A restaurant website is a valuable marketing and promotional tool for new and established restaurants alike. Creating a website for your restaurant can boost visibility via search engine optimization and give you another way to attract new customers. If you’re feeling stuck designing your restaurant website, sometimes all you need is a little real-world inspiration […]
A restaurant website is a valuable marketing and promotional tool for new and established restaurants alike. Creating a website for your restaurant can boost visibility via search engine optimization and give you another way to attract new customers. If you’re feeling stuck designing your restaurant website, sometimes all you need is a little real-world inspiration to get over your creative block and into a business development flow.
We’ve rounded up some of the best sites for restaurants in 2024 to inspire you.
Primanti Brothers is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based bar and restaurant chain. Its website features high-quality, craveable images of its food and beverage directly on its homepage to tempt visitors to visit the restaurant. For homebodies, the menu and online ordering buttons are easy to find. The high-contrast colors are easily readable and various font sizes help direct customer attention to tempting words like “free,” “original,” and “load up.” All of these communicate value and encourage customer clicks.
Mountains Walking is a Bozeman, Montana-based brewery and restaurant with incredible scenic views. Its website gives users two clear journeys at the top: beer or food. You can also use the main navigation bar to browse Mountains Walking merchandise, which is a smart way to drive revenue with products that have a long shelf life.
Atlanta, Georgia-based Old Lady Gang serves Southern cuisine and soul food in a bustling location. The website features the establishment’s “matriarchs,” highlighting the personal experience customers can expect. There’s a way to browse the menu, merchandise, and careers, as well as sign up to receive marketing messages via email. Customers can also find its locations and hours. But this brand is all about the personality and personal stories of the owners, and the website clearly communicates that.
Rainbow Drive-in is a fast food chain with three locations in Hawaii. The website front loads images of Rainbow’s signature Hawaiian dishes and includes user-friendly links to additional information like menus, locations, and online ordering. The header “We’re open! Looking for takeout?” lets customers know immediately that they are in the right place and saves hungry diners any wasted time.
Joe’s Deli is a beloved Cleveland, Ohio, quick-service restaurant. Its straightforward website places its piled-high sandwiches in front of a black-and-white background, which makes a difficult-to-photograph food look particularly tasty.
Key information like hours and contact details are highlighted in a friendly red shade. Joe’s also has a homey touch that I absolutely love—customers ordering online can login and click “order my usual.” It’s an insightful way to make these customers feel as welcome as those who order in person.
The Varsity is a Southern chain of quick-service restaurants. This chain specializes in large groups and events and makes those services easily accessible on their website. The color scheme is welcoming and warm, the food photographs are vivid, and the images of locations and food truck operations make it obvious that customers who love the food can easily get enough to share.
Chicago, Illinois, fine dining restaurant Alinea uses compelling food images and very little text to build the mysterious energy the restaurant is famous for. The prix-fixe menu changes daily, so the main action website visitors need to take is to book a reservation. The Alinea website includes multiple places where they can do so.
Where Alinea’s website is minimalist, Toronto, Canada’s Reign goes for maximalism. The opulence of the menu and the restaurant’s interior are on full display on Reign’s website. The site also showcases the many options for extended experiences Reign provides, from private dining to its sister businesses, a wine bar, and a bakery.
A famous Kansas City, Missouri, barbecue joint, RJ’s Bob-Be-Que Shack has a website that highlights its humble location and catering services at the same time. Videos of the food make it extremely appetizing, and the main menu is easy to navigate. Users can find the menu, online ordering, reservations, events, employment opportunities, and more.
Memphis, Tennessee, barbecue spot Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous uses dynamic black, orange, and yellow colors to communicate the brand’s energy and draw attention to popular actions like viewing the menu or shipping BBQ. The site is also full of branded language like “How do you ‘vous?” which extends the brick-and-mortar vibes of this popular restaurant to the website.
Santarpio’s Pizza is a destination independent pizzeria in East Boston, Massachusetts. The website showcases the handmade nature of Santarpio’s pies while also providing user-friendly links to menus, beverage lists, locations, and merchandise. When the site initially loads, it includes a pop-up window to prompt for online delivery and takeout orders, so hungry customers won’t waste any time. A downward scroll reveals the full menu.
Domino’s Pizza’s website is a classic for a reason. It frontloads the deals and combos that mainstream pizzerias are known for. The order buttons are easy to find, with streamlined options for delivery orders or carryout. This page includes a ton of options, but the boxy, high-contrast colors make it easy for customers to find exactly what they need.
Mellow Mushroom is a US-based chain of pizza restaurants with several locations and a seemingly generous website budget. Its website is fun and interactive, synonymous with the psychedelic style of the brand. Customers can easily find the location nearest them, order online, view the menu, and even browse job openings. The menu features high-quality images of the signature pies, giving customers a fun and functional experience.
Coffee brands are all about vibes, and Abracadabra Coffee illustrates the look and feel of its coffee brand on its website’s homepage. This Vermont brand roasts and sells coffee for retail and wholesale clients in addition to operating a coffee shop.
Nyack, New York’s Art Cafe uses a minimalist line-drawn design with pops of blue to give potential customers draw customers in. The navigation includes links for reserving a table or a waitlist in addition to online ordering, menus, and links to featured musicians and local artists (another coffee shop staple).
SusieCakes is a bakery with locations in California, Texas, and—soon—Tennessee. Its website is gorgeous overall, but its online ordering system really stands out. Customers can opt for local pick-up or shipping nationwide. The cakes are ordered just like how you’d purchase from an ecommerce store, so there’s no learning curve or unfamiliar functionality. Some basic customization options let patrons order exactly what they want. (I recommend starting with the marble cake.)
Vermont fine dining restaurant Hen of the Wood has two locations—the website uses an elegant greyscale with pops of deep red to distinguish between the two. Multiple steps along the reservation workflow confirm the location. Users can also book the Butcher Room, a private dining room serving a chef’s tasting menu for parties of six to 12.
Whiskey Cake is a chain of full-service farm-to-table style restaurants throughout the South and Southwest. There are a lot of great aspects to the Whiskey Cake concept (and website), and the group and party booking features are some of the best. Customers can see the bookable areas of their preferred Whiskey Cake location, even taking a 360-degree tour of the options before making their reservation.
The website for 3 Dudes and Dinner uses a cutting board as inspiration to display their many services. The minimal background makes it easy for catering customers to find the package that fits their needs and quickly schedule a consultation.
Chicago, Illinois’ Blue Plate Catering starts with their food. A scrolling video showcases high-quality images of the food and available venues. A top-line navigation menu with drop-down options includes online ordering options and the choice to contact a catering specialist for one-on-one guidance.
A great restaurant website should include the following, at a minimum:
Choose a restaurant website builder that can accommodate these features so you don’t waste time on a platform that doesn’t meet your needs.
A restaurant website is a necessity in 2024—even if you just have a single-page website with your name, location, menu, and contact information. It’s important to create and own your digital presence through great restaurant website design.
Customers use restaurant sites to research menus and price points, make reservations, inquire about private events, or place online orders. Make sure customers have a place online to learn about your operation and plan their visit. Take some inspiration from the best restaurant websites and look for opportunities to extend your unique brick-and-mortar experience to attract customers who find you online.
Mary King is a veteran restaurant manager with firsthand experience in all types of operations from coffee shops to Michelin-starred restaