Restaurant Brand Grader
Methodology

How the Restaurant Brand Grader actually works.

Plain language. No black box. Every restaurant we grade is scored the same way, against public data, using published standards.

1. What the score is.

The Restaurant Brand Advantage Score is a single 0 to 100 number, made up of 12 checkpoints across two dimensions. Marketing is worth 60 points. Brand is worth 40 points.

Marketing (60 pts)

Can customers find you and act?

  • 10Attention. Do you show up on Google, Maps, and local search when hungry customers look?
  • 10Audience. Do you speak clearly to the people you actually want in your dining room?
  • 10Message. Is your one-sentence promise obvious in the first 5 seconds of looking at your site?
  • 10Offer. Do your menus, pricing, and specials give a first-time guest an easy reason to try you?
  • 10Trust. Ratings, review count, response habits, photo quality: does a stranger trust you before tasting you?
  • 10Action. Are the next steps (order, book, directions, call) frictionless on mobile?
Brand (40 pts)

When they find you, do they choose you?

  • 08Identity. Logo, color, type, and photography working together as one system.
  • 08Position. You occupy a specific spot in your market that customers can name.
  • 06Vision. There is a clear picture of where this restaurant is going.
  • 06Story. The people behind the food show up somewhere on the site.
  • 06Purpose. There is a reason you exist beyond serving plates, and customers can feel it.
  • 06Values. The way you treat guests, staff, and community is visible in what you publish.

2. How the checks work.

Every checkpoint is one of two kinds.

Deterministic checks.

Pass or fail against published standards. Google Business Profile guidelines. Core Web Vitals thresholds. Presence of a menu link, phone link, or reservation link on the homepage. Number of reviews. Real photo count. HTTPS. Mobile viewport. These are counted, not judged.

AI judged checks.

A handful of brand checkpoints (Message, Story, Values, Vision, Purpose) require reading real content and judging clarity. These are clearly labeled and every score comes with an evidence sentence quoting or citing what we found. If we cannot see the evidence, the item is marked unverified and excluded from the score.

3. Four commitments.

  1. 01We score only publicly visible data against published standards. If a customer cannot see it, we do not grade it.
  2. 02We never grade based on which vendor or platform built a site. WordPress, Squarespace, Toast, Wix, custom code: none of that changes the score.
  3. 03Sites that block automated review are marked unverified and never penalized for security tooling. A locked door is not a bad brand.
  4. 04Recommend first. This tool diagnoses and prescribes. It never changes anything automatically. Humans approve everything.

4. Competitor comparisons.

The competitor reality check uses Google's public place data for nearby restaurants in the same category. Ratings, review counts, photo counts, and distance come straight from Google. We do not scrape or judge competitor sites. The comparison is there to give your score context, not to grade anyone else.

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