Finding new customers
People nearby who aren’t on Buon Cibo’s customer lists
$10in ads for each order
- Their first order averages
- $69
- Every $1 in ads brings back
- $6.64
So: The first order pays for the ad nearly seven times over.
Meta adsFacebook and Instagram, run for Buon Cibo
Every $1 in ads brought back $10.46.
That’s Buon Cibo’s best full week on Facebook and Instagram this October, counted in preorder meals and event tickets bought on its website. We run the creative and the strategy, and every ad is tracked, traced to the orders it brings in, and scaled only once it works.
Run for Buon Cibo by Tom Tarantino and Ezra Gonzalez
- You pay Meta directly
- No cut of ad spend
- Judged by paid orders
Source: Meta Ads Manager, October 2026
How one ad becomes a paid order
One dinner, one price, one deadline, shown to the people most likely to order it.
01 · Trackable
We don’t spend money we can’t measure.
Every ad we run is there to make money, so if a dollar can’t be traced to a paid order, we don’t spend it. We’re obsessed with how customers behave: where they come from, what they do and what they buy. With all of it connected, we can see what a campaign is likely to do before we put more money behind it. That’s why you’ll see so many numbers on this page.
What we see on every campaign
- Where traffic comes fromWhich ad, email or post sent each visitor.
- What customers doWhat they look at and tap on the way to an order.
- Who buys from each pageHow many visitors to each offer’s page end up buying.
- Page by pageWhere people leave, so the weak step gets fixed first.
- The average orderWhat each order is worth, by offer and by audience.
- The add-on rateHow many add a dessert, a salad or wine.
- Every sale, counted twiceBy the shopper’s browser and by your store itself, so sales aren’t missed.
- Against real ordersMeta’s count checked against the store’s own orders.
02 · Traceable
A new customer costs $10. A regular, $4.
Every order traces back to the campaign that brought it in, so Buon Cibo knows what each kind of customer costs. These are its numbers in ads, for each order, in its best full week this October. Most ad reports blend the two into one.
Bringing customers back
Past customers and people who’ve visited the site
$4in ads for each order
- Their order averages
- $53
- Every $1 in ads brings back
- $12.98
So: Every order after the first costs less than half as much.
Blended together, that week reads $1 brings back $10.46. Split apart, Buon Cibo can see what each job costs and put every dollar where it earns the most.
Source: Meta Ads Manager, best full week of October 2026
Never run ads, or not sure what yours bring in? Sit down with Tom and Ezra, and we’ll show you where to start.
Book a call03 · Scalable
Sales from the ads more than tripled. Then they nearly doubled again.
More money only goes behind what’s already selling. Month 0 is the old setup, a separate campaign for every dinner. In Month 1 we moved the budget to what was selling and started rebuilding. By Month 2 everything ran as one system, with regulars and new customers handled separately.
Sales grew, and each dollar brought back more, not less. The average order from the ads is about 40% bigger too.
Sales from Meta ads, per dayMonth 0 = 1×
1×
3.5×
6.7×
04 · What we handle
We build, test and scale every campaign.
The strategy, the creative, the store behind the ads and the scaling, all run by us and all decided from the data. We don’t make assumptions: we read who bought, which message sold and which creative converted, then put the next dollar there.
- 01PlanThe strategy
What to sell, and to whom. New and returning customers run as separate campaigns, and every ad sells something with a date: a dinner on a set night, a seat at an event.
- 02BuildCampaigns, store and tracking
The campaigns and audiences, the store the ads point at, and the tracking that reports every purchase back to Meta from the browser and the server.
- 03CreateThe creative
The images and words for every offer, made by us and tested against each other. The ones that sell get more budget; the rest get replaced.
- 04TestEvery week
New messages, offers and creative run against what already sells. We read the orders by audience, message and creative, and keep what the numbers back.
- 05ScaleOnly what converts
Money moves to what converts and away from what doesn’t. That’s how the return on each dollar doubled in a month.
What we keep for the call:
- Audience setup
- Budgets
- Timing
- Creative schedule
- Offer structure
05 · Who runs them
The people running Buon Cibo’s ads will run yours.
