Five things every restaurant website must do. Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress compared. You can set it up in one afternoon.
Last updated: April 2026
You need a website for your restaurant but you are not a web designer, you do not have a big budget, and you do not have time to learn a complicated platform.
The good news: a restaurant website does not need to be complicated. It needs to do five things well, and you can set it up in an afternoon for less than $30 per month.
The five things every restaurant website must do
- Show your menu. This is why most people visit a restaurant website. If your menu is hard to find or hard to read, the rest of the site does not matter.
- Show your location and hours. Address, map, phone number, and current hours. Including holiday hours.
- Work on a phone. More than 70% of restaurant website visits come from mobile devices. If your site is not mobile-friendly, most visitors will leave.
- Load quickly. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, more than half of visitors will leave before it finishes. Keep it simple.
- Look professional enough to trust. The website does not need to win design awards. It needs to not look broken, outdated, or abandoned. Clean layout, readable text, and a few good photos are enough.
Everything else (online ordering, reservations, blog, events calendar, gift cards) is nice to have but not essential on day one.
The three platform options
Squarespace ($16 to $33/month CAD)
Best for: Restaurants that want a polished look without hiring a designer.
Squarespace has restaurant-specific templates with built-in sections for menus, hours, location maps, and photo galleries. The drag-and-drop editor is intuitive. The designs look professional out of the box.
Pros: Beautiful templates, easy to use, includes hosting and domain, mobile-responsive by default.
Cons: Limited customization if you want something very specific. No built-in online ordering (you need a third-party integration or embed).
Wix ($17 to $35/month CAD)
Best for: Restaurants that want more flexibility and do not mind a slightly busier interface.
Wix has a large template library including restaurant-specific options. The editor offers more customization than Squarespace. Wix also has a built-in restaurant ordering feature (Wix Restaurants) on higher-tier plans.
Pros: More customization options, built-in ordering feature, large app marketplace for add-ons.
Cons: Can feel cluttered if you add too many features. Some templates look dated. Free plan has Wix ads on your site.
WordPress with a simple theme ($10 to $30/month for hosting)
Best for: Restaurants that want full control and are comfortable with a slightly steeper learning curve.
WordPress powers about 40% of all websites. It is extremely flexible but requires more setup than Squarespace or Wix. You need to choose a hosting provider (SiteGround, Bluehost, or similar), install WordPress, choose a theme, and configure it.
Pros: Full control, thousands of themes and plugins, no platform lock-in, can do anything.
Cons: Steeper learning curve. You are responsible for updates, security, and backups. More decisions to make upfront.
What to put on each page
Homepage
- Restaurant name and a one-line description of your concept
- A hero photo (your best dish, your interior, or your exterior)
- Hours and location (visible without scrolling)
- A link to your menu (prominent, not buried in a navigation dropdown)
- A call to action: "View Our Menu" or "Make a Reservation" or "Order Online"
Menu page
- Your full menu as text on the page (not just a PDF download)
- Organized by categories (appetizers, mains, desserts, drinks)
- Prices visible
- Dietary tags if you have them
- A link to download a PDF version as an option (not the only format)
Alternative: If maintaining a menu on your website is too much work, embed or link to a hosted digital menu. EasyMenus gives you a permanent link you can embed on your menu page. When you update the menu, the embedded version updates automatically. No website editing required.
About page
- Your story in 2 to 3 paragraphs (who you are, what you cook, why you opened)
- A photo of you, your team, or your kitchen
- This page builds trust. People like to know who is behind the food.
Contact page
- Address with an embedded Google Map
- Phone number (clickable on mobile)
- Email address
- Hours (duplicated from the homepage for convenience)
- Links to your social media accounts
Common mistakes to avoid
Putting your menu as a PDF download only. PDFs do not display well on phones and are invisible to Google for dish-level searches. Use text on the page, with a PDF download as a secondary option.
Auto-playing music or video. This was a bad idea in 2005 and it is a bad idea now. Nobody wants their phone to suddenly start playing music in a quiet office.
Using stock photos of food instead of your own dishes. Customers can tell. A photo of your actual dish, even taken on a phone with natural light, is more trustworthy than a perfect stock image of food you do not serve.
Neglecting mobile. Test your site on your phone before launching. If you have to pinch, zoom, or scroll sideways, fix it.
Adding features you will not maintain. A blog you never update, an events calendar with no events, a newsletter signup that goes nowhere. Every abandoned section makes your site look neglected. Only add sections you will actually keep current.
Making the menu hard to find. The menu should be one tap from the homepage. If a customer has to tap through three pages to find it, you have lost them.
The minimum viable restaurant website
If time and budget are extremely tight, here is the absolute minimum:
- A one-page site on Squarespace or Wix ($16/month)
- Your restaurant name, address, hours, and phone number
- A link to your digital menu (hosted on EasyMenus or similar, free)
- One good photo
That is a complete restaurant web presence for $16/month. It takes an hour to set up. It is better than no website, and it is dramatically better than a broken website from 2019 that nobody has updated since COVID.
Do you even need a website?
For a detailed comparison: Restaurant Website vs. Google Business Profile: Do You Need Both?
The short version: your Google Business Profile is more important than your website for local search. But a website supports your Google ranking, gives you a home for your menu, and provides a place to link from social media. If you can do both, do both. If you can only do one, do Google first and add a website when you are ready.
If you have no website and no budget for one, a hosted digital menu page (like EasyMenus) gives you a URL with your menu that you can link from Google, Instagram, and Facebook. It is not a full website, but it covers the most critical function.
Build your free menu page
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