Cafés & food

Websites for Cafés, Restaurants & Takeaways

Two things get looked up, and only two: what's on the menu and whether you're open. Both change constantly, and most food sites bury both — the menu inside a PDF nobody can read one-handed on a bus, and the hours in a footer that hasn't been right since a bank holiday two years ago.

Audit back within 24 hours · Working demo within 2 days · No deposit, ever

#1request on any food site is the menu
0people enjoy pinch-zooming a PDF menu
"near me"is how most of your new customers search
£395five-page site, live in 3–5 days
What usually goes wrong

The four problems I find most in this trade.

Not generic web-design advice. These are the specific failures that turn up over and over when running real Google audits on businesses like yours — each one with what it's actually costing you and how it gets fixed.

01

The menu is a PDF

What happensIt's the single most common mistake in this trade — a print menu uploaded as-is, or worse a photograph of one.
What it costsIt's unreadable on a phone, invisible to Google, and impossible for a screen reader. Search for one of your own dishes and you won't appear.
The fixThe menu rebuilt as real text: readable at any size, searchable, and marked up so Google can list your dishes and prices.
02

Opening hours are wrong or hidden

What happensHours live in a footer image or haven't been updated since Christmas.
What it costsSomeone drives over and finds you shut. That's a customer you've lost and a review you've earned.
The fixHours front and centre, marked up in schema so Google shows them, with a bank-holiday override you can flip yourself on the Platform tier.
03

You don't appear in "near me" searches

What happensNo location schema, no Google Business Profile, no town or neighbourhood mentioned in the actual page text.
What it costs"Café near me" is one of the highest-volume searches there is, and it's decided almost entirely on local signals you're not sending.
The fixLocalBusiness and Restaurant schema, real address text, a map, and your Business Profile set up properly — which for food beats the website itself.
04

Photos that don't sell the food

What happensEither no photographs, or huge uncompressed ones that take eight seconds to appear.
What it costsFood is bought with the eyes. If the images don't load, there's nothing left to persuade anyone.
The fixYour photos, cropped and colour-corrected, served as modern compressed formats so a gallery still loads in under a second.

Want to know which of these apply to you? Test your site free on the home page for the speed number in thirty seconds, or ask for the written audit and get all four checked properly by hand, back within 24 hours.

What I'd build you

Designed around your business, not a template.

A greasy-spoon café and a tasting-menu restaurant are not the same business with different prices, and their sites shouldn't be built the same way. A café wants the menu and hours instantly, big type, no ceremony. A restaurant is being chosen on a Friday night by four people comparing photographs, so the images carry the sale and the booking link has to be one tap away. A takeaway is judged on delivery radius and whether you're open right now. Your build starts from which of those decisions your customer is actually making.

A typical build for cafés & food Starting point, not a fixed menu
Pages
  • Home with hours and location above the fold
  • Menu as real, readable text
  • Separate menus by service where you have them
  • Gallery of the food and the room
  • Find us — map, parking, accessibility
  • Bookings and functions enquiry
Features that matter here
  • Menu marked up so dishes can appear in search
  • Opening hours in schema, so Google shows them live
  • Bank-holiday hours override (Platform tier)
  • Your existing booking or ordering link, untouched
  • Events and specials section
  • Instagram feed pulled in automatically
How you get found
  • Restaurant and LocalBusiness schema
  • Menu schema with dishes and prices
  • Google Business Profile set up or corrected
  • Neighbourhood and town in the real page copy
  • Fast enough to win on mobile, where all of this happens
  • Review stars marked up for search results
Pricing for cafés & food

What it would cost you.

Guide prices based on the typical scope for this trade, one-off, with £0 a month on every tier. The free audit turns this into a real number — often a lower tier than people expect. And don't feel boxed in by the recommendation: pick by what you need the site to do.

★ Recommended for cafés & food
£395Starter
  • Home, Menu, About, Find Us, Contact
  • Menu as real text, not a PDF — readable and searchable
  • Opening hours and map front and centre
  • Indexed for "near me" searches with the right schema
  • Enquiry form for bookings and functions
See this as a free demo →
£795Business
  • Everything in Starter, up to 8 pages
  • Separate breakfast, lunch and evening menus
  • Photo gallery of the food and the room
  • Events, specials and functions sections
  • Your booking or ordering system linked in, untouched
See this as a free demo →
£1,495Platform
  • Everything in Business, up to 12 pages
  • Change the menu yourself — live in seconds
  • Bank-holiday and seasonal hours override
  • Instagram feed pulled in automatically
  • Mailing list signup for regulars
See this as a free demo →
Included whichever you pick
  • Free audit with real Google data first
  • A working demo before you pay anything
  • £0 per month — hosting is genuinely free, forever
  • Your existing booking or payment system kept exactly as is
  • Built mobile-first and tested to WCAG 2.2 AA
  • You own the code, the domain and every login
  • 14-day fix guarantee from launch
  • No deposit at any point before you've seen the work

Want to edit it yourself? You don't need the top tier for that. Add the £150 self-edit content panel to any build and change prices, photos and text yourself with no monthly fee — it's on the add-ons list with everything else.

Worth adding for cafés & food

Fixed one-off prices, addable to any tier, and addable later rather than up front. These four are the ones that actually earn their money in this trade — the full list of fifteen is on the pricing page.

Self-edit content panelChange the menu yourself in seconds. The single most useful add-on in this trade.
£150
Google Business Profile setupHours, photos, menu links and posts. For food, this beats the website for footfall.
£95
Photo editing & gallery buildFood is bought with the eyes. Properly compressed shots of the dishes and the room.
£75
Review collection systemTurns happy regulars into the reviews that decide who eats where.
£145

Don't buy any of these speculatively. After the free audit you'll be told which one or two would genuinely move your numbers, and which of the rest would just be me taking your money.

Questions from this trade

The ones that come up every time.

Why does a PDF menu matter so much?

Because Google reads pages, not attachments. If your menu is a PDF, every dish, price and dietary note on it is invisible to search — so you can never appear for "[town] Sunday roast" or "gluten free pizza near me". Rebuilt as text, all of it becomes findable, and it stops being unreadable on the phone your customer is holding.

I change my menu constantly. Am I forced onto the £1,495 tier?

No. Either send changes over as £15 edits, or add the £150 self-edit content panel to a £395 or £795 build and change the menu yourself in seconds with no monthly fee. The Platform tier is only worth it if you also want live integrations — an hours override, an Instagram feed, an ordering system talking to the site.

We already take orders through Deliveroo or a booking system. Does that change?

Not at all. Anything already taking money keeps running exactly as it is — I build the fast, findable front door around it. Nothing to migrate, nothing to relearn, no risk to orders already coming in.

Two ways to start, both free.

Already have a site? Take the audit — real Google data plus the checks an automated tool can't run, back within 24 hours. Haven't got one? Take the demo — a real working site for your business on a live link within 2 days. Neither costs you anything and neither needs a deposit.

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