Get the profile genuinely complete
Most Kuwait restaurant profiles are half-built: no menu, three photos from opening day, a category that says "Restaurant" rather than "Lebanese restaurant", and hours that were never updated for Ramadan. Each of those is a ranking signal and each is free to fix.
Set the primary category as specifically as it allows, add secondary categories, upload real photos every month, list menu items as products with prices, add attributes like outdoor seating and family section, and fill in both the Arabic and English name. Bilingual profiles surface for bilingual searches, and half of Kuwait searches in Arabic.
Reviews decide the order more than anything you write
Among restaurants of similar distance, review count, rating and recency largely determine who appears in the top three. This is the one ranking factor you can move deliberately, and it is also the factor that decides whether the person clicks once they see you.
Make it a routine rather than a push: a QR on the bill folder, a line from the server at the right moment, and a reply to every review. Replies signal an active business to Google and a responsive one to the person reading before choosing. The Google Business Profile guide covers the rest.
The website work that actually pays
You do not need a large site. You need one page that gives Google a consistent name, address and phone matching your profile exactly, plus your menu as real text — not a PDF and not an image. Text is what search engines and AI assistants can read, quote and answer from.
That text is also what wins the searches Maps does not answer: "best mandi in Kuwait", "Lebanese restaurant with outdoor seating Kuwait City", "restaurants open after midnight Salmiya". Write it in Arabic and English, and those queries become reachable without competing with the big delivery platforms on their own terms.