Restaurant Websites
What Should a Restaurant Website Include?
A restaurant website should answer the questions people have before they visit, in the order they have them: what you serve and what it costs (the menu), whether you are open (hours), where you are (address and directions), how to book or order, and how to contact you. Everything else — your story, photos, events — helps, but only after those basics are easy to find on a phone.
The essentials
| Item | What to include | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Menu | The current menu as text, with prices and allergen information | The most visited page on most restaurant sites; text can be read on a phone and found by search engines |
| Opening hours | Regular hours, plus holiday closures | Wrong hours send guests to a closed door |
| Address and directions | Full address and a link that opens directions | Most visitors are deciding how to get to you |
| Booking | A way to request a table, or clear words that you do not take bookings | Saves a phone call at your busiest time |
| Ordering | A link to order for pickup or delivery, if you offer it | Keeps orders direct instead of through a marketplace |
| Contact | Phone number and email, tappable on a phone | For questions the page does not answer |
Make the menu a page, not a picture
A menu uploaded as an image or a scanned PDF cannot be read comfortably on a phone, cannot be searched, and tells search engines almost nothing about what you serve. A menu written as text on a web page does all three, and you can change a price without redesigning anything.
More on this in how to create a digital menu.
Details that build trust
- Real photos of your room and your dishes, taken in your restaurant.
- A short paragraph on who you are and what kind of place it is.
- Dietary options you can genuinely accommodate — and the ones you cannot.
- Accessibility information: step-free entrance, accessible toilet, space for a wheelchair.
- Payment methods you accept, and whether you take card at the table.
Help search engines understand the page
Structured data is a small block of machine-readable information on the page that describes your restaurant. Google's documentation for local businesses lists the name and address as required, and recommends adding opening hours, the type of cuisine, a link to the menu, a telephone number and the location's coordinates.
- Use the same name, address and phone number everywhere — on the site, in map listings and in directories.
- Keep opening hours in the structured data identical to the hours shown on the page.
- Point the menu property to the page where the current menu lives.
Make it work on a phone first
- Put the menu, hours, address and booking within one tap of the first screen.
- Make the phone number and address tappable.
- Keep pages light: large photos should not delay the menu text.
- Avoid pop-ups that cover the page before a visitor has seen anything.
Common mistakes
- Hours on the website that differ from hours on map listings.
- A menu that was last updated two seasons ago.
- A booking form that sends an email nobody checks during service.
- A site that looks fine on a laptop and is hard to use on a phone.
A restaurant website with Thmenu
With Thmenu, your restaurant gets guest pages on menu.thmenu.com: the menu, an About page with opening hours, the address and a link that opens directions in Google Maps, and a photo gallery, plus pages for reservation requests, the waitlist, reviews and loyalty. Serving them from your own domain is not available yet. The menu and About pages carry schema.org Restaurant data — address, coordinates, opening hours and the menu link — generated from the same details you enter in the dashboard, so the page and the structured data cannot disagree.
See how a Thmenu restaurant website works.
Sources
- Google Search Central — Local Business (LocalBusiness) structured data (accessed 7 October 2026)