Search most independent restaurants and the first four results belong to somebody else — a delivery platform, a booking aggregator, a review site with an out-of-date menu. Every one of those takes a commission, an email address or a customer relationship that should have been yours.
Somebody deciding where to eat on Saturday is doing something closer to browsing than searching. They want to see the room, read a few dishes, get a feel for what sort of evening it is and roughly what it costs.
That means real photographs of your food and your dining room, a menu written out as text rather than hidden in a PDF, and enough about the kitchen and the people to make you a place rather than a category. This is the half that most sites skip and it is the half that fills tables.
Then there is the person who already knows your name and needs your number, your address, tonight’s opening time and a booking link, on a phone, in the street, in a hurry.
That needs no persuasion at all — just speed. So the practical details sit in the header of every page and the booking route is one tap from anywhere, whether you take reservations by phone, through a system, or not at all.
On orders that would have come to you directly if you had somewhere to send them.
Rather less than the commission on a busy Friday.
Menu, about, find us, book, and a home page that does the persuading.
Covered
Written as text, so it is searchable and readable on any phone.
The offers that fill the difficult tables, given real space.
Christmas, wakes, birthdays, work parties. The highest-margin bookings you take.
One of the most searched restaurant terms in the country, and worth its own page.
Including the awkward weeks. Message us and it changes.
If you sell them, they belong somewhere findable in December.
Restaurant hours move — a Monday closure, a Christmas rota, a chef's holiday. When the only source is a directory somebody filled in three years ago, people turn up to a locked door and blame you rather than the listing. Message us and it changes the same day, as often as you like.
A photographed menu or a PDF cannot be read one-handed on a bus, cannot be searched for the dish somebody is craving, and tells a search engine nothing about what you cook. Written out as text it does all three.
One member of a party of six decides where six people eat. If your site is silent on gluten, dairy or nuts, that party books somewhere that is not.
Nobody wants to arrive over-dressed or with children somewhere that clearly does not want them. Photographs of the room at service and a couple of honest lines about the atmosphere prevent more bad reviews than any amount of apologising afterwards.
Illustrative customer scenario
An example of the practical outcome this page is describing—not a claimed client testimonial.
The delivery app was the first thing that came up when you searched us. We were paying them to rent our own name. Now we come up first and the phone bookings have gone up noticeably.
Practical
Yes. Whatever you already use, we link it so a visitor gets there in one tap. We do not replace it and you keep your existing account.
Send us the new one and we put it up. It costs nothing extra and we do not meter it — a restaurant showing last spring's menu is worse than no site at all, and we are not going to invoice you for fixing that.
Then the site says so, and says what you do instead. Being a proper restaurant rather than a kitchen with an app is a selling point worth stating.
It helps for food, more than in almost any other trade. But good phone photographs of the room, taken in daylight, get you a long way, and you can add professional shots later.
One conversation, a fortnight or so, and £47 a month with the domain and hosting included.