SMS. Budget $20-$50 CAD/month for a small list (under 500 SMS subscribers) with moderate send frequency.

Total tech cost for a real setup: $50-$150 CAD/month for most single-location independents.

Compare that to what you're paying for third-party delivery. A Winnipeg operator I came across described changing the price of one pizza by a dollar and spending 35 minutes updating DoorDash, Skip, Uber, the website, and the POS , and still missing one platform. Three weeks of orders went out at the wrong price. The menu fragmentation problem is real, and if you want to understand the full scope of it, our menu sync guide for Canadian restaurants covers it in detail.

The point is: $100/month to own a direct channel to your customers is not a big bet. It's the cheapest insurance you have against platform dependency.

Three Things to Take Away From This

1. CASL is not a reason to avoid building a list. Express consent, clear identification, working unsubscribe. That's it. Build the list properly from day one and you have nothing to worry about.

2. Collection is the hard part, not the sending. Most restaurants have the tools to send email. Almost none have a consistent system for collecting addresses at the POS, at checkout, and at reservation. Fix the collection first. Everything else follows.

3. Segmentation turns a list into a revenue tool. An unsegmented list of 2,000 people is okay. A segmented list of 800 active customers, 600 at-risk customers, and 600 lapsed customers is a machine you can actually use to fill slow nights and win back people who've drifted.

Email isn't the flashiest channel. But it's the one you own. And in a world where DoorDash owns your delivery customers, Instagram owns your followers, and Google owns your search visibility, owning something matters.