Key Takeaways:
77% of diners look at a restaurant’s website prior to visiting or ordering.
Opting for a website template instead of a custom design can save you thousands of dollars.
Website templates are designed with mobile compatibility in mind.
Having a professional, user-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing website for your restaurant is no longer optional.
It exposes you to more potential guests, strengthens your brand identity, and helps drive more table reservations and online orders.
But building a website from scratch is easier said than done.
It can be time-consuming, expensive, and technically challenging.
That is where pre-built, restaurant-specific website templates come in.
So, if you’d like to find out why they are a game-changer for restaurants, keep on reading.
Did you know that 77% of diners visit a restaurant's website before they dine in or order takeout or delivery?
This means that having an online presence is no longer a nice-to-have for your restaurant.
It’s non-negotiable and even urgent.
Think about it:
With so many prospective diners wanting to check out your offer before spending money at your establishment, you simply can’t afford to wait months for your website to go live.
However, building a custom website will result in exactly that: months of design and development, all while your guests are dining elsewhere.
Bill Erickson, a WordPress developer with over 15 years of experience, explains that the entire process from start to finish can take over 3 months.
Illustration: Tablein / Quote: Bill Erickson
This is where website templates come in.
They can significantly cut down the time it takes to get your website up and running because you’re not starting from scratch.
Instead, you’re working with a pre-built structure that you can easily customize by plugging in your brand colors, typography, visuals, and story.
Plus, the less time you spend on the intricacies of designing a website, the more time you have for perfecting your menu and developing strategies to attract guests.
This is especially important if you’re just starting out, says Sam Gold, founder of the healthy snack subscription service Yumvelope.
Illustration: Tablein / Quote: Entrepreneur
Now, you might be wondering, “If I prioritize speed and opt for a website template instead of a custom design, does this mean that I’ll be sacrificing quality?”
The short answer is no.
With a plethora of high-quality templates available online, you can create a professional, functional, and visually appealing website that reflects your brand identity while skipping the blank canvas stage.
Don’t believe us? Take a look at this template from Wix.
Source: Wix
Examples like the one above just go to show that website templates aren’t what they used to be 20 years ago.
Now, they are modern, fully customizable solutions that let you skip the time-consuming process of building a website and help you connect with your guests faster.
Custom website designs aren’t just time-consuming to create, though.
They can also come with a hefty price tag, which is especially unfavorable if you’re running a smaller restaurant or just getting started in the industry.
And, with all the unavoidable expenses that restaurateurs have to deal with, investing thousands of dollars into website design is simply not an option for many.
Dylan Holtzhausen, CEO and co-founder at Menuzen, a free online menu maker, breaks down the costs for a small restaurant in a Quora thread on the topic:
Source: Quora
He goes on to explain that website building is particularly challenging for small restaurants, seeing as it is often restaurant owners who are burdened with the task, alongside juggling day-to-day operations.
On one hand, explains Holtzhausen, building a website on their own is too challenging, but on the other, hiring an agency to do it quickly becomes too expensive.
Once again, website templates naturally come as a budget-friendly or even free alternative.
Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.
First up, there is ThemeForest, an online marketplace where designers can sell their website themes and templates for a variety of niches, including the restaurant industry.
The website features thousands of templates specifically for restaurants, with prices going as low as $3 per template.
Below, you can see a few of their most popular options, all in the affordable range of up to $90.
Source: ThemeForest
Webflow is another great option if you’re looking for an affordable, modern, and functional template.
The platform even lets you filter the available templates by style, such as modern, retro, minimal, and playful.
That way, you don’t have to scroll for hours before you find the one that fits your brand.
Source: Webflow
Then there are also free templates and website builders, such as Tablein’s very own.
Although primarily a restaurant reservation software, we understand the importance of creating a cohesive brand identity.
That is why we’re developing features that will enable restaurants to offer their customers an exceptional experience from the very first interaction.
And having a user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing website plays a major role in achieving that.
Our website builder is free for Tablein users, allowing them to go beyond just reservation management and create a professional online presence, too.
Its intuitive interface allows you to:
Add key information about your restaurant
Upload photos that best represent your establishment
Describe your restaurant’s cuisine and overall concept
Include practical details (parking availability, live music, wheelchair access, etc.)
You can see some of the customization options below.
Source: Tablein
On top of that, Tablein makes it easy to customize your reservation widget, making sure that your guests get a cohesive experience every step of the way.
Source: Tablein
So, while you’re paying for the extensive set of features our booking system offers, you’re also getting a fully customizable, intuitive website builder that reinforces your brand for free.
Now that you know just how good budget-friendly website templates can look, wouldn’t you rather save money and time while still impressing your diners?
When you hear the word “template”, you might think of a rigid design that is going to limit you and make your restaurant website look like any other.
