A restaurant website: what it must have and what it does not need

Guests find a restaurant on Google and Instagram, but they decide on the page that shows the menu and the address. A website makes that page yours. A social account can be blocked and an algorithm can change; the site stays.

Here is what a restaurant website should contain, and what it does not need.

What the site is for

A restaurant website is not a photo gallery. It has one job: to get a person to come in or place an order.

So the first screen carries three things — what is served, where it is, and how to get in touch. Everything else moves down the page.

• Name and type of cuisine
• Address and a point on the map
• Opening hours, answering "are they open now"
• A tappable phone number
• A button that goes to the menu

How to publish the menu

The most common mistake is publishing the menu as a PDF or an image. On a phone it has to be zoomed, and Google cannot see a single dish inside it.

The menu should be page text: dish name, ingredients, price and photo as separate records. Then it is searchable, and a price is edited in one place.

• Sections: salads, mains, drinks, desserts
• A price on every dish, not "on request"
• Photos help but are not required for every item
• Prices editable from the admin panel

Table booking and delivery

These two separate a restaurant site from a business card. Neither is needed on day one.

A booking form with three fields is enough: name, phone, date and party size. The request lands in the manager's Telegram, which is the cheapest thing that works.

Delivery is a separate system. A few orders a day are fine with a form. A steady flow needs a cart, payment and courier status, which is a different size of project.

How it looks on a phone

Most visitors arrive from a phone, often while walking. So the site is designed for the phone first and the desktop second.

• Tapping the phone number starts a call
• Tapping the address opens a map
• The menu reads by scrolling, with no zooming
• The page opens in three seconds; heavy photos cost visitors

What is not needed

Many restaurant sites pay for things that do not help: a large video on the home page, an intro animation, and music that starts on its own. All three slow the page down and often fail on a phone.

The same goes for a long "about us" text, a history section and a staff gallery. They are not harmful, they simply belong to a later version.

How long it takes and where to start

A site with a menu, address, opening hours and a booking form is usually ready in two to three weeks. Most of that time goes into material rather than code: dish photos, the price list and the text.

So the work starts here:

1. The menu list — dish, ingredients, price in one table
2. Photos of at least the main dishes
3. Address, opening hours, phone, social links
4. Where a booking request should land — Telegram or a phone
5. A domain name

Once those five are ready, the rest is technical work.

If you are planning a website for a restaurant or a cafe, the web development service page shows how scope and price are put together.