Restaurant social media content calendar template: weekly themes for a small café
The hard part of posting for a café isn't the posting. It's deciding what to post at 2 pm on a Tuesday when the rush just ended and nobody took a photo. A calendar makes that decision once a month instead of every day.
Our Instagram guide for a new café covers the account and the first 90 days, and the short video guide covers shooting Reels on a phone. This post is the calendar that keeps it going after that: a theme for each day of the week, a monthly grid, and a short routine to fill it.
Start with weekly themes
A theme per day means nobody starts from a blank page. Pick five or six that fit your café and keep them for at least a month. Here's a set to adapt:
Day | Theme | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
Monday | Behind the counter | Prep, the first pour, the bake coming out, the morning setup |
Tuesday | Meet the team | One person, their favorite drink, how long they've been here (with their OK) |
Wednesday | How we make it | A short Reel of one drink or dish, start to finish |
Thursday | What's new or seasonal | A special, a menu change with its end date, a new bean |
Friday | Weekend plans | Weekend hours, a pastry that's only on Saturdays, an event |
Saturday | Guests and neighbors | Reposts of guests who tagged you (with permission), a local partner |
Sunday | Rest, or a Story only | Something simple: the window, the empty café before opening |
Stories can run every day; feed posts and Reels follow the themes. If five a week is too many, keep three themes and drop the rest. A steady three beats an ambitious seven that stops in week two.
The monthly grid
Fill it in once a month. Each cell gets the theme, a one-line idea and who shoots it.
Month ________ Planned by ________ Posted by ________
Week | Mon: Behind the counter | Tue: Team | Wed: How we make it | Thu: New / seasonal | Fri: Weekend | Sat: Guests |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | ||||||
2 | ||||||
3 | ||||||
4 | ||||||
5 |
Then add the dates that aren't weekly:
Date | What | Post when | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
Menu change or seasonal launch | Day before and the day | Use the photo from the menu change rollout | |
Holiday hours | A week before and the day before | Same hours as the door and Google | |
Local event or partner | Week before | Tag the partner | |
Anniversary, a team birthday (with their OK) | The day |
Holiday hours belong on your holiday planner first; the post repeats what the door sign and Google already say.
The content bank
Keep a running list of ideas and a folder of photos and clips that haven't been used. When a day's plan falls through, you take the next item from the bank.
Idea | Theme | Shot? | Used on |
|---|---|---|---|
Latte art close-up, window light | How we make it | Yes | |
The new grinder arriving | Behind the counter | No | |
Baker's first croissant of the day | Behind the counter | Yes |
Shoot extra on quiet mornings: three clips instead of one. Our menu photography guide covers light and framing.
One hour a month to plan it
- Look back (15 minutes). Which posts did people save, share or comment on? Write the top three and the bottom three in the log below.
- Fixed dates (10 minutes). Add next month's menu changes, holidays, events and hours.
- Fill the grid (25 minutes). One idea per cell. Reuse what worked, in a new way.
- Assign the shooting (10 minutes). Names next to each idea. The person on the morning shift is usually the best photographer you have, because that's when the light is good and the café is quiet.
Who does what
Job | Who | When |
|---|---|---|
Plan the month | Owner or manager | Last week of the month |
Shoot the day's idea | Opener or whoever is named | Before the rush |
Write and post | One person, the same one all month | Same time each day |
Answer comments and messages | The person who posts | Within a day |
Look back | Planner | Monthly session |
One person posts all month. Two people sharing the password means each one thinks the other posted.
The rules for staff and reviews
- Ask before you post a person. Team members and guests both get asked first, every time. Don't post minors on the team without a parent's OK.
- Staff reviews need a disclosure. If your team posts about the café as fans, the audience should know they work there. The FTC's Endorsement Guides say a connection between an endorser and the business that "might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement" and that the audience wouldn't expect "must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously", and that this applies "equally to employees posting their own reviews of the product on retail websites or review platforms" (16 CFR 255.5).
- Don't ask the team for reviews without a disclosure. The FTC's rule on reviews makes it a violation for a manager to ask employees for reviews when the reviews then appear without a disclosure and the manager didn't tell them to disclose (16 CFR 465.5(c)). Our Google reviews guide covers asking guests the right way.
- Music. Business accounts have limits on music; the short video guide explains them, and the music licensing guide covers what plays in the café.
The post log
Write down what you posted and what happened, in your own numbers from the app's insights. No benchmarks needed: you're comparing your café with itself.
Date | Theme | Format | What it was | Saves | Shares | Comments | Profile visits | Keep doing? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
After two months, the log tells you which themes to keep. Drop the one that never moves, and give its day to the one that does.
Where Mays fits
Mays doesn't post to social media or keep a content calendar; you post from Instagram, TikTok or Meta Business Suite. What Mays does is make sure the photos get taken and the plan is written down:
- The day's shot as a task. In Tasks → Templates, add a Daily template with one task, "Today's theme: photo or clip", with a Photo answer, assigned to the opener's role. Staff tap Take Photo in the app, and the photos land in one place for whoever posts. See Creating a checklist template.
- Fixed dates on the schedule. A menu launch or event goes in the schedule's Events row, so the team sees it and the person shooting knows what's coming. See Schedule events and birthdays.
- The rules in one place. Your themes, the photo rules (ask before posting a person) and the disclosure rule for staff go in a Knowledge Base article. See Knowledge base basics.
- The same content in the café. With the Digital signage add-on, the photos and vertical videos you post can play on your own screens, in a playlist with your menu boards. See Signage media and playlists.
Plan it once, post it every day
Pick your weekly themes, fill the grid in one hour a month, name who shoots each idea, and keep a bank for the days the plan falls through. The calendar does the deciding, so the posting takes five minutes.
Start your free trial: 30 days, every module, no card needed. Or book a walkthrough and we'll set up your daily photo task with you.