# Websites for cafés & coffee shops

> Websites for cafés, where the entire job is being findable, being open when you say you are, and looking like somewhere worth walking to.

- Source: https://nerdsharks.com/industries/cafes
- Publisher: Nerdsharks (Exeter, Devon, UK)
- Updated: 2026-09-27

There are 28,920 cafés and unlicensed restaurants across 378 UK local authorities (ONS UK Business Counts, SIC 56102, 2025, OGL v3.0).

## How customers choose

Café discovery is almost entirely local and immediate - someone is nearby, wants coffee, and is choosing between three options within walking distance. They check the hours, look at whether it seems pleasant, and check whether there is space to work or room for a pushchair. A second, slower group is looking for somewhere specific: dog-friendly, gluten-free, good for a laptop, quiet enough to meet someone. Those specific needs are what people actually search for and are rarely answered anywhere on a café website.

## What most websites in this trade get wrong

Many cafés reasonably conclude a website is not worth it and rely on a social profile. The problem is that a social profile cannot answer "is it open now", cannot be found by someone searching for a dog-friendly café nearby, and cannot show a current menu. The other common failure is a site built once and never updated, so the hours are wrong and the menu is two years old - which is worse than having nothing.

## What the website has to do

- **A visit** - There is no online transaction; footfall is the entire objective.
- **Answer specific suitability questions** - Dog-friendly, laptop-friendly and dietary needs are what people actually search for.
- **Event and private hire bookings** - The one genuinely high-value enquiry a café receives.

## Pages

- **Home** - Hours, location, and what the place feels like.
- **Menu** - Current, in text, with dietary markers.
- **Find us** - Map, parking, accessibility, opening hours.
- **Private hire** - The high-value enquiry.

## Features that matter

- **Opening hours that are genuinely maintained** - A café site with wrong hours actively costs you customers.
- **Explicit answers to suitability questions** - Dog-friendly, step-free, wifi and dietary options are the actual search terms.
- **A current menu in text with dietary markers** - Allergen information is a legal and practical necessity.
- **Photographs of the room, not just the coffee** - People are deciding whether they want to sit there for an hour.

Trust signals: Accurate opening hours; Food hygiene rating; Photographs of the space; Dietary options.

Seasonality: Weekday footfall follows office patterns; weekends are driven by families and walkers. Summer terraces change everything.

## Local authorities with the most

| Local authority | Businesses |
|---|---|
| Birmingham | 540 |
| Westminster | 385 |
| Glasgow City | 380 |
| City of Edinburgh | 355 |
| North Yorkshire | 345 |
| Tower Hamlets | 335 |
| Camden | 325 |
| Leeds | 320 |
| Cornwall | 310 |
| Manchester | 290 |

## The offer

- **Monthly**: £299 upfront, £99/month (the upfront is a setup fee), 12-month minimum term. We build it, host it and look after it - and after 24 monthly payments, it is yours.
- **Own It**: £1,795 upfront, £49/month, no minimum term. Buy the website outright. It is yours to keep, move or cancel.
- **Pro**: £6,950 upfront, £299/month, 12-month minimum term. No limits. For large, multi-site and fast-growing businesses.
- Payment: The setup fee is paid when you book, and it starts the design. Monthly fees are collected by Direct Debit, covered by the Direct Debit Guarantee, from the day your site goes live.
- Guarantee: You see your finished design on your phone and approve it before anything goes live, with two full rounds of changes included. Nothing launches until you are happy with it. The Monthly plan runs for 12 months from launch.
- Bolt-ons: Google Business Profile management £29/month; Local SEO pack £49/month; Business email £5/month. Coming soon, not yet on sale: Missed-call text back, Review booster.
- VAT: We are not VAT registered, so there is no VAT to add to these prices.

## Questions

### How do I keep my opening hours up to date?

Send us the change and we make it - that is what the monthly change is for, and bank holidays are the most common one. Wrong opening hours are worse than no website at all, because they send a customer on a wasted journey and they rarely come back.

### I already have a busy social page. Do I need a website?

A social profile cannot be found by someone searching for a barber near them, cannot show a current price list clearly, cannot take a booking without a conversation, and belongs to the platform rather than to you. It works well alongside a website and badly instead of one.

### Can we just upload our menu as a PDF?

We would strongly advise against it. A PDF menu cannot be read on a phone without pinching and zooming, cannot be found by search engines, and is almost always out of date. Setting the menu as real text on the page is usually the single biggest improvement a restaurant website can make.