Clear the Plate is Tom Tarantino and Ezra Gonzalez. Tom is an award-winning restaurant owner with more than 30 years in San Diego food, and he makes sure what we promote is worth promoting. Ezra built Buon Cibo’s brand, website and email list from the ground up, and runs its ads. Every result on this page came from Buon Cibo’s own ad account before we offered to run anyone else’s.
Tom Tarantino
Award-winning restaurant ownerTom decides what’s worth promoting: a dish the kitchen can make well, at a price that still pays after the ads.
- Grew up in Little Italy, in a Sicilian fishing family here since the early 1900s
- Co-founded RoVino (opens in a new tab), an Italian restaurant and wine bar in Little Italy, in 2016
- Ran Rovino The Foodery in East Village, where take-home dinners for two took off in 2020
- Opened Buon Cibo, his Sicilian deli, market and wine shop, in Scripps Ranch in 2026
Ezra Gonzalez
Brand, website, ads and emailEzra runs the campaigns, the creative tests and the tracking, and writes the weekly report. Every ad figure on this page comes from campaigns he runs.
- Built Buon Cibo’s brand and email list, a year before it opened
- Built the store the ads send people to
- Runs its Facebook and Instagram ads and its weekly emails
- Set up the tracking that counts every sale from an ad
Ezra’s results at Buon Cibo
- 1,500on the email list before opening day
- 60%+of the list opens each email
- $1 brings back $8.67in sales from the ads in October
You talk to us directly. One of us leads, the other steps in for their specialty. No account team in between.
06 · How it starts
First we see what you have. Then the ads.
Whether you’ve run ads before or never have, it starts with a conversation, and you’re in charge at every step. You’ll have the plan and the price in writing before anything starts.
- 01Sit down with Tom and Ezra
The three of us meet for 30 minutes to an hour, on a call or in person. Whether you’ve run ads before or never have, tell us what you’d like to sell more of.
Who: You and Tom and Ezra - 02See what you have
Your website, how people order, any ads or social accounts, and whether your setup can count which ads bring sales. If something’s missing, we’ll tell you what it needs first.
Who: Ezra - 03Ready to count every sale
We build or fix the page that takes the order, a full website or one page, and set up the tracking, so every sale from an ad is counted before a dollar is spent.
Who: Ezra - 04An offer, and the ads for it
Together we pick something worth promoting, like a dinner on a set night, priced so it still pays after the ads. We make the pictures and words; your food photos help, but you don’t need a shoot.
Who: You and Tom and Ezra - 05New customers and regulars
One set of ads finds new customers and another brings regulars back, within a monthly budget you set and pay to Meta directly.
Who: Ezra - 06A report every week
What each $1 in ads brought back, what a new customer cost, and what we’ll change next week, in plain numbers.
Who: Ezra and You
What you bring
- Your website and any ad accounts you already have
- A monthly ad budget you set, paid to Meta directly
- Your menu, prices and any food photos you have
- A yes on every offer before it runs
07 · The weekly report
Every week, you see what your ads brought in.
One short report, read beside your store’s own orders: what each $1 brought back, what new and returning customers cost, which ad sold best, and what changes next week.
Weekly ad report Buon Cibo · Facebook and InstagramSample
- Every $1 in ads brought back
- $10.46
- Best full week of October
- Ads per order, new customers
- $10
- Their first order averages $69
- Ads per order, returning customers
- $4
- Their order averages $53
- Best ad, $1 brought back
- $13.36
- Friday dinner, shown to past customers
What changes next week
- More budget behind the Friday dinner ad to past customers, the best return of the week.
- A new photo for Lasagna Sunday, tested against the one running now.
- Event ads shown first to people who have bought tickets before.
Sample built from Buon Cibo’s figures in Meta Ads Manager, October 2026. The changes listed are examples.
08 · Is it a fit
Ads work when there’s something worth buying and a store that can take the order.
Ads pointing at a menu page can’t be measured, so they can’t be tuned either. That’s why we look at what you sell and where people pay before we look at the ads.
