Do you want to skip the read and get right to my top picks for restaurant website creators? The best restaurant website builder for most people is Squarespace.
Introduction to Restaurant Website Builders:
Which restaurant website builder is the perfect partner for your food business?
With pandemic restrictions in place over the past couple of years, restaurants and other dining establishments made the shift to offering their specialities through takeaway, delivery, and pickup services. However, some services like DoorDash or UberEats tend to tack on additional charges which may cut into a restaurant’s revenues should they opt to use their networks to deploy delivery services.
Therefore, a number of restaurants have opted to create their own websites to service their clientele. As with all things, however, not all restaurant website creators are made equal. Indeed, a restaurant website builder needs to comply with specific requirements built in to create a great online dining site.
For today’s feature, we present our top five picks for the best restaurant website builder, a selection that includes options for both big brands and pop-up/food truck restaurateurs. We've also thrown in several restaurant website examples for inspiration!
Why Would a Restaurant Need a Website?
Websites have enabled brick-and-mortar businesses to stay relevant and viable throughout the pandemic. Indeed, they have even enabled many to expand their reach beyond their physical locations.
In the case of restaurants, having their own websites cut out the middleman – namely a networked delivery/courier service – and allows them to retain their earnings while also offering perks to customers who order directly as opposed to through a third-party app.
With the best website builder for restaurants, you can launch a stunning restaurant website, like the restaurant website examples we feature here.
Our Picks for the Best Website Builder for Restaurants:
Our top five choices for the best website builder for restaurants are as follows:
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Squarespace – perfect for those who want stunning websites
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Square Online – restaurant website creator with excellent analytics
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Weebly – best for beginners
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WordPress.com – restaurant website creator with the best integrations capability
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Wix – good overall restaurant website creator
How We Chose the Best Restaurant Website Builder:
In our top five best restaurant website builders review, our picks for the best restaurant website builder were selected based on the following criteria:
- Ease of Use – Restaurant work tends to be fast-paced and that means a business ought to have someone on their team dedicated to running the website. However, this is not the case for many restaurants. Therefore, the best restaurant website creator is one that lets users create a compelling website fast. It can also be a restaurant website creator with an AI interface that can generate a site within a set of given parameters;
- Functionality – This involves the ability to accept orders and payments online. Hence, the best restaurant website builder needs to offer built-in ordering systems, payment gateways, or third-party integrations for such a purpose. That said, the best website builder for restaurants should have solid ground for e-commerce. In other words, we're looking for a restaurant website creator that offers order management, delivery, and secure payment features to get top marks;
- Aesthetics – We have specifically chosen the best website builder for restaurants that have templates specific to the food and beverage industry as these are a welcome shortcut to creating an engaging website; and
- Budget – Keep in mind that the restaurant industry was among the hardest hit by the pandemic. In particular, restrictions have severely reduced their incomes and budgets. For this reason, a restaurant website maker that offers a “free forever” or “freemium” edition will certainly have an advantage.
Our Best Restaurant Website Builders in Detail:
Now, we get to know the best website builder for restaurants up close, including some restaurant website examples.
Squarespace
Overview:
Next on our list of the best website builder for restaurants: Squarespace!
Along with its standard ecommerce-centric website builder, Squarespace offers another tool for optimising a restaurant’s performance and efficiency on and offline: Tock.
A proprietary app/plugin, Tock is best described as an omnibus tool for online restaurants. It serves as a single hub for a number of transactions, including reservations, tableside and online payments, as well as takeaway orders and delivery.
Restaurant Website Examples – Made with Squarespace
https://www.thomaskeller.com/thomas-keller – One of the restaurant website examples using Wix is award-winning American chef Thomas Keller’s website. It is every bit as stunning as the food served and the interiors at each of his stellar establishments which include The French Laundry, one of the most epoch-defining restaurants in the United States, and the tempting paradise of sweets that is the Bouchon Bakery.
Along with links to individual restaurants, Keller’s site also has an online store called Finesse where visitors can purchase everything from kitchen implements and cookbooks to single-origin chocolate and organic extra virgin olive oil.
Features:
As one of the best website builder for restaurants, Squarespace has:
- Tock omnibus app for reservations, payments, and other transactions;
- Intuitive site builder so that you can use it easily;
- Industry-specific templates; and
- Marketing tool suite.
Pricing:
Standard rates and pricing packages are as follows:
Read through their terms of service before you commit.
Square Online
Overview:
Square Online’s primary advantage is that it is aligned with its parent company’s signature payment systems. Therefore, users can benefit from its much-lauded point of sale (POS), kitchen management, and ordering systems on their websites.
The keen thing about this is that it provides real-time analytics for users, allowing them to gauge their restaurant’s performance online so they can make necessary adjustments wherever applicable. Also, if you're looking for a food delivery website builder, Square offers delivery-specific features to help you out.
Restaurant Website Examples – Made with Square Online
https://funnyfarmrestaurant.square.site/ – With comfort food selections so good and satisfying, it isn’t surprising that San Jose, CA-based The Funny Farm has been featured by world-renowned gourmand Adam Richman in his TLC show Man vs Food. But its website, simple as it is, is also a toothsome titbit in its own right.
The Funny Farm website also maximises its use of Square and Square Online to the hilt. For example, gift cards may be purchased online through the SquareUp site, while orders may be placed and processed online through their ordering system.
