The Restaurant Comment Moderation Playbook

Restaurants sell trust. A diner scrolling Instagram before dinner is deciding between your venue and three others in under 30 seconds. If the top comment on your latest post is a fake complaint, a delivery scam link, or a troll insult, you lose the booking before the menu even loads.

The data from the 2026 Ad Comments report: negative comments below an ad reduce click-through by 23–37% depending on vertical; restaurants sit at the higher end because of the visual, appetite-driven nature of the buying decision.

Every restaurant sees some version of these four patterns. The specific spam changes; the categories do not.

• Fake negative reviews from competitors or disgruntled individuals — short, vague, often unverifiable complaints
• Delivery scam comments — bots posting "get 50% off with this link" under your food photos
• Off-topic trolling — racist, sexual, or inflammatory comments on aesthetic food posts
• Coordinated raids after a controversy — one negative news mention turns into 200 comments in an hour

Before any advanced rules, every restaurant should have this baseline in place. Most restaurants skip step 3, which is the single highest-ROI setting.

• Enable Instagram "Hidden Words" with your restaurant name, city, and menu items as protected terms
• On Facebook, set Moderation Assist to "Aggressive" for profanity and "Active" for spam
• Connect your Instagram and Facebook accounts to a comment moderation tool that can auto-hide ad-level comments (native tools cannot moderate ad comments reliably)
• Designate one person per shift who checks DMs and reported comments — a kitchen or floor manager is fine

Most restaurant moderation rules are either too loose (nothing gets caught) or too tight (real customers get hidden). These rules strike the balance.

• Auto-hide comments containing external delivery-app links that are NOT your partner platforms
• Auto-hide comments with more than 3 emojis and no words (almost always spam)
• Auto-hide comments mentioning competitor restaurant names unless from a verified account
• Flag (do not hide) comments containing food-safety keywords — these need human review within 30 minutes
• Never auto-hide negative reviews that describe a specific dish or visit — respond instead

Fake-review raids are terrifying in the moment and boring in retrospect. The response protocol is the same almost every time.

• Minute 0–5: Screenshot the pattern (same phrases, same accounts) — you will need this for the platform report
• Minute 5–15: Turn on crisis lockdown — auto-hide any comment from an account less than 30 days old on this post
• Minute 15–60: File platform reports for "coordinated inauthentic behavior" on Facebook, "fake engagement" on Instagram
• Day 2: Post an acknowledgment if the raid is visible. Do not engage with specific trolls.
• Day 7: Review what rules would have caught this earlier. Add them.

Most restaurants track the wrong thing. Do not track "comments hidden" — that number means nothing without context. Track these four instead.

• Spam rate on ad comments (% of ad comments flagged as spam) — target under 5%
• Response time on real customer complaints — target under 4 hours during business hours
• Comment sentiment trend (rolling 7-day) — alarm if negative share exceeds 20%
• Comments hidden per dollar of ad spend — trending up over time means your rules are tightening appropriately

Print this, put it on the wall of the office, update quarterly.

• Instagram Hidden Words enabled with brand + menu terms
• Facebook Moderation Assist set to Aggressive (profanity) + Active (spam)
• Ad comment moderation tool connected (native tools alone are not enough)
• One person per shift assigned to comment monitoring
• Crisis protocol documented and tested once per quarter
• Weekly review of auto-hidden comments — 5 minutes, every Monday