Restaurants
Restaurant website design
Somebody is sitting in a parking lot deciding where to eat. They have about eight seconds of patience and one thumb. Everything about a restaurant website should be built for that moment.
The menu is the website
Almost every restaurant site gets this backwards. The menu sits behind a full-screen slideshow, or a chef's-story page, or worst of all, a PDF link that opens in a viewer and demands pinching and zooming. Meanwhile the person deciding whether to drive over has already gone back to the search results.
Menu first, as real text, on the page. Not an image of a menu. Not a PDF. Real text — which also means Google can read your dish names, so you can actually appear when somebody searches for the thing you are known for.
The PDF menu problem. A PDF cannot be read properly by search engines, cannot be styled for a phone, and cannot be updated without re-exporting the whole file. If your menu is a PDF, fixing that one thing will do more for you than a redesign of everything else.
What we have built
Imperial Roast & BBQ House — a Corpus Christi Asian BBQ spot. Appetite-first, smooth-scrolling menu, online ordering, and photography that does the selling. Built to turn searches into seats.
Posuki — build-your-own poke, hand-rolled sushi, and wok classics on Airline Road. Menu-first structure so the ordering decision happens on the page rather than in the parking lot.
You can see both in our work, and open them live rather than taking our word for it.
What a restaurant site needs
| Element | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Menu as real text | Readable on a phone, and searchable by dish |
| Hours, visible immediately | The second question after "what do they serve" |
| Tap-to-call and directions | One thumb, in a car, deciding now |
| Real food photography | Stock photos of generic food read as dishonest |
| Direct ordering | Every order that skips a platform keeps its commission |
| Restaurant structured data | Lets Google show cuisine, hours, and price range |
| Speed | Eight seconds of patience, often on a weak signal |
The part that is not the website
For restaurants more than almost any other business, the Google Business Profile outranks the website. Food searches return a map with three results above every blue link, and that box is won with an accurate profile, current photos, and a steady flow of reviews. A beautiful site behind an empty profile loses to an average site with two hundred reviews, every time.
We build the site and set the profile up properly, and we will tell you which of the two is actually holding you back. Frequently it is not the website.
Frequently asked questions
What should a restaurant website have on it?
Menu, hours, location, and a phone number — all reachable within one tap of landing. Everything else is secondary. Most restaurant sites bury the menu behind a slideshow or serve it as a PDF that pinches and zooms on a phone, and both mistakes cost covers every single night.
Should the menu be a PDF?
No. A PDF menu is the single most common mistake in restaurant web design. It loads slowly, forces pinching and zooming on a phone, and search engines struggle to read the dish names inside it — which means you do not appear when someone searches for a dish you actually serve. Menus should be real text on the page.
Do restaurants need a website if they are on delivery apps?
Yes, and increasingly so. Delivery platforms take a substantial cut of every order and own the customer relationship. Your own site is where a direct order costs you nothing, where your Google listing points, and where you control what the business looks like rather than appearing as one tile in a grid.
How do we show up when people search for food nearby?
Mostly through Google Business Profile rather than the website — the map results sit above everything else for food searches. The website supports it: real menu text so dish searches can match, accurate hours, structured data describing the restaurant, and a site fast enough that someone deciding in a parking lot does not give up.
Get your menu working
Tell us about the restaurant and we will scope it properly — an itemised quote before any work starts, and you own everything we build.
Also worth reading: how the Google map pack is actually won · what custom web design means · our Corpus Christi service