40 restaurant survey questions to get honest feedback

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Customer feedback is crucial for a restaurant. Gathering feedback with a restaurant survey is an excellent way to understand how your customers think, where your restaurant is strong, and what needs improvement. Any restaurant owner worth their salt will be keen to learn about the customer experience in the most unfiltered way possible. So, compiling a solid list of restaurant survey questions is an excellent step toward improving customer satisfaction and catching aspects of your restaurant to improve you might not have thought of.

Many people find themselves unwilling to give full feedback and criticism directly to a restaurateur, either due to politeness or a desire to avoid confrontation. That’s totally normal. It’s not a great feeling for most if they have something negative to say. But keep in mind that a majority of customers will not return to a restaurant if they have a negative experience and you’ll want to make sure that negative experiences don’t happen.

In order to make negative feedback more palatable and honest for guests, create an anonymous feedback system that can help you and your staff provide the best dining experience possible. This doesn’t have to be a harrowing experience for anyone, since anonymity makes people far more honest than they otherwise would be.

Let’s look at ways to get the most out of restaurant survey questions as well as what questions to ask.

P.S.: We’ll just cover internal surveys in this article. If you’re interested in learning about how to navigate public reviews, check out this guide on how to get online reviews without asking.

The benefits of customer surveys

Whether someone is a regular guest or a first-time customer, they’re going to have opinions about your establishment. No restaurant anywhere is perfect, but striving for perfection is the way forward. Guest feedback provides valuable insights.

Noise levels too high? Bathrooms not cleaned well enough? Not family-friendly enough? These are all things that are easy to overlook if you’re quite familiar with an environment, which can happen to anyone. Soliciting restaurant feedback via a survey template can tip you off to blind spots you have.

Surveys can also indicate patterns and trends that you as a restaurant owner may not yet have identified. You might get feedback on how guests like your online ordering system or favorite menu items or your restaurant atmosphere, which can be invaluable. Automated SMS surveys like Yelp’s new Guest Experience Surveys combine guest responses with data stored in Yelp Manager for deep insights—more on that below.

40 restaurant survey questions

Stuck on what types of questions to ask? Try out these prompts on your guest questionnaire to tap into the minds of your diners after their meal.

General questions

First, you’ll want to understand who you’re getting feedback from: the demographics of your customer, their relationship to your restaurant, and how representative of your average customer they are. Knowing your customers well is key to making sure the guest experience fits expectations.

Try asking:

1. How old are you? (Can include age groups, i.e., 18-29, 30-45, 46-60, etc.)
2. How did you hear about our restaurant? (Consider multiple choice here: social media, through a friend, internet search, saw a sign)
3. Is this your first experience with our restaurant?
4. How often do you visit our restaurant?
5. How likely are you to recommend our restaurant to others on a scale of 1-10?

Dining experience

Naturally, you’ll want to understand the customer experience from beginning to end. For this section, focus on the dining experience itself, which can lead to broad interpretations:

1. What was the best thing about your overall dining experience?
2. What was the worst thing about your overall dining experience?
3. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your overall experience?
4. Did our restaurant meet your expectations?
5. How likely are you to return to our restaurant?

Food and drink

As a key part of the customer experience and, really, the main reason a person visits a restaurant, your food and drink should take a large part of your attention. Here are some questions to consider including in a questionnaire:

1. On a rating scale of 1-10, how would you rate the quality of our menu items?
2. Did our menu offer enough options to you, including any dietary restrictions?
3. Were there any specific dishes or drinks that stood out to you, either in a good or a bad way?
4. Did you feel that the prices charged represented good value for money?
5. Were the portion sizes appropriate?
6. Are there any suggestions you have to improve drink and food quality?
7. Did our menu meet your dietary preferences?

Service

The restaurant industry is a service industry by definition, so the quality of service is paramount. Guests that feel well taken care of will be more likely to return and recommend your establishment to others, so you may want to ask:

1. Were our staff friendly, attentive, and welcoming?
2. Did our staff respond to requests and address any concerns promptly?
3. How would you rate our speed of service?
4. Did our servers recommend any specials or make personalized recommendations?
5. Did our staff check on you during your meal to ensure you were satisfied?
6. If you waited for a table, were wait times reasonable and readily communicated?

Ambiance and atmosphere

The right ambiance goes a long way in a restaurant. From the décor to the interior design and more, your ambiance makes a huge impression on customers. Finding out what they like and dislike can help you tweak your aesthetic to make it more appealing. Try asking:

1. Did our restaurant look and feel welcoming when you arrived?
2. What did you think of the overall ambiance of our restaurant?
3. How would you rate the noise levels at our restaurant?
4. Was your table comfortable?
5. Was our restaurant as clean and hygienic as you’d expect?
6. Was our patio area or outdoor space comfortable, clean, and welcoming?

