How to use Klaviyo for Your restaUrant & Cafe
Learn more restaurants can use Klaviyo to build loyalty, drive bookings and increase spend with each visit.
Guests are happy to share their details, when it feels like part of the service. The key is to collect information at the moments where connection is already expected.
Many restaurants underuse Klaviyo because they treat it like a basic email sender. Klaviyo is not Mailchimp with a nicer UI, it’s a revenue engine that can turn every reservation, walk-in, order, and guest interaction into a long-tail relationship. If restaurants struggle with data, it’s because they think of it as surveillance, involving too many questions, being too direct or too transactional.
Hospitality data collection needs to be about capturing information at the exact moments where a guest already expects a touchpoint, all while making sure friction is reduced. When the timing is right, data capture feels natural, seamless, and even helpful.
Because at the end of the day, the goal isn’t to collect the ‘data’: we want to build a living guest profile, that helps us understand the customer, one who may return endless times.
The hospitality brands winning right now understand one truth: loyalty isn’t built in the dining room. It starts the moment a guest searches, books, orders, or reads a menu online.
Klaviyo is the system that captures these moments and converts them into repeat visits. Below is a practical, restaurant-ready guide to using Klaviyo as your core guest experience platform.
Create a Guest Data System (Without Bothering People)
Restaurants struggle with data because it feels intrusive. However, the fix is simply: start by capturing data at the points where guests actually expect connection.
Restaurants don’t need to invent new interactions to gather data; they simply need to master the ones that already exist.
Reservation data (SevenRooms, Resy, OpenTable → Klaviyo)
This is the cleanest, highest-quality hospitality data you will ever receive. Guests willingly give their name, email, phone number, visit date, party size and ocassion type. Some systems even capture dietary preferences or seating choices.
Once pushed into Klaviyo, this becomes the backbone of your post-dining flows, VIP identification, visit frequency tracking and lapsed guest journeys.
This is foundational CRM.
Online ordering & pickup (Toast, OrderMate, Mr Yum, Deliveroo, Uber Eats where possible)
These supply order history, spend patterns, preferred dishes and order frequency. This segment is ideal for lapsed order flows, menu drop announcements and targeted upsells (“Your usual is back”).
It turns occasional takeaway customers into reliable midweek revenue.
Event enquiries
Function leads are gold. They carry the highest potential spend and a strong intent signal. Feeding these enquiries into Klaviyo allows automation to:
send event kits instantly
follow up every 24–48 hours
track warm vs cold leads
route to sales with context
This removes the friction and inconsistency that often costs venues thousands in missed events.
Website pop-ups tailored to hospitality (e.g., “Get the chef’s monthly menu notes”)
Most venues sabotage themselves with generic “Sign up for news & offers”, because hospitality pop-ups must speak to appetite and curiosity. Trying offers or messages like “Be the first to know when truffle season opens.” or “Exclusive access to wine dinners & limited events.” sends a different typ eof message; it’s an invitation to belong, less marketing.
These sources feed Klaviyo a profile for each guest: their visit history, average spend, food preferences, and behaviour. Thus, this is the start of your retention engine, before you even have a “loyalty program.”
Automate Reservations (the Smart Way)
For restaurants with SevenRooms or Resy integration, Klaviyo can send automated nudges based on booking behaviour:
Incomplete booking abandonment
Low-availability alerts (“Only 6 seats left this weekend”)
Post-booking confirmations with upsells (wine pairing, chef’s counter, tasting menu)
This reduces admin and fills seats without extra labour.
Send Campaigns That Cut Through the Noise
Restaurants rarely need 8 emails a month. They need 1–2 high-quality, creative campaigns that hit at the right moment. These can cover a few things, such as:
New seasonal menu drop
Set menu previews
Wine dinners
Sunday lunch revival
“A note from the chef” storytelling
Special booking windows
New cocktails or bar snacks
Pre-orders for festive seasons
At-home meal kits or speciality items
What matters is storytelling, timing, and relevance.
Strong restaurants are build on relationships, not promotions. In hospitality, margins are tight and attention is tighter. Klaviyo allows restaurants to create a direct, emotional, ongoing connection with guests that no marketplace or booking platform can offer.
At Parsley & Dill, this is what we specialise in automated guest journeys that feel human and drive real revenue.
If you’d like help setting up your Klaviyo for hospitality, we can build:
Full CRM foundations
Guest flows
Event enquiry funnels
High-impact email design
Segmentation architecture
Monthly campaign playbooks
Send us a note. Your regulars are waiting.
Ready to turn one-time diners into loyal regulars? Want flows, campaigns, and guest journeys that actually drive bookings? Reach out to Parsley & Dill and we’ll build the CRM system your restaurant should have had from day one.
Book your call now.
A complete lifecycle system for specialty food, beverage, chocolate, wellness, and artisan product brands.
This pack is built for brands in:
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