Features:
- Business-specific site builder;
- Integration with payment systems and order management tools under the Square Online umbrella, including:
- SquareUp for gift cards;
- Order management;
- Payment gateways; and
- Delivery management solutions
Pricing:
Standard rates and pricing packages are as follows:
Read through their terms of service before you commit.
>> Give Square Online a try <<
Weebly
Overview:
In terms of ecommerce, Weebly is a great website builder for restaurants and other businesses operating within the F&B industry. It also offers numerous features for marketing, online order and delivery management, as well as reservations processing and management.
While these are not necessarily built into the Weebly UI, apps like GloriaFood’s Restaurant System are a great help to users. They're also a boon to smaller businesses as these can be downloaded and installed for free.
Restaurant Website Examples – Made with Weebly
https://famouswoktomball.weebly.com/ – It may appear basic, but Famous Wok’s website keeps things simple and straightforward, offering ease of navigation for its visitors, a static menu page, and a contact page to handle online orders and reservations.
Features:
- Intuitive drag-and-drop website builder so anyone can use it easily;
- SEO toolkit so you can improve your rankings;
- Ecommerce toolkit; and
- Industry-specific third-party integrations with developers like GloriaFood so that you can handle on and offline restaurant management
Pricing:
Standard rates and pricing packages are as follows:
Interested in Weebly? Then better understand their service terms before you subscribe.
WordPress.com
Overview:
A strong mobile-responsive website is seen as a key strength for many restaurateurs these days, as it enables customers to reach out to them through a variety of devices (as opposed to just a desktop or laptop computer) and from any location. This is the advantage that CMS-driven builder WordPress offers to restaurateurs.
Along with the WooCommerce app for setting up online storefronts, WordPress also offers a selection of templates that are restaurant-ready. The fact that it also has a free-to-use edition for those with a minimal budget makes it a great free restaurant website builder.
Restaurant Website Examples – Made with WordPress
https://coda-berlin.com/en/ – The website for this Michelin-starred German dessert atelier Coda in Berlin is every bit as dark and rich-looking as fine chocolate.
The bilingual website offers online table booking as well as gift cards. They do not, as yet, have delivery options.
Features:
- CMS site creator / editor;
- Integrated news and blogging function;
- WooCommerce plugin for creating online storefronts;
- Easy integration with social media;
- Mobile-responsive templates; and
- Industry-specific aesthetic options
Pricing:
Standard rates and pricing packages are as follows:
Be sure to check out their service terms before you subscribe.
Wix
Overview:
Wix has long been considered one of the easiest site builders to use, but did you know that it has its own restaurant website builder?
Wix is a winner when it comes to restaurant website design thanks to templates specific to the food and beverage industry. It's also a restaurant website builder with online ordering capabilities, logistics management, and even promotional solutions.
As Wix also has a free-to-use edition, it earns points as the best website builder for restaurants or food businesses that have meagre budgets or limited manpower for site management.
Restaurant Website Examples – Made with Wix
https://www.yangs.com.au/ – Located in Melbourne, Australia, Yang’s is an elegant Chinese restaurant that has become an institution in Ringwood East for many years. As one of our restaurant website design examples, this site brings ancient culinary traditions into the 21st century through elegant lines and an eclectic aesthetic.
Yang's features blue and white line art reminiscent of the designs on Chinese willow-ware porcelain paired with geometric forms. The site offers online ordering as well as a bilingual (Cantonese/English) menu for diners’ consideration.
Features:
As one of the best website builder for restaurants, Wix has:
- Menu builder so that customers can learn what you offer;
- Online ordering system;
- Reservations and phone ordering feature;
- Mobile business management suite;
- On and offline marketing solutions; and
- Secure payment tools so that customers can have peace of mind;
Pricing:
Standard rates and pricing packages for this best website builder for restaurants option are as follows:
Do your diligence and read their terms of use before committing.
Conclusion and Recommendations for the Restaurant Website Builder:
In conclusion, even now that businesses are reopening and pandemic restrictions are being relaxed, restaurants throughout the world have seen the benefit of having a website. Indeed, they aren’t bound to take those down anytime soon.
While Squarespace is our recommended option for those in the F&B biz, the offerings from Weebly, Square Online, WordPress and Wix are nothing to sneer about at all. Nevertheless, we encourage restaurateurs to shop around and consider their options, particularly those that will enable their businesses to flourish on and offline.
FAQs:
Do any of these restaurant website builders enable restaurants to offer delivery and pickup services without resorting to a third-party provider like UberEats?
All of these site builders allow restaurants to take direct orders for delivery, takeaway, as well as pickup without having to resort to a third-party network. As a result, they can save on transaction fees and retain their earnings.
Is there a best website builder for restaurants platform I can use for free?
Wix, Weebly, and WordPress all have free-to-use (or freemium) subscription packages, while Squarespace and Square Online offer trial periods before one commits to using the platform. Keep in mind, though, that in-platform ads will be placed on your site.
Do any of these best website builder for restaurants offer or work with free third-party apps?
Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly all have extensive application marketplaces. Weebly, in particular, works with a developer called GloriaFood to create functional features for those in the restaurant industry. A number of useful GloriaFood apps may be downloaded for free.
That's all for now:
If you've read all the way through this best restaurant website builder guide, we are thankful. We hope you can now answer the question of what is the best restaurant website creator for you! We have a large collection of articles, guides, and comparison reviews of eCommerce solutions, web hosting providers, website builders, and more! Feel free to check them out;
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