Booking and reservation

Bookings and reservations are a key part of many restaurant’s operations. The smoother, the better. Restaurants who use Yelp Guest Manager can expect a seamless experience for customers, with two-way communication, push-button reservations, and accurate times for online waitlists. But in any case, here are valuable questions to ask:

1. Did you make a reservation before visiting our restaurant?
2. How would you rate the reservation process on a scale of 1-10?
3. Did you receive a reservation confirmation?
4. Did you get a reminder for your reservation?
5. How satisfied were you in general with the overall booking experience on a scale of 1-10? What could be improved?

Takeout, delivery, and online ordering

As takeout, delivery, and online ordering are steadily increasing in popularity, restaurants that offer these options will need to hone in on the finer details to figure out what’s working and what’s not. Ask your takeout customers:

1. Was your order placed directly with us or was it via a third-party app?
2. If it was a third-party app, which delivery service was it?
3. Was your order delivered on time?
4. Did you receive exactly what you ordered?
5. How satisfied were you with your food delivery or takeout on a scale of 1-10? What could be improved?
6. What made you decide to opt for takeout or delivery as opposed to a dine-in experience?

How to implement a restaurant survey

There are quite a few ways to implement a restaurant survey, whether you’re simply doing a food survey of items diners just ate or a more comprehensive follow-up satisfaction survey.

Yelp Guest Experience Survey

Yelp Guest Manager customers now have access to Yelp Guest Experience surveys. These automated feedback surveys help identify specific areas for improvement—and they’re easy both for restaurants and customers.

It works like this: SMS surveys are sent directly to customers’ phones by Guest Manager, meaning no extra work for your staff. Yelp’s predictive intelligence engine automatically pairs survey responses to Guest Manager data to pinpoint trends and patterns. So, restaurateurs can get a solid overview of the real guest experience—from regulars to new customers and on any day of the week. Pairing feedback with customer data makes for a powerful tool that shines a light on the full restaurant customer journey and addresses customer needs.

A simple piece of paper

Sometimes old school is the way to go. An optional survey at the end of the meal, included with the bill, can be quite effective if it’s simple and short. This is a good situation to include a 1-10 ranking with a small number of questions so diners can quickly and anonymously answer questions. Since it’s immediate, the meal will be the freshest in their mind and they’ll have information to share that’s unbiased by memory.

SMS or email

If you have your customers’ information on hand, sending out anonymous surveys by SMS or email can be an effective way of gaining valuable feedback. Email especially can provide for longer-form answers from diners who may take the time to share their opinions. If customers can vent their honest feedback directly toward management and have their complaints addressed, that might be all they need. Automating these surveys with a CRM or via Guest Manager, as mentioned above, can save an enormous amount of time compared to sending these manually.

Via QR code

QR codes can be set to direct customers to online surveys on your website or on other online survey services. Since QR codes require little time investment for customers who wish to provide feedback, there’s less friction than directing someone to a URL. Offer a small incentive for proof of an answered survey like a discount.

Via your website

You can offer customers an option to complete a survey via your website. You may want to provide incentives for simply filling out the online survey, like a discount on their next meal, a free non-alcoholic drink, or dessert with an order. Be sure to note this option when you hand customers the bill so they’ll be able to fill out the survey on their own time.

Via your loyalty program

Offer strong incentives to customers in your customer loyalty program to complete surveys, like a buy 1 get 1 free meal, heavy discounts on their next purchase, or a free alcoholic drink. Since these are customers familiar with your restaurant, consider asking more open-ended questions like what menu options they’d like to see more of, what could be done to improve service quality, and how effective your marketing strategies have been. Your regular customers are your most valuable ones.

Optimize your customer service

Every restaurant wants to optimize the overall guest experience. Restaurant questionnaires can go a long way toward learning customer preferences, especially if you ask the right restaurant survey questions. Keep it anonymous, ask both specific and open-ended questions, and take note of common complaints, compliments, or trends. Tap into automated guest experience surveys via Yelp Guest Manager and watch the software pair responses with data for keen insights.

You can stay ahead of the curve in service by making sure your front-of-house operations are as smooth as possible. Whether you’re looking to improve reservations, check-ins, or table management, you’ll want to equip your staff with Yelp Guest Manager. Switching to Yelp Guest Manager will give your hosts and servers a seamless arsenal of tools to keep customers happy.

Curious how it works? Want to see if it’s right for you? Reach out to us for a free demo and we’ll get started. Every restaurant should be striving for greatness, and we’re there to help.