The menu is a photograph of a menu
An image or a PDF cannot be read by search engines, cannot be used by a screen reader, and cannot be updated without a designer.
Industry
Restaurants and cafes
Readable menus, correct allergen information, and bookings that do not go through a commission.
Hospitality websites get judged in about four seconds, usually by someone standing outside deciding where to eat. What they need is the menu, the prices, whether you have a table, and how to get to you.
The number of restaurant sites that make one of those four difficult is remarkable.
Menus should be text
A PDF menu is invisible to search, unusable on a phone, and requires whoever made it to change a price. Holding dishes as data solves all three and takes the same afternoon to set up.
Allergens are not an afterthought
Once customers can order from the site, allergen information has to be available before they pay. Building it into the menu data from the start costs nothing extra. Retrofitting it across ninety dishes later is a job nobody volunteers for.
What we usually find
Where hospitality businesses lose enquiries
A third party takes a cut of every booking
Platforms are worth paying for new customers. Paying commission on regulars who searched for you by name is a different matter.
Allergen information lives on a laminated card by the till
If people order from the site, that is not where the information needs to be.
What we build
Built for hospitality businesses
Menus as structured content
Dishes, prices and dietary tags held as data, marked up so Google can display them, and editable from a phone when a special sells out.
Direct booking alongside the platforms
Keep the platforms for discovery, take the repeat bookings yourself, with a deposit on larger tables.
Allergen data attached to each dish
The fourteen allergens recorded per item and shown before the order is placed, which is where the rules require it for online ordering.
Google Business Profile kept in step
Opening hours, holiday closures and menu links matching the site, because the profile is where most people actually look.
Regulation
What the rules require of the website
These apply to your site whether or not anybody has mentioned them. We build to them by default. They are summarised here for orientation and are not legal advice.
Food Standards Agency
Food prepacked for direct sale must carry a full ingredients list with the fourteen regulated allergens emphasised. Where PPDS food is sold online, by app or by telephone, allergen information must be available to the customer before the purchase is completed and again when the food is delivered.
Services this usually involves
Website design
A site your customers can read on a phone, and that you can edit without ringing us.
Online shops
A shop that takes payment cleanly and does not fall over the week you get busy.
Booking systems
Let people book at eleven at night without your diary ending up double booked.
Common questions
We prepare everything to order. Does this still apply?
Food packed after being ordered is not PPDS, so the full labelling rules do not apply in the same way, but you still have to provide allergen information for the fourteen regulated allergens. Distance selling has its own requirements. We build the fields either way, since the cost is the same and the exposure is not.
Should we drop the delivery platforms?
Usually not. Use them for reach and give customers a reason to order direct next time, such as a better price or something only available on your own site. Cutting them off entirely tends to cost more than it saves.
How do we keep the menu current?
Editable from a phone, with items switched off rather than deleted so they can come back next season without being retyped.
Tell us what the site has to do
Send a couple of lines about the business and what is not working. You get a straight answer on whether we are the right fit, and a fixed price if we are.