Restaurant website design: A menu you change yourself, with the allergens one tap from every dish.
Bank holidays move your hours, the specials change, and someone always asks what is in the sauce. The site is built around that week: dishes and allergens you edit yourself, and tables that book into your diary. Restaurants, cafés and coffee shops pay for it once and own every account it runs on.
Business build £3,950, paid once. Ex VAT.
On the pavement, on a phone
A diner deciding on the pavement wants these settled first
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When does the kitchen stop taking orders?
Today’s hours where the eye lands first, the time last orders go in, and bank holidays changed the week before rather than the morning after.
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What would I eat, and for how much?
Every dish named and priced, with vegan and vegetarian marked, in type large enough to read with one thumb on the screen.
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Can I eat here safely?
Allergens beside each dish or a tap away, the hygiene rating somewhere obvious, and a clear way to ask the team about a dish.
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Is there a table, and where is the door?
A booking that takes a few taps, or a number that rings, then the address on a map and whether there is a step at the entrance.
The longer read, with the mistakes that cost restaurants their covers: does a restaurant need a website?
What the FSA and the CMA expect
Allergens, hygiene ratings and fees: where the rules land on your site
Each card says whether it is the law or the Food Standards Agency’s advice, and one is both: the law sets the minimum and the FSA’s advice goes further. The FSA’s pages cover England, Wales and Northern Ireland; Scotland has its own agency, Food Standards Scotland. This is how each stands at the time of writing.
- The law
Fourteen allergens, kept accurate
A food business must tell customers which of the 14 regulated allergens are in a dish, and that information has to be accurate and easy to get at. When a recipe changes, its allergen information has to change with it.
- The law, and FSA advice
Before the order, and again at the door
For orders taken online or by phone, allergen information must be given before the order is completed and again when the food arrives, in writing or by phone. The FSA’s advice goes further: written at both stages, and on your own website, ideally on the menu itself or at most one click away.
FSA, allergen guidance for food businesses FSA, allergen best practice
- FSA guidance
Your hygiene rating, before the order
Shown where a customer sees it before choosing food or ordering, such as the header or the menu, and only ever your current rating. The sticker at the door is a legal duty in Wales and Northern Ireland.
- The law
Every fee in the price from the start
A compulsory booking fee, or a delivery charge on orders you take direct, has to be shown up front. Adding it only at the end of the purchase is the drip pricing the CMA says is illegal.
The commission, or your counter
Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats take a fee on the orders they bring. Regulars who find you direct cost you no commission.
Stay on the apps while the orders justify the commission; nothing here is a case against them. This is about the second visit, and whose customer it is by then.
| Through a delivery app | Through your own site | |
|---|---|---|
| What the app or the site takes | A commission or fee on each order the app brings. Deliveroo’s own partner page calls it a commission on completed orders, and prints no standard rate. | No cut of any booking. Nothing to pay us each month. The one running cost is your domain renewal, at cost. |
| How your menu is shown | Your dishes in the app’s template, in a list the app sorts for itself. | Your dishes in your order, with your photographs and your words, changed whenever the menu changes. |
| Where a regular goes next time | Back into the app, which decides whose menu they see first. | Straight to your site, to book a table, check what is on or ring you. |
What we would build for a restaurant or café
Business
£3,950 ex VAT, paid once
10 pages, which is room for the menu, drinks, private dining, events and a find-us page beside the home page. Bookings for big tables and functions sync with your calendar, enquiry forms are routed and tracked, keyword research goes into every page, and we set up your restaurant’s Google Business Profile so the map listing and the site tell the same story. Live in two to four weeks.
Need a deposit with every reservation, or the site wired into your reservations software or EPOS? That is an advanced integration, built and priced on its own, from £650 ex VAT.
Lite, at £1,950, is the honest answer for a single-room café with one menu and a phone for bookings: 5 pages covering the menu, the hours, a map and a contact form. Calendar booking starts at Business.
Price a site for your restaurantRestaurant and café owners ask
Do I legally have to put allergens on my restaurant’s website?
The legal duty is to tell customers which of the 14 regulated allergens are in your food, accurately and in a way that is easy to get at. For food ordered online or by phone, the FSA says that information must be given twice: before the order is completed and again when the food arrives, in writing or by phone. Its advice goes further, to written information at both stages, and on your own site the allergens ideally sit on the menu itself, or at most one click away. That is the FSA’s position for England, Wales and Northern Ireland at the time of writing. The build sets each allergen line against its dish; keeping it true to what leaves the pass is yours after launch, because only the kitchen knows what went into the dish.
Do I have to show my food hygiene rating on the site?
Online, it is FSA guidance rather than a duty on the pages we read. The rating should be easy to see before a customer chooses food or orders, in the header or on the menu, and it has to be your current one, which is why the FSA offers an image to download or a code to embed. The window sticker is different: in Wales and Northern Ireland, displaying it at or near your entrance is the law.
Is a PDF of the menu good enough?
It is a second copy of the menu that somebody has to remember to update every time a dish changes, and its allergen lines have to stay as accurate as the kitchen’s. We build the menu as a page, dish by dish, in the editor instead: change a dish and its allergens are in the same entry, and you publish the change yourself, with no file to re-export.
Can the site take table bookings, or link to the system I already use?
Booking that syncs with your calendar, and enquiry forms that are routed and tracked, come with Business. In practice that handles big tables, functions and party enquiries well. Wiring the site into reservations software or an EPOS you run already, or taking a deposit with each reservation, is a separate build: choose the advanced integration add-on, at the price printed in the configurator.
Should I come off Just Eat, Deliveroo or Uber Eats?
That is not for us to say. Each takes a commission or fee on the orders it brings, and only you can say whether the reach is worth it. Deliveroo describes its charge as a commission on completed orders without printing a standard rate, and we could not read a published rate from Just Eat or Uber Eats. Your own site is simply where regulars can reach you without an app in between.
Who owns the site?
Your restaurant does, outright: every account is opened in its name before the build starts. The domain, hosting, code and editor are set up in your own accounts and we are added as a collaborator, so the site stays put whoever you work with next.
What does it cost to run once it is live?
Your domain renewal, at cost. Hosting and the editor run on free tiers in your own accounts, so nothing comes to us unless you choose a care plan. Any booking system or delivery app you keep goes on billing you directly, as it does today.