How to create a restaurant survey? + 20 questions examples

Regularly assessing your guests’ experience at your restaurant is key to your growth and success. While there are many ways to measure customer satisfaction, nothing is as easy and direct as asking your diners for feedback through a restaurant survey.

Worried about the “survey fatigue”? We feel you. We all receive too many emails and requests for feedback. However, this shouldn’t hold you back from regularly surveying your customers. In fact, people are generally keen to provide feedback. Especially if they had a remarkable experience (good or bad). And there are many ways you can make giving feedback easy for your diners. At sunday, we provide a feedback feature integrated into your digital payment solution to do exactly that.

So, how to develop a survey for your restaurant?

Define your restaurant survey goals

First, determine why you want to survey your customers. There are many reasons to do a restaurant survey. You may want to regularly assess your overall customer satisfaction, and measure how well you’re doing in terms of serving speed or food quality. Maybe you’ve launched a new dish or rearranged your space —how do your customers feel about it? Ask them! Surveys are also a great way for you to understand how people know about your restaurant so you can gain marketing insights.

Then you need to think about how you’ll manage your restaurant survey results. Yes, surveying customers doesn’t stop at the moment they complete your form. You’ll need to go through the results and process your data to identify trends. Well-managed data will help you make informed decisions on improvements to achieve the goals you set for your business.

So save yourself some precious time by designing your survey questions according to how you wish to process your results.

There are two main types of questions with different data processing implications in the world of restaurant surveys: closed questions, and open-ended questions. With closed questions, you obtain quantitative results which are easy to translate into statistics. Open-ended questions on the other hand provide you with qualitative feedback. Answers to open-ended questions are more detailed and can be more informative, but they also require more human handling when processed.

Most restaurant surveys use both closed and open-ended questions. Find the right balance that works with your goals and the way you’ll manage results.

Different types of restaurant surveys

Keeping your goals in mind, here are four quick and friendly ways to ask for your diners’ feedback.

1. The one closed question

Wait, one question only? Well, you can get a lot from asking one question. And keeping your survey extra short and simple will help you maximize your number of answers. Again, it all depends on your goals. To measure customer satisfaction, a simple “How likely are you to recommend our restaurant to someone?” with an answer scale from 0 to 10 can go a long way.

2. The one open-ended question

If you are to ask one single question, you might also choose to make it open-ended to gather more information than a simple number on a scale. You could ask, for example: “Do you have any specific suggestions for how we can improve?” or “What were the best and worst parts of your meal?”

3. Multiple closed questions and one open question

You may need to ask more than one single question to your diners depending on your goals. Asking three to four closed questions with one open question at the end is a very common way to design a restaurant survey. This format allows you to carefully select a limited number of questions to gather the information you need while leaving space at the end for customers to share comments and feel heard.

4. Multiple open questions

If you want more qualitative feedback, you can also ask only open questions. This survey type places more importance on your customers’ voices. In such a case, we suggest keeping it to 3 questions to keep it short for your diners to answer and for you to process afterward.

How and when to conduct your restaurant survey

Now that you have an idea of your restaurant survey structure, it’s time to think about how you’ll conduct your survey and when. Here you have many different options.

1. On-table Feedback Cards

Physical feedback cards on your restaurant tables ensure great visibility for your survey. Only customers who actually dine at your restaurant can fill it. However, physical restaurant surveys come with environmental and printing costs. And think about going through all the hand-written feedback! Chances are some answers might be completely unreadable. Most importantly, diners might not take the extra step to grab a pen and fill out a physical feedback card. They might also fear being easily identifiable and refrain from being honest with their responses if they fill out your survey.

2. Digital Surveys via Email

Email is a great way to stay in touch with your diners. Why not use it to ask for their feedback? Digitalizing your restaurant through services such as sunday will offer you many opportunities to collect your customers’ contact details for you to keep them engaged and informed. You can design an automatic follow-up email survey after a meal. However, not all your diners will take the extra step to open your email, let alone fill out your survey. 

3. Point-of-Sale (POS) System

It’s no secret: at sunday, we like our surveys to be digital, nice and short. We believe that customers are more likely to provide feedback if restaurant surveys take minimal time to fill, and if we make it easy for them. We like to make your team’s life easier, too. That’s why we started to integrate restaurant surveys into checkout flows. No need to reach out for a pen and paper or open another email. Diners can give feedback after an easy 10-second payment. Integrating your restaurant survey into your payment or POS system is the best way to generate high answer numbers. That’s exactly how we help restaurants collect 50% of customers’ reviews. Again, you need to check whether this way of surveying your diners aligns with your goal and restaurant survey format.

