# Websites for pubs

> Websites for pubs that answer what people actually check before they come in: is the kitchen open, is there a Sunday roast, can I bring the dog, and is the match on.

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

There are 31,360 pubs and bars across 378 UK local authorities (ONS UK Business Counts, SIC 56302, 2025, OGL v3.0).

## How customers choose

Pub customers search in two very different moods. The first is immediate and local: someone is out, it is half past twelve on a Sunday, and they are typing "Sunday roast near me" or "dog-friendly pub" into a phone and choosing from whatever the map shows. They check whether the kitchen is serving, whether they need to book, and whether there is a garden. The second is planned: a birthday, a wake, a christening, a group of twelve after a walk, or a quiz team looking for a new Tuesday. Those people read the function room page, ask about a set menu and want an email reply. Regulars rarely visit the site at all, but they do check the events page for live music, quiz nights and which football is being shown. Walkers, cyclists and holidaymakers in rural areas lean heavily on search because they do not know the area, and they care about parking, muddy boots and whether food stops at half past two.

## What most websites in this trade get wrong

Most pub websites are a single page with a photograph of the building, a phone number and a menu PDF that went out of date two chefs ago. They cannot be found for the searches that actually fill tables - Sunday roast, dog-friendly, beer garden, food served all day - because none of those words appear anywhere in text. Kitchen hours are usually missing or wrong, which is the one thing a hungry family checks. Tenanted and leased pubs often inherit a template page from the pub company that the licensee cannot update, so events never get posted and the site quietly ages. And the function room, which is the highest-value enquiry a pub gets, is usually a sentence at the bottom of the About page with no capacity, no menu and no way to ask.

## What the website has to do

- **Table booking, especially for Sunday lunch** - Sunday is the busiest service in most food pubs and the one people book ahead for.
- **Function room and party enquiries** - Wakes, birthdays and christenings are the highest-value bookings a pub takes.
- **Answer the suitability questions** - Dogs, children, garden, parking and step-free access decide the visit before the menu does.
- **Event attendance** - Quiz nights, live music and big matches fill quiet midweek evenings.

## Pages

- **Home** - Open now, kitchen hours today, book a table, and this week’s events.
- **Food menu** - Real text with allergen markers, split by lunch, evening and Sunday.
- **Sunday lunch** - Its own page because it is its own search - roasts, sittings, booking.
- **Drinks** - Cask ales, guest beers and anything local you are proud of.
- **What’s on** - Quiz, live music, sport and seasonal events, kept current.
- **Functions and private hire** - Room capacity, buffet options and an enquiry form.
- **Find us** - Map, parking, walks from the door, dogs and accessibility.

## Features that matter

- **Separate bar and kitchen hours, visible on the homepage** - The bar being open is useless to someone who wants lunch at three.
- **Menus as real text with allergen information** - Readable on a phone, findable in search and quick to update when the specials change.
- **A plainly stated dog, child and garden policy** - These are the actual searches that bring new customers to a pub.
- **An events list the licensee can update without ringing anyone** - A what’s-on page that is three months stale tells people the pub is tired.
- **A function room enquiry form that asks for date, numbers and occasion** - Qualifies the most valuable enquiry before the phone call.
- **Online table booking with Sunday sittings** - Takes the Sunday lunch bookings without tying up whoever is behind the bar.

Trust signals: Food hygiene rating from the Food Standards Agency scheme; Cask Marque accreditation, where held; CAMRA Good Beer Guide listing, where genuinely listed; Real photographs of the bar, garden and plated food; Accurate kitchen hours.

Seasonality: Beer gardens make summer weekends; December is dominated by Christmas party bookings made from September. Major football tournaments and bank holidays produce sharp spikes, and wet January is quiet.

## Local authorities with the most

| Local authority | Businesses |
|---|---|
| North Yorkshire | 605 |
| Cornwall | 445 |
| Somerset | 390 |
| Leeds | 335 |
| Glasgow City | 315 |
| Shropshire | 310 |
| Wiltshire | 310 |
| Dorset | 290 |
| Liverpool | 265 |
| Sheffield | 265 |

## 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

### Can I have my own website if my pub is tied or leased?

In most cases yes, but check your tenancy or lease agreement first. Some pub companies provide a basic page for each site and have rules about branding, while many tenants and leaseholders run their own website alongside it. A site you control is the one you can update the same day the specials, events or kitchen hours change.

### How do I get found when people search for a Sunday roast near me?

Give Sunday lunch its own page with the words people actually search for, and keep your Google Business Profile hours and menu current. Roasts, sittings, booking, dogs and the garden should all be in text, not just in photographs. A page that answers the question directly has a far better chance than a menu PDF that says the same thing inside a file.

### 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.

### 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.