When the market
fell 9%,
this venue
grew 33%.
A single percentage is easy to claim. This is something harder to argue with: a third-party benchmark of 80+ competing venues in the same neighbourhood, the same time window, verified by OpenTable. Two lines going in opposite directions. One explanation.
+33% means nothing
without knowing what
everyone else did.
A restaurant that grows 10% in a year where the market grows 15% is losing ground. A restaurant that grows 33% in a year where the market falls 9% is doing something the market cannot explain. The difference between those two stories is a benchmark.
OpenTable publishes neighbourhood-level cover data across all participating venues. For Dublin's South City Centre corridor, this benchmark spans every direct competitor — 70 venues at engagement start, expanding to 84 as new restaurants opened. Every metric in this case study is measured against that same benchmark, in the same time window, verified by the same platform.
This matters because digital marketing is full of single-number claims. "We grew covers by X%" tells you almost nothing about whether the work contributed to that or whether the whole market was rising and the venue simply rode the tide. The benchmark strips that ambiguity out entirely.
What the benchmark shows here: in the period when the digital infrastructure was being built and deployed, this venue outperformed the market by 42 points. The market was contracting. The venue was growing. Those two facts, verified by OpenTable data, are the case for this engagement. Not a percentage. A comparison.
Two lines.
Same market.
Opposite directions.
Cover performance indexed to Jan 2024 baseline. Both lines move in the same direction before August 2024. After August 2024, they separate. That is the inflection point.
Jan 2024 – Jan 2026 · Indexed to 100
Three windows.
Three very different
competitive realities.
All cover data sourced directly from the venue's OpenTable account. Benchmark: South City Centre neighbourhood. No estimates — platform-verified figures throughout.
the market.
diverge.
holds.
42-point spread.
84 venues.
Same streets.
Same conditions.
The benchmark is not a fabricated comparison. It is every participating venue in the same South City Centre OpenTable neighbourhood — growing from 70 to 84 as new restaurants opened over the engagement period.
The market context matters for honest interpretation. The South City Centre benchmark spent most of 2024 contracting — all 70+ competing venues were declining simultaneously. This was not a uniquely bad period for one restaurant. It was a market-wide condition.
In that environment, growing +33% is not about having a good menu or good service — every restaurant in the neighbourhood has those things. It is specifically about what happens when a guest who doesn't already know the venue searches "restaurants Dublin city centre" on Google Maps at 7pm and decides where to eat. Digital visibility determines who they find.
By Period 3, the market had recovered modestly to +5%. flagship engagement grew at +21%. The gap narrowed from 42 points but did not close — because the infrastructure that drove the Period 2 divergence continued to compound. Every month of citation authority, link profile, and pack position consolidation adds to the structural advantage.
Every metric that
fed the result.
Cover data is the output. Here is what fed it — the visibility, authority, and discovery infrastructure built over 18 months that made the benchmark comparison possible.
Honest accounting
of what digital work
actually contributed.
The benchmark comparison proves the direction. Attribution converts the direction into a claim — and that claim must be stated conservatively to be credible.
Fixed monthly retainer → 43× revenue return
Attribution is stated at 50% of cover growth. The restaurant's team, kitchen, and the flagship brand carried the other 50% — that half is not claimed here. 50% of +12,503 additional covers at a conservative €50 floor spend equals ~€310,000.
The actual per-cover spend is €62.99. The conservative floor understates the return. Break-even on this engagement: fewer than one evening's worth of additional covers per month. The venue exceeded that threshold in the first weeks. Everything beyond it is pure return.
How does your venue
compare to its
market?
A 15-minute audit call will show you exactly where you stand against the benchmark — your local OpenTable neighbourhood, your domain authority vs competitors, your map pack coverage. Whether we work together or not.
15-minute call. Benchmark report included. No commitment.