4. Staff Interaction

Training your staff to ask for feedback verbally during the meal or when presenting the bill is a great way to build a connection with your diners and make them feel valued. However, it may be harder for a customer to give negative feedback face-to-face, so your staff needs to ensure they feel comfortable. Also, make sure that there’s a way to register verbal feedback for you to process it later. 

5. QR Code at Tables

Similarly to the on-table feedback card, you can also place a QR code on each table for guests to access your restaurant survey online. Say goodbye to paper, pens, and poor handwriting. Similarly to the feedback card though, not every diner will pay attention and take the time to scan your QR code and fill out your survey. Chances are only your most dissatisfied or ecstatic customers will take the time to do that, which may affect your results. 

6. Feedback Kiosks

Kiosks are another way to make it easy for your customers to give you feedback. You can set them near your exit for your diners to share their experience on their way out. Kiosks require your survey to be very easy. It may be difficult to type answers to open-ended questions on a kiosk. And who enjoys touching a screen with many greasy fingerprints…? Kiosks require maintenance and regular cleaning, on top of a significant financial investment. Again, look back at your restaurant survey goals making any decision.

7. Social Media Polls

In this day and age social media is a great way to hear directly from your customers and engage with them. Conducting short polls on your restaurant’s social media pages is ideal if you want to get timely feedback on one particular aspect of your restaurant. Or if you want to test a new suggestion before implementing it. Social media is instantaneous and allows quick answers. But it’s also ephemeral. After a day your post won’t likely be seen again if you don’t reshare it or post it anew. Keep in mind that receiving feedback on social media will most likely involve manually processing the data collected, as well as responding via comments or messages. Also, not all your diners will be following you on social media and you may have followers who have never set foot in your restaurant.

8. Mobile Apps

If your restaurant has a mobile app, include a built-in feedback system. You can choose to have your restaurant survey be accessible at all times on your mobile app or pop up at designated times such as after a payment or redeeming points. You can also combine several surveys for different locations in your app. Make sure your app’s backend allows you to manage collected feedback data in an easy and streamlined way. 

9. Mailing List Surveys

We already mentioned after-meal emails. If you have a mailing list, you can also send periodic restaurant surveys to your subscribers. Regularly emailing your customers helps you stay top of mind and keep your diners engaged and informed. Each email you send to your mailing list offers you an opportunity to do a new survey. This allows you some flexibility and to receive timely feedback. Remember however that not all customers will open your email, let alone take the time to fill out your survey. 

10. Customer Receipts

You can also print a QR code or link to your restaurant survey on your receipts for customers to provide you with online feedback. Again, asking your customers to take out their phones to scan their receipts is asking them to take an extra step they might not be willing to take. And nowadays many diners don’t want a printed receipt to begin with.

20 questions examples to create your restaurant survey

We know it can get hard to find inspiration to write your restaurant survey questions. Look no further than the below list of 20 sample questions and feedback areas to get you started. Again, make sure that the questions you choose align with your goals.

• Overall Experience: How would you rate your overall experience at our restaurant?
• Service Quality: How satisfied are you with the service provided by our staff?
• Food Quality: Please rate the quality of the food you received.
• Menu Variety: Did you find a satisfactory variety of options on our menu?
• Food Presentation: How would you rate the presentation of the dishes?
• Value for Money: Do you feel the prices are reasonable for the quality and quantity of the food?
• Cleanliness: How would you rate the cleanliness of the restaurant?
• Ambiance: Did the ambiance of the restaurant contribute positively to your dining experience?
• Speed of Service: Were you satisfied with the speed of service (ordering, delivery of food, etc.)?
• Staff Friendliness: How friendly and attentive were the staff during your visit?
• Special Requests: If you had any special requests or dietary restrictions, were they accommodated?
• Likelihood to Recommend: How likely are you to recommend our restaurant to friends or family?
• Frequency of Visits: How often do you visit our restaurant?
• Social Media Interaction: Have you engaged with our restaurant on social media platforms?
• Online Reservation Experience: If applicable, how was your experience with online reservations?
• Source of Discovery: How did you first hear about our restaurant?
• Preferred Cuisine: What type of cuisine would you like to see more of on our menu?
• Suggestions for Improvement: Do you have any specific suggestions for how we can improve?
• Celebration or Event Feedback: If applicable, how did we contribute to your celebration or event?
• Contact Information (optional): Would you like to provide your contact information for future promotions or surveys? (Ensure this is optional and includes privacy assurances.)

FAQ

How to improve the number of respondents to my survey? 

First, make sure your survey is extra easy to fill and keep your questions concise. At sunday we believe that integrating your restaurant survey into your checkout system is the best way to improve your answer ratio. You can also further improve the number of respondents to your survey by offering something in return for filling it out. Customers will more likely take the time to give you feedback if they feel like they’re getting something out of it. You can thank them with perks such as discounts, points, merch or other gifts.