What a Restaurant Website Costs, and What It Actually Needs

en 2026-09-14 7 min read

A restaurant website costs EUR 600 to 900 for a single page carrying the menu, the hours, the address and a link to your reservation system. Give yourself a menu you can edit, a second or third page and a contact flow, and it is EUR 900 to 1.500. Both figures exclude VAT, and for one venue that can be the whole job.

The steps, and what a restaurant gets at each one

A fixed quote follows scoping. The full ladder is on packages.

The menu is the website

Someone looking up a restaurant wants the menu, the hours and the address. Everything else is decoration around those, which is why one habit deserves more attention than the design: the menu as a PDF.

• On a phone it opens as a document rather than a page. The reader pinches and zooms through every line, and some of them check the place next door instead.
• Search engines treat it as an attachment rather than part of your site, so the dishes you are known for are not text anyone can match a search against. An AI assistant asked for somewhere vegetarian nearby reads websites, not attachments.
• Screen readers can struggle with them, and so can translation tools.
• Changing a price means going back to whoever made the file and exporting again. The menu goes stale because updating it is a design job.

A menu built as real HTML fixes all of that: text on a page, in sections, with allergen marks where you need them, editable by whoever writes the specials. It is searchable, translatable and readable on a phone. Print it to PDF afterwards for guests who want a file, so the website stays the source of truth.

Hours, address and the unglamorous part

Opening hours belong in text, not baked into an image and not only on a social profile. They also belong in structured data, so a search result or map card can show them. Kitchen hours that differ from bar hours need saying, and so do the days you are closed. The phone number should dial when tapped and the address should link to a map.

Reservations, and the difference between linking and building

If you already pay for a reservation platform, it gives you a button or a widget, and using it is the right answer. Linking to it is included at step 01 and step 02, and it keeps availability and no-show handling off your plate.

Building your own is a different product: accounts, tables and turn times, availability rules, confirmations, reminders, cancellations, and a view your staff trust on a busy Saturday. That is step 04 at EUR 3.500 to 7.500, described on our Next.js development page. It makes sense when platform fees grow big enough to be worth replacing.

Which brings up the hard line: the moment you take a deposit or a payment on your own site you are at step 04. Prepaid seats at a wine dinner, a card held against a no-show, ordering for pickup. Payments are never part of step 03, and a quote that puts them there has not thought about refunds or about who answers the phone when a card is charged twice.

When a landing page or mini-site is enough

A restaurant is not sold by its website. It is sold by the room, the food, the reviews and the map pin. The site has to remove every reason for a hungry person on a phone to close the tab: what you serve, what it costs, when you are open, where you are, and a way to book. A step 01 page does that, and faster than a large site, which matters because the reader is on a street with bad signal. How we build for that is on design and engineering.

Step 02 adds what keeps a site honest: a CMS, so the menu changes when the menu changes. You are buying editability rather than pages. Step 03 is right when you genuinely have more to say, such as several locations with their own hours, private dining and events arriving as enquiries, or catering.

What moves the quote

• Photography. The biggest lever here, and it is not a web line. Photographs of your actual food and your actual room make a step 01 page look expensive. Stock plates make a step 03 build look cheap.
• How much already exists. A written menu with prices confirmed, a logo, a brand you are keeping.
• How many languages. A second language means a second version of every menu item, and a second thing to update when a dish changes.
• Payments and accounts. The step 03 to step 04 line.
• What happens after launch. Whether you edit it yourself or want it maintained.

Process and timeline

1. Scoping. The step, the pages, and which reservation platform you use.
2. Menu and content. Dishes, descriptions, prices, allergens, hours. This is the part that waits on you.
3. Design and build. 1-2 weeks at step 01, 2-3 weeks at step 02, 3-6 weeks at step 03, from the point the content is settled.
4. Launch checks. Reservation link on a phone, tap to call, map link, hours in structured data, menu read on a small screen.

After launch

Care is EUR 100 to 300 per month for updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes. Not redesign, not new features, and optional: a step 02 site with a CMS is something a manager can keep current without help.

To be found by people who do not know your name yet, an SEO foundation is EUR 450 to 750, paid once: Search Console and analytics, indexation, technical hygiene, titles, internal links, and a plan covering the next three to six months. Ongoing work is the separate line, SEO growth at EUR 500 to 800 per month.

You own the code, the repository and the database. Hosting we can take on, agreed per customer rather than assumed.

When to spend less

If your room fills on reputation and walk-ins, do not buy pages. Buy the step 01 page, put the real menu on it as text, get the hours right, and spend the difference on photography. If you are opening and the menu has not settled, launch that page and decide on a bigger site once the concept stops moving. Rebuilding a small site is cheap. Rebuilding a large one is not.

Questions restaurant owners actually ask

Can we just put our menu up as a PDF?

You can, and it costs you readers on phones, visibility in search, and any chance of an AI assistant recommending you accurately. Build the menu as text and export a PDF from it if guests ask for a file.

Do we need online ordering?

Only if takeaway is a real part of the business and you are ready to run it. Ordering means payments, which means step 04 at EUR 3.500 to 7.500. If takeaway is a side line, let the delivery platforms carry it.

Should the website replace our reservation platform?

Not at step 01 or step 02. Link to the platform, because it already solves availability, reminders and cancellations. Consider replacing it at step 04, when the fees grow large enough to matter.

How do we keep the menu up to date?

That is precisely what step 02 buys. A basic CMS means whoever writes the specials can change a price or pull a dish without emailing anyone. Without it you are back to sending changes to an agency, which is how a menu ends up advertising something the kitchen stopped making last season.

Tell us your venue, your menu and which reservation platform you use, and you get a fixed quote against the step that fits. Start here.