# Websites for restaurants

> Websites for restaurants built around the three things every visitor came for: the menu, a table, and whether you are open.

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

There are 32,460 licensed restaurants across 378 UK local authorities (ONS UK Business Counts, SIC 56101, 2025, OGL v3.0).

## How customers choose

Restaurant website visitors are overwhelmingly late-stage. They have already decided they might eat with you and are checking the menu, looking for a table on a specific date, or confirming opening hours. Most are on a phone, many are already out, and a significant share arrive between six and eight in the evening deciding where to go tonight. Almost nobody reads the story of the head chef. The menu is the most-visited page on any restaurant website by an enormous margin, and how quickly someone can read it determines whether they book.

## What most websites in this trade get wrong

The single most damaging thing a restaurant can do is publish the menu as a PDF. It cannot be read on a phone without pinching, it cannot be found in search, and it is almost always out of date. The second failure is a full-screen video of the dining room that delays everything the visitor actually wants. The third is burying the booking link in a navigation menu when it should be permanently visible.

## What the website has to do

- **Table booking** - The only conversion that matters, and it should be reachable from anywhere on the site.
- **Menu views** - The most-visited content, and the thing that decides whether someone books.
- **Opening hours and location** - A large share of visitors are already nearby and deciding now.

## Pages

- **Home** - Booking button, tonight’s hours, and a route to the menu.
- **Menus** - Real HTML text, split by service, always current.
- **Book a table** - The booking system, reachable in one tap from every page.
- **Private hire and events** - High-value bookings that need a different conversation.
- **Find us** - Map, parking, accessibility, transport.
- **Sunday lunch or set menu** - Specific, heavily-searched occasions deserve their own page.

## Features that matter

- **Menus as real HTML text, never as a PDF or an image** - The single highest-impact change available to most restaurant websites.
- **A booking button visible on every page, including while scrolling** - Booking intent appears at unpredictable moments.
- **Opening hours that are correct, including bank holidays** - Wrong hours turn a customer away permanently.
- **Dietary and allergen information alongside dishes** - For a growing share of diners this decides whether they can eat with you at all.
- **Fast-loading food photography** - Appetite appeal matters, but not at the cost of the menu appearing.

Trust signals: Current menus with prices; Food hygiene rating; Real photographs of your dishes; Accurate opening hours.

Seasonality: December is the dominant month, driven by party bookings made from September. Valentine’s and Mother’s Day are single-day peaks.

## Local authorities with the most

| Local authority | Businesses |
|---|---|
| Westminster | 1,075 |
| Camden | 555 |
| City of Edinburgh | 460 |
| Glasgow City | 440 |
| Cornwall | 435 |
| Birmingham | 410 |
| Manchester | 395 |
| North Yorkshire | 360 |
| Leeds | 345 |
| Islington | 345 |

## 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 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.

### Can you add online booking?

Yes. Every plan includes a booking-request form, live-availability booking can be added to any plan (quoted on your call) and comes as standard on Pro, and we can connect whichever booking system suits your business rather than forcing you onto ours. For appointment businesses it is usually the highest-return feature on the site, because the phone going unanswered while you are working is a constant source of lost bookings.

### 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.