Restaurant Website: Menu, Hours and Ordering

A restaurant website is used in a hurry, usually on a phone, usually by someone standing outside or sitting in a car. They want four answers: what do you serve and what does it cost, are you open now, where exactly are you, and how do I order or book. Put those answers in plain text on the first screen or one tap away, and keep them current. Everything else is secondary.

Put the menu in the page as text

The most common restaurant site problem is a menu that is a PDF or a photo of a printed menu. It tends to fail in several ways:

• On a phone, a PDF opens in a viewer that needs pinching and scrolling sideways.
• Text inside an image cannot be searched, selected, translated or read aloud by a screen reader.
• It is harder to update, so prices and specials go stale.
• People searching for a dish cannot find a page that mentions it.

Publish the menu as a normal page: sections with headings (starters, mains, drinks), item names, short descriptions and prices as text. Mark dietary notes (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free) plainly, and add a line about allergens that tells guests to ask staff. Check your local health department and county rules for anything you are required to disclose. If you want a printable version, offer the PDF as an extra link, and keep the page as the main version.

Keep one source of truth. If the menu lives on your website, your ordering platform and your Google profile, decide which one you edit first and copy outward, so prices do not disagree.

Hours, address and phone

• Show today's hours at the top and a full weekly schedule on the contact page. Include happy hour and kitchen close times if they differ from open hours.
• Update holiday hours as soon as you know them. Google lets you set special hours on your Business Profile, and the website should match.
• Use a tappable phone number, a street address that opens in a maps app, and a line about parking or nearby garages. In Los Angeles, that line saves calls.
• If you have separate dining room, bar and takeout hours, say which is which. Google's guidance for restaurants is to list dine-in hours first on the profile.

Ordering and reservations

Decide who handles the transaction and make the link obvious.

• Online ordering. A first-party ordering page, or a link to the platform you use, in a button labeled "Order pickup" or "Order delivery." Third-party delivery apps charge the restaurant fees, and rates differ by agreement, so ask your account rep what you pay on pickup and delivery before you send most orders through them.
• Reservations. A button to your booking provider. Say if you take walk-ins and how large a party you accept.
• Catering and private events. A short inquiry form with date, headcount and budget, and a person who replies.

On Google, the Business Profile has separate places for a menu link, ordering links and booking links. According to Google's help center, you can add up to 10 links per category for food ordering or pickup and delivery, and ordering links are hidden if the profile's option to accept orders is turned off. A reservation link you add yourself does not produce the blue booking button; that appears with providers that integrate directly with Google. Set your preferred link for each so guests land where you want them.

Photos and words

• Use photos of your food and room. Name dishes in text beside the picture instead of burying words in the image.
• Compress them. A homepage with a dozen heavy photos is slow on mobile data. See Core Web Vitals in plain English.
• A short page about the restaurant, chef or family. Two paragraphs of true detail work better than "farm to table" slogans.

Structured data Google can read

You can add JSON-LD markup that states your details in a form search engines read. Google's local business documentation says the type Restaurant should be used when it fits. Name and address are required for rich result eligibility, and recommended fields include telephone, opening hours, servesCuisine, price range, geo coordinates and a menu link. A few cautions:

• Markup should match what visitors see on the page.
• Google does not guarantee that any feature will appear, and markup is not needed to appear in local results.
• If you change hours, change the markup too. Many sites forget.

Treat it as housekeeping, not a ranking trick.

Mistakes that cost diners

1. 1Hours on the site, Google and Yelp disagree.
2. 2The "Menu" button goes to a PDF from last year.
3. 3The ordering button goes to a broken or wrong location page.
4. 4A popup covers the page before anyone sees the menu.
5. 5Autoplay video that eats data and slows loading.
6. 6Email contact only. Restaurants need a phone number.

Maintenance matters more than design

A restaurant site stays good because someone updates it. Decide who changes hours, specials and seasonal menus, and make sure they can do it without calling a developer. On most platforms this means editable menu sections instead of hard-coded pages. Add a seasonal reminder to check holiday hours.

If you also want to be found for local searches, local SEO for a Los Angeles service business explains how the profile and website work together. For platform choices, Squarespace or custom and the guide to choosing a platform cover the tradeoffs.

Want a person to look at it?

We build restaurant sites where the menu is text, the hours are right and the order button works. See what we do for restaurants, or start a quote and send us your current menu and ordering setup.