Industry · Hospitality · 5 November 2026 · 5 min read
Restaurant website: getting menu, reservations and ordering right
What a good restaurant or café website needs: a readable menu instead of a PDF, opening hours, reservations, pre-ordering and Google Maps. With a real-world example.
Guests decide where to eat in seconds, mostly on their phone. They want to see three things straight away: what's on, is it open, and how do I get there? Everything else is a bonus.
First things first
- 01
Menu as a real page
Not a PDF that's tiny on a phone. A readable menu with prices that Google understands too.
- 02
Up-to-date opening hours
Including holidays and rest days, identical to the Google profile.
- 03
Directions and contact
Address, map, parking, tap-to-call phone number.
- 04
Atmospheric photos
Real pictures of dishes and rooms sell better than any stock photo.
Reservations and ordering
A reservation form or an embedded booking tool saves phone calls. One step further is pre-ordering and ordering at the table by QR code: guests order and pay on their own phone, the kitchen sees everything live. Such a system runs at the EFA petrol-station bistros in Karlsruhe and Baden-Baden, and you can try it yourself as a live demo on this website.
Common mistakes
- Menu only as a photo or PDF
- Outdated prices and opening hours
- A slow page with huge images
- A delivery platform as the only way to order, with high fees per order
More notes