Restaurant websites start with a menu you can read on a phone

Covent Market Amber

People open a restaurant's website for three things: the menu, the hours, and a way to order or book. So the menu goes on the page as real text, not a PDF; the hours include holidays and match your Google profile; the Order and Book buttons go to the services you already use; and the photos are of your own food.

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Why the menu should be text, not a PDF or a photo

Plenty of restaurant menus online are a PDF or a photo of the printed card. It is the quickest thing to upload and the hardest thing to read on a phone. Nielsen Norman Group's 2020 article on PDFs makes the same point: they are laid out for paper, so on a phone people end up pinching, zooming and scrolling around to read them.

Text also does work a picture cannot. Google says it may copy menu data from your own website onto your Business Profile, and its guidance for appearing in its AI features, such as AI Overviews, includes keeping important content in text form. A dish written as text can be searched, quoted by an assistant and read aloud by a screen reader; a photographed menu is what the WCAG accessibility guidelines call an image of text. I also add structured data that points Google at the menu page and your opening hours, which its local business documentation has fields for.

What goes on the menu page:

Dishes, short descriptions and prices, grouped the way your printed menu groups them
Lunch, dinner, brunch and drinks under their own headings, or on their own pages if they are long
Dietary and allergen notes, if you want them, written out rather than shown as icons alone
Seasonal dishes marked as seasonal, so nobody drives over for one that has gone
The PDF, kept as a printable download beside the text menu rather than instead of it

Hours, holiday hours and how to find you

Most restaurants have more than one set of hours: the dining room, takeout and delivery, and sometimes a kitchen that closes before the bar. The site should list each one as text, on the hours page and in the footer, in the same words your Google profile uses. Google's rules for restaurants are specific: your main profile hours are the dine-in hours, falling back to takeout only if people cannot sit down, and the other service times go under 'More hours'.

Holidays and short closures go in as special hours, which cover up to six days in a row; anything longer is marked as a temporary closure. On the holidays Google lists for Canada, your profile may show a warning that your hours might differ. Google says you can set special hours for those dates in advance, and suggests confirming them even when nothing changes. Its Canadian list includes Thanksgiving, Remembrance Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year's Eve, among others. Whatever you set there, the site should say the same thing.

On a small site the hours share a page with the address, and that page has one job: getting someone who has never been in from the car to a table. A spot on Richmond Row or in Old East Village, for example, should say where to park. The page should cover:

The address, written exactly as it appears on your Google profile
Where to park, and whether that is on the street or in a lot
Which door to use, if there is more than one
Whether there is a step-free way in
Patio dates and hours, in season

Link to the ordering and bookings you already use

If you already take orders through your own ordering page or a delivery app, and bookings through a reservation or waitlist tool, the website does not replace any of them. It sends people there, with plain buttons such as Order for pickup and Book a table. Rebuilding ordering inside the site would give you a second menu to keep in step with the kitchen, and that is how wrong prices end up online.

Your Google Business Profile has room for one menu link, and one rule catches restaurants out: that link cannot go straight to a third-party ordering or delivery service. It should point at the menu page on your own site, which is one more reason to have one.

Food orders and reservations get their own links, up to 10 of each, and tables can also be booked through a Reserve with Google provider. Ordering and delivery services that say they have an authorized arrangement with you are listed on the profile automatically. You can remove the ones you do not want, and the provider then has five business days to take its link down.

Photos of your own food, not stock

Stock photos of a burger are easy to spot, and they promise a meal you do not serve. Google asks restaurants for at least three photos of their food or drinks on the Business Profile, in focus and well lit, without heavy filters or AI edits, because the picture should represent reality. The website should hold itself to the same standard.

The photos come from you. This is a one-person studio with no photographer, so it is either your own phone on a quiet afternoon by a window, or a photographer you hire. Take the dishes people order most, the dining room, and the front of the building as someone sees it from the street, so they recognise it when they arrive. Each photo on the site gets a short text description, so a screen reader can say what it shows.

Keeping your Google Business Profile and your website in step

On the Google Business Profile	What it should say or point to
Menu link	The menu page on your own site, not a delivery app
Menu editor items	The same dishes and prices as the site's menu
Main hours	Your dine-in hours, as shown on the site
More hours	Takeout and delivery times, worded the same as on the site
Special hours	Each holiday, set in advance, matching the site's hours page
Order and reservation links	The same ordering and booking services your site's buttons go to
Photos	At least three of your own food or drinks, plus the room and the entrance

Questions people ask

How much does a restaurant website cost?

A one-time $499, $899 or $1,399 in Canadian dollars, with free hosting on every plan. Starter covers one to three pages, which usually means home, menu, and hours and location. Standard covers four to six, for separate lunch, dinner and drinks menus or a catering and private events page. Pro covers seven to ten, which suits several locations, each with its own hours.

Do I need online ordering built into the website?

Usually not. If you already take orders through your own ordering page or a delivery app, the site links to it and the kitchen keeps one system. Ordering built into the website means a second menu and a second set of prices to keep in step. Some customers will always order through an app, so the site lists your own pickup link first and the apps after it.

Who changes the menu when prices go up?

On the Care plan, I do. It is $49 a month, cancel anytime, and covers up to 30 minutes of edits: prices, hours, photos and dishes, done within two business days. That is not same-day, so send holiday hours and price rises a few days ahead. Google's own menu editor is separate, and Google says changes there can take 24 to 48 hours to show.

Do I have to post calories on my website menu?

Generally not, if you run a single independent restaurant. Ontario's Healthy Menu Choices Act covers food service chains with 20 or more locations in Ontario. At one of those chains, an online menu that lists prices and any way to order, even just a phone number, needs calories and Ontario's contextual statement. Check Ontario's guide or ask your public health unit; this is not legal advice.

Have you built a website for a restaurant before?

There is no restaurant in my work to show you. The real business site on the examples page is 5Rivers Trucking, my own family's business, and the seven samples are trades, a photography studio and a children's play room. To see what I would do with your menu and hours, ask for a homepage preview: a twenty-minute call, then your own homepage within a week, free and with nothing signed.