You run a restaurant in Astoria, Williamsburg or Midtown, or a catering business serving office lunches, weddings and private events across the five boroughs. An agency offers to make you more visible online on a twelve-month contract. On paper it sounds good. But twelve months covers a whole cycle of patio season, holiday parties and the January slump, and the fee is real money in a business where margins are counted per cover.
Before you sign, ask the right questions. The answers will tell you more than the sales deck.
Why restaurants need to be demanding
The diner searching online wants to eat tonight, book for Saturday or find a caterer for an event three weeks out. They compare fast, look at photos, reviews and the address, and call, book or message the first place that feels right. That makes visibility valuable, but only if it brings that kind of customer, at that moment, for your cuisine and your neighborhood. A vague contract can cost you a year with nothing you can read.
New York also raises the stakes. Competition is dense on almost every block, diners have endless choice, and a new opening down the street can pull attention away in a week. That means the provider you pick has to understand that your customer is local and impatient, that catering clients plan ahead and compare several quotes, and that tourists and out-of-town visitors decide from their phones in a hotel lobby. The questions below test whether they do.
Questions about what will be delivered
"What exactly are you committing to put live, and by when?"
Reassuring answer: a written commitment on what the plan includes and the schedule, with a remedy if they miss it. With Traffic Engine, if what your plan includes is not live on time, the following month is free.
Worrying answer: "we'll do our best", "it depends", or a list of technical tasks you could never check.
"Do you also work for restaurants I compete with directly?"
An agency pushing ten restaurants in the same neighborhood for the same searches cannot serve them all honestly. Reassuring answer: a clear cap on clients per sector and area. Worrying answer: "no problem, we work with tons of restaurants."
Questions about measurement
"How will I know it is working?"
Reassuring answer: a regular, dated report, plus results you can check yourself in your own Google tools, without relying on screenshots the agency chooses to send. Worrying answer: a proprietary dashboard you cannot access, or "impressions" that say nothing about reservations and catering inquiries.
"What happens at three months?"
A serious plan includes a checkpoint. The point is not a promised number of covers but reading the trajectory: does your restaurant show up more often when people search for your kind of food in your part of the city, are booking and catering inquiries moving? For why the commitment runs a full year, see our guide on why visibility work runs on a 12-month commitment.
Questions about promises
"Can you guarantee we'll be number one on Google?"
This is the trick question, and the right answer is no. Nobody controls what Google or an AI assistant decides. An honest provider guarantees what they control, delivery and measurement, and shows you results they have achieved elsewhere, for example on their own site. Anyone promising the top spot in a few weeks is selling a story. Our guide on top-of-Google promises lists the warning signs.
"How many extra customers will I get?"
Reassuring answer: no numeric promise, but a conversation about what a customer is worth to you. For a caterer, one corporate account that orders lunch every week or a handful of extra weddings can carry a year of visibility on its own. Worrying answer: a precise figure pulled out of thin air.
Questions about money and exit
"What is the total cost over twelve months?"
Ask for the full amount: setup plus twelve monthly payments. With Traffic Engine, Presence comes to $16,050 in year one and Momentum to $26,850. If an agency cannot give you that number cleanly, it is not being transparent.
"Who owns what gets built?"
Your website, your business profiles and your accounts should stay in your name. If you ever switch providers, you should leave with everything that was built. For the rest of the list, our general guide on questions to ask before signing a visibility contract completes it.
How Traffic Engine answers these questions
Traffic Engine makes your restaurant or catering business show up when people search for your cuisine or service in New York, on Google and in AI assistant answers. The answers are written on the offer page: a Visibility Audit at $750, deducted from the $1,650 one-time setup if you start within 30 days; Presence at $1,200, Momentum at $2,100 and Flood at $3,850 a month; a 12-month commitment with a measured review at three months; a dated report every week; results in your own Search Console; 3 standard seats per sector per area, plus an exclusive option while the sector is still empty. Kolonell ran the approach on its own site first and publishes the curves on the page. Read the offer and check whether restaurants are still open in your area.
Before you sign anything
Print these questions and put them to every provider you meet, including us. Start with the free website score to see where you stand, then use the calculator on the offer page to see how many bookings or catering jobs you need to cover the investment. If the answers are clear and the math works, the audit is the next step.