In reality, templates give you the best of both worlds:
They provide a structured foundation so you can skip all the difficult parts, but they also give you customization capabilities that will turn your template from generic to unique.
And the best part is, you can easily make all the necessary changes yourself—no need to call up your developer every time you want to make a little tweak.
Mikiel Arnold, owner of the Peruvian restaurant The Freakin Incan, has experienced the benefits of this firsthand when he switched from a custom website to a template:
“My previous website was run through a local customer. Anything we tried to do with him, there was always a delay. We weren’t in control of our website the way we are now with the dashboard and the ability to change things, and it was fairly easy to get used to the site. I did a lot of stuff on my own, and I was able to train my managers quickly, too.”
With a template, you can align the colors and fonts with your brand, tweak layouts, and upload images of your dishes and interior, all within a few minutes.
As you can see in the example below, many templates come with preset color palettes you can choose from if you need a quick solution that still looks cohesive.
However, if you want the colors on your website to match your brand colors perfectly, you can build your own palette using the intuitive color picker.
Source: Squarespace
Of course, templates also let you choose your fonts, adjust the appearance of buttons, change layouts, and add your own content to the website.
Source: Squarespace
In short, with templates, you get all the creative freedom you could possibly need without the steep learning curve of coding and web design.
While the majority of website templates nowadays come with a plethora of customization options, that’s not the only thing you should be paying attention to when choosing the right one for your restaurant.
Another thing to consider—and another reason why templates are a great choice—are the built-in features tailored to specific industries.
By choosing a template designed specifically for restaurant websites, you can be sure that all the features you could possibly need are right there.
Take Tablein, for example.
With our template, you don’t have to think about what sections to include or worry that you’re forgetting to include an essential piece of information.
All the essential fields are already there, waiting for you to populate them.
Source: Tablein
A restaurant-specific template should also have functionalities like online ordering, table reservations widgets, and menu displays already built in.
The latter is especially important, seeing as PDFs and photos of the physical menu are frowned upon.
Why?
Because they lack accessibility and are overall more difficult to read, as explained by users in one Reddit thread on the topic of restaurant websites.
Source: Reddit
And these users are right.
Opting for a template with a built-in menu functionality increases the likelihood of diners making a reservation or placing an online order.
Otherwise, you could lose a significant portion of potential diners, research shows.
Illustration: Tablein / Data: MGH
Imagine losing 30% of your prospective diners just because you didn’t optimize your menu for online browsing.
Sure, loading the PDF file or the photo of the menu into your template is quicker than entering the menu items manually, but it creates a frustrating experience for your guests.
Besides, the menu builder feature—alongside the others we mentioned—is already there, it’s convenient, and it takes the look and functionality of your website to another level.
So, why not make the most of it?
Having a website that’s mobile-friendly is non-negotiable.
Why?
Because, by the end of 2024, 61.85% of website traffic came from mobile users—an increase of nearly 31% since the beginning of 2015.
Source: Statista
With that many people using their phones as the primary means of browsing the internet, being stuck with a website that’s not responsive is the last thing you want for your restaurant.
If they have to struggle navigating the desktop version of your website on a mobile device to access the menu or make a reservation, your diners will likely give up on your restaurant altogether.
Research conducted by MGH confirms this.
According to their findings, over half of the diners consider mobile-responsiveness to be very important, and more than 35% of them wouldn’t order food from a restaurant because of a poor mobile experience.
Illustration: Tablein / Data: MGH
If you’re using a high-quality website template, though, this is not something you need to be concerned about.
Why?
Because nowadays, templates are mobile-friendly by default.
In other words, if you opt for a template, you won’t need to spend time and money on a custom website design that works on desktop, and then spend even more on a separate mobile version.
However, this wasn’t always the case.
Rembrant van der Mijnsbrugge, a software engineer, explains that people used to build separate, completely different-looking desktop and mobile sites.
This made an already time-consuming process even more complicated, but also confusing for the customers, he adds.
Illustration: Tablein / Quote: Shopify
With templates, issues like this have become a thing of the past, because they’re created with responsiveness in mind.
So, a website that looks like this on your desktop:
Source: Squarespace
Will look like this on a mobile device:
Source: Squarespace
With mobile-friendliness no longer being optional, using a template is one of the best things you can do for your restaurant website.
Templates take the guesswork out of creating a responsive site and ensure that it looks professional and functions properly on any device.
Ultimately, this leaves you with more time and resources to focus on running your establishment.
We hope that this article has given you an insight into some of the main reasons why using a template for your restaurant website is a great choice.
By choosing not to build a custom website from scratch, you’ll save time and money and avoid technical struggles, yet still end up with a professional-looking online presence.
This allows you to focus on what matters most: running your restaurant and developing strategies for driving more orders and reservations.
Sounds like a win-win scenario to us!