A good fit if you have
- Something to sell online, with a date or a deadline
- Ready to send ads to a page built to measure them
- Room in the kitchen for more orders
- An owner who will share real sales numbers
Not the right time if
- There’s nothing to buy online yet, so we’d build that first
- The kitchen is already stretched every night
- You want likes and reach more than paid orders
- The food or service needs fixing first
09 · Ways to start
Two ways to start. Both track every dollar.
We don’t run ads to a page nobody can measure: that’s money wasted. Most restaurants don’t have the tracking in place to see which ads bring sales, and it’s hard to set up. So both ways to start include the page that takes the order and everything behind it: the system behind every result on this page.
The whole system
The website and ads
We build the website that takes the order, connect every sale to the ads, and run the campaigns, the creative and the weekly report. The same system behind every number on this page.
How it’s paidThe website at a written price, from $5,000. Running the ads from $750 a month. Your ad budget goes to Meta directly.
See the website packages One program, fast-tracked
The 90-day launch
No new website. We add one landing page for one program, like a Friday dinner, with every sale and every number connected, and your current site stays as it is. We run the ads to that page, measure that one program and scale what works. At day 90 you decide what’s next.
How it’s paidOne written price for the setup and the 90 days. Your ad budget goes to Meta directly.
Ask about the 90-day launch Running your ads
From $750 a month
The fee depends on how many programs and campaigns we run, and how often they change. The price is in writing before anything starts.
- No percentage of your ad spend
- No percentage of the sales the ads bring in
- You pay Meta directly, and the ad account stays in your name
What owners ask about ads
Ask yours on a callAnswered by the people who do the work
- Tom TarantinoAward-winning restaurant owner, 30+ years in San Diego food
- Ezra GonzalezBuilds the store, runs the ads, emails and tracking
We don’t promise any return. Results depend on your food, your prices, your neighborhood and what you’re selling. What we promise is that you’ll see, every week, what your ads brought in.
Only if nobody measures them. Buon Cibo’s ads are judged by paid orders every week. Anything that stops earning gets cut.
We build or connect the page that takes the order, set up the tracking that counts every sale, plan the first offer with you, make the first ads, and launch separate ones for new and returning customers. Your first weekly report follows the first full week.
In Buon Cibo’s best full week this October, about $10 in ads for each order from people nearby who weren’t on its customer lists, and their first order averaged $69. Bringing a past customer back cost about $4 an order. That’s why we run the two as separate campaigns.
It depends on what you’re selling and how far people will drive for it. We set the budget with you in writing. You pay Meta directly. Our fee for running the ads starts at $750 a month, and we never take a percentage of ad spend or of the sales the ads bring in.
Not on their own. Ads only pay when every sale can be traced back to them, and most restaurant websites can’t do that. If you want to keep your site, the 90-day launch adds one landing page for one program beside it, with everything connected. If you want the whole system, we build the website and run the ads together.
Not exactly. Meta counts orders from people who saw or clicked an ad within a set number of days, and some of them might have ordered anyway. That’s why we also read your store’s own reports on new and returning customers.
You’ll talk with Tom and Ezra
Let’s see where your ads could start.
Tell us what you’d like to sell more of. The three of us meet for 30 minutes to an hour, on a call or in person. No sales deck. We’ll look at what you have and tell you whether we can help.
What we’ll ask
- 01What does your business do today?
- 02Where is it doing well?
- 03Where would you like help?
- 04What have you already tried?
View sources and how we counted
- Ad figures come from Meta Ads Manager. Return is the purchase value Meta attributes to the ads, in its default window, divided by what the ads cost.
- The headline, cost per order and order values are Buon Cibo’s best full week of October 2026, Monday to Sunday, across its two campaigns.
- Month 0, 1 and 2 are August, September and the first half of October 2026, compared as average sales per day.
- Audiences: the new-customer ads leave out people on Buon Cibo’s customer lists and recent online buyers, though not everyone who has visited the site or follows it. The returning ads go to past customers and recent website visitors.
Ad-attributed sales aren’t profit, and some buyers might have ordered anyway. Buon Cibo is our founding example, not a client portfolio, and we don’t promise the same results.