How To Make Your Restaurants Show Up in ChatGPT

For most businesses — and especially restaurants — online visibility has been the #1 priority over the past few years. Whether it's getting more clients through search (SEO) or keeping regulars engaged on social media, digital presence drives every stage of the customer journey.

With ChatGPT (and other AI), the game has changed — again.

Potential clients are already asking ChatGPT where to eat tonight, and this will only grow faster.

At Malou's, we're already noticing this change in customer reviews (ex👇) and trafic analysis.

The question is: will you show up in the answer? How To Make Your Restaurants Show Up in ChatGPT? What can you do to get ChatGPT to recommend your restaurant? Will this work for other AI? Let's take a look.

How is AI different and what doest it mean for restaurants?

Let’s start with the obvious: AI is changing how people find local businesses.

We’re entering a world where your potential customers no longer type "Best Italian restaurant in Chicago" into Google. Instead, they ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini — and they don’t get a list of 10 blue links. They get one answer. A conversational, confident, highly specific answer.

Some call it GEO (GPT Engine Optimization). Others refer to it as AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization). Whatever the term, the principle is the same: optimizing your brand to appear in AI-generated responses.

And this changes everything about how you manage your visibility. First, because you need to show up in the answer. Second, because a confident answer is very convincing. And third, because users write more with more details when they use an AI.

Instead of googling "best restaurant around me", they might add more details in their prompts. "I have a diner date tonight with a vegan friend, we'd like a cosy atmosphere and cocktails. What are the best restaurants in the area of Bushwhick?"

Spoiler alert: to be good in GEO/AIO, you NEED to be good in SEO and local SEO.

Understanding How AI Works (and Why It's So Different from Google) and What it means for Restaurants

To understand how to appear on ChatGPT, we need to understand how it thinks. Unlike Google, which indexes billions of web pages and ranks them based on technical signals (like keywords, backlinks, page speed...), ChatGPT works with a different engine under the hood: a retrieval-augmented language model.

Its job is not just to synthesize a response. It first has to retrieve the best information.

This is what we call retrievability: your ability to be accessed, understood, and reused by a Large Language Model (LLM). This concept is foundational to GEO/AIO.

LLMs don’t look for "websites." They look for fragments of meaning, across a huge range of structured and unstructured content:

• Local business listings
• News articles
• Review platforms (Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.)
• Blogs (especially with good authority)
• Forums
• FAQs
• Quotes

Yes, even quotes in Reddit threads. Even restaurant names mentioned in "Top 10" lists. Even a guest praising you on a travel blog. LLM love quotes and recommandations.

In fact, these sources are often more valuable to an AI than a beautiful homepage. Why?

• Because they are more conversational (the way users ask)
• Because they provide context (what type of experience you offer)
• And because they are unique (not just copy-paste boilerplate)

Retrievability is about ensuring that your restaurant appears in the right context, across the right sources, often enough, and with the right associations.

That’s why the new visibility strategy isn’t just SEO.

It’s SEO + brand mentions + structured presence + conversational content.

What ChatGPT Uses to Recommend Restaurants: 4 Things You Should Do

ChatGPT makes recommendations based on a combination of its training data and live integrations (like Bing or ChatGPT Search).

Here’s what matters most:

1. Brand Mentions = The New Backlinks

LLMs don’t rely on hyperlinks the way Google does. Instead, they use co-occurrence: the frequency with which terms appear together in their training data.

For restaurants, that means your brand name + your keywords (expertise, location).

Ex: our client “Breads Bakery” has be mentioned alongside “best babka in New York” in so many articles, client reviews, and forums, he automatically shows up in any AI.

2. Reputation and Reviews

Like Google, ChatGPT learns from what real people say.

Thousands of reviews mentioning your name, your food, your experience? Your restaurant will be unmissable.

Even better: platforms like Google, Yelp, TheFork, and TripAdvisor are very AI-readable.

Our top tip: collect and answer all reviews, even negative ones. They are an incredible visibility tool for a restaurant.

3. Authority & Content Structure

AI prioritizes content that is:

• Clear and conversational
• Frequently updated
• Structured

Like Google (again), structure help AI understand what is important with headings, schema markup, and accessible FAQs.

From your Google Business Profile (ex Google My Business) to your website, make sure you use titles, bulletpoints, etc.

4. Presence Across Trusted Sources

Finally, just like Google, Bing and other search engines (and humans), AI will trust you more if more people say they trust you.

ChatGPT knows:

• Local blogs
• User forums
• Press articles
• Directories
• Business listings

The more places your brand appears — the better. GEO/AIO is about being everywhere that matters.

PR here is quite important, as well as backlinks (including links on social media). But just like in SEO, don't force it or overdo it. Make sure you are mentioned in content related to your brand and expertise. 

A backlink from a highly trusted blog on cars will not bring you any SEO or GEO juice!

5. Local pages, or better, Store Locators

If you run a restaurant group, a franchise, or any multi-location brand, your store locator isn’t just a UX feature — it’s a strategic SEO and GEO asset.

Each of your locations needs its own page.
Not just a “find us here” widget. A fully indexable, content-rich, structured landing page that clearly answers:

• Who you are
• Where you are
• What you offer
• Why that location is unique

Because here’s what most groups get wrong: they treat local SEO as a checkbox — one page, one line of address, one phone number.
But LLMs don’t work like that, and neither does Google’s local algorithm anymore.

If ChatGPT can’t retrieve distinct signals for each restaurant, it will treat your group as invisible.

Remember: ChatGPT doesn’t rank pages — it retrieves answers.
If all your locations point to the same URL, or worse, aren’t individually mentioned across your ecosystem, you drastically reduce your chances of appearing in an AI-generated recommendation.

Your store locator is your opportunity to create a data-rich web of retrievable content, tailored to the language of real users and the structure AI systems rely on. The Malou Store Locator we designed for restaurant groups allows:

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Bottomline : start with SEO then move to GEO

Strengthening your online reputation, being active on social media, and investing in local SEO aren’t just “nice-to-haves” — they’re the foundation.These actions compound over time, and brands that structure them well move faster, scale smarter, and stand out everywhere that matters.The best part? You don’t need to reinvent the wheel — you just need the right method and the right consistency.

Once all of the basics are covered, you will be able to optimize you AI presence.

At Malou's, we help multi-location restaurants be excellent in everything digital-related. We are currently working on a restaurant-focused GEO study — how to get your brand picked up by ChatGPT, Perplexity and every AI in between. If you are interested, call us at +1 (917) 528 3521 to book the checklist (we will send it your way when it's ready) or to speak to one of our experts for a free online audit.