Honey & Herb
How a waffle-focused breakfast & brunch spot turned Google Ads into 15,500+ store visits and 17,000+ directions requests — growing Google-driven foot traffic 6× in two years.
A multi-year partnership built around one goal a restaurant can take to the bank — getting more real people through the door, every single morning.
The Client
Honey & Herb is a waffle-forward breakfast & brunch restaurant in Thousand Oaks, California — the kind of local spot people build their weekend around, in a market full of breakfast options competing for the same hungry morning crowd.
For a restaurant like this, success isn't measured in clicks — it's measured in tables filled and people walking through the door. The goal was simple and relentless: grow Google-Ads-driven store visits, month over month.
The Challenge
Breakfast and brunch is one of the most crowded categories in local dining. In and around Thousand Oaks, Honey & Herb competes with chains, diners, cafés and every other weekend spot for the same hungry morning crowd — and that crowd decides where to eat in the few minutes it spends searching "breakfast near me" or "best brunch."
The objective was refreshingly clear, and it wasn't website sales or form fills: grow Google-Ads-attributed store visits month over month. That's a hard thing to fake. You can't pad it with cheap clicks — it only moves when real people actually show up to eat.
So the account had to be built around physical traffic from day one: reach nearby diners at the moment of intent, win the "take me there" and "call now" clicks, and point every dollar at getting one more table seated.
Honey & Herb · Thousand Oaks, CA
The Approach
We built a local-first Google Ads program aimed at the one outcome that matters for a neighborhood restaurant — foot traffic:
Performance Max for store visits
Reaching nearby diners across Search, Maps, and YouTube to drive measurable visits to the restaurant — the campaign optimized to the store-visit goal itself.
Local search for breakfast intent
Owning high-intent 'breakfast near me,' 'brunch,' and 'waffles' searches across Thousand Oaks and the surrounding area.
Directions & calls that convert
Capturing 'take me there' and 'call now' moments — the clicks that turn into someone pulling into the parking lot.
Online ordering support
Backing up foot traffic with online orders, so demand we created converted whether guests dined in or ordered ahead.
The Results, Year by Year
Real numbers, pulled straight from the account. Tap a year.
What Made It Work
Foot traffic that compounds
Store visits grew from 1,244 to 6,806 to 7,475 — roughly 6× in two years. This wasn't a one-month spike; it was a durable climb in real people walking through the door.
Directions requests nearly tripled
'Take me there' moments climbed from 3,248 to 9,482 — people actively navigating to the restaurant. For a local spot, that's as close to a guaranteed visit as advertising gets.
Optimized to the goal that matters
We ran the campaigns to the store-visit objective itself — not clicks, not vanity metrics — so every dollar was pointed at physical traffic, the thing that actually fills a dining room.
A local engine that keeps scaling
Clicks more than doubled (15,886 → 35,626) while the account got sharper every year — proof the program still has room to grow.
A full dining room is the only metric that matters for a neighborhood restaurant. We optimized the account to store visits themselves — so the growth you see is real people, not clicks.
What This Means for Your Restaurant
If you run a breakfast, brunch, or any local restaurant, the lesson from Honey & Herb is simple: advertise to foot traffic, not clicks. By optimizing campaigns directly to the store-visit goal — rather than cheap website traffic — every dollar was pointed at the one outcome that fills a dining room.
The results compounded because the approach was durable. Store visits climbed from 1,244 to 7,475 a year and directions requests nearly tripled — not a one-month spike, but a steady, repeatable rise in people showing up to eat. That's what a well-run restaurant Google Ads program is supposed to do.
The same engine works whether you're chasing the morning rush or the dinner crowd: use Performance Max and local campaigns to reach nearby diners, win the high-intent "near me" searches, and capture the directions and call clicks that turn into visits. For more on the playbook, see our guides to getting more restaurant customers and local SEO for restaurants.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you measure foot traffic from Google Ads?
Google Ads includes a store-visit conversion that estimates how many people visited a physical location after interacting with an ad, using anonymized, aggregated data from users who opt in to location history. Paired with directions requests and call clicks, it lets a restaurant see real-world visits from advertising. Honey & Herb grew from 1,244 to 7,475 store visits a year.
What are directions requests and why do they matter for a restaurant?
A directions request is when someone taps to navigate to your location from an ad or listing — a strong 'I'm coming in' signal that usually precedes a visit. For a local restaurant it's one of the most valuable actions you can drive. Honey & Herb's directions requests nearly tripled, climbing from 3,248 to 9,482 per year.
How can a breakfast or brunch restaurant get more customers with Google Ads?
Win the high-intent local searches ('breakfast near me', 'best brunch', 'waffles'), run Performance Max optimized to store visits to reach nearby diners across Google, and make it easy to get directions or call. Optimizing to visits rather than clicks is what turns ad spend into a fuller dining room — the core of how Honey & Herb grew foot traffic 6×.
What is a store visit conversion in Google Ads?
It's a conversion type that credits your campaigns with estimated in-person visits to your business after an ad interaction. It's modeled from aggregated, anonymized location data and is available to eligible businesses with physical locations and enough visit volume. For restaurants, it's the metric that best reflects whether advertising is actually driving people in.
How does Performance Max help local restaurants?
Performance Max runs one campaign across Search, Maps, YouTube, Display, Discover and Gmail, and can optimize directly to store visits. That means it automatically finds nearby diners most likely to come in, across all of Google, from a single setup — which is why it's so effective for driving measurable foot traffic to a neighborhood restaurant.
Is Google Ads worth it for a small local restaurant?
When it's optimized to real outcomes like store visits, calls and directions — rather than clicks — yes, because you can see the physical traffic it drives and scale spend only as the results justify it. The Honey & Herb program grew store visits roughly 6× in two years on a modest local budget. A free audit will show whether the math works for your restaurant.
More Restaurant Results & Reading
Cala Scottsdale Case Study
6,900+ store visits and 1,100+ reservation leads for a Scottsdale fine-dining room.
Hundred Mile Brewing Case Study
Driving taproom traffic and events for a craft brewery with Google Ads.
Google Ads for Restaurants
Our full restaurant program — store visits, reservations, and local reach.
The Store-Visit Revolution
How restaurants measure real foot traffic from their advertising.