Restaurant AEO: FoodEstablishment Schema, GBP Optimization, and AI Recommendation Visibility
Restaurant AEO operates at the intersection of local search and AI recommendation systems - AI assistants on phones, smart speakers, and AI-powered maps are increasingly the first touchpoint for dining discovery. The queries 'best restaurants near me', 'Italian restaurants in [city]', and 'restaurants with outdoor seating' are now as likely to first contact an AI system as a search engine, making FoodEstablishment schema and GBP optimization critical for restaurant visibility.
For the local AEO foundation underlying restaurant optimization, see Local AEO Basics and Google Business Profile for AI.
Restaurant AEO - Schema Implementation Guide
The three schema types most critical for restaurant AI visibility:
FoodEstablishment
The base schema type for all restaurant and food service businesses. Required properties: name, address (PostalAddress with streetAddress, city, state, postalCode), telephone, url, servesCuisine (very important for query matching - 'Italian restaurant near me'), openingHoursSpecification (by day of week), and priceRange ($ to $$$$). The servesCuisine property is critical for cuisine-specific voice search ('find a Thai restaurant...'). Add currenciesAccepted and paymentAccepted for transactional agent queries.
"servesCuisine": ["Italian", "Mediterranean"],
"priceRange": "$$",
"openingHoursSpecification": [
{ "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
"dayOfWeek": ["Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday"],
"opens": "11:00", "closes": "22:00" },
{ "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
"dayOfWeek": ["Saturday","Sunday"],
"opens": "10:00", "closes": "23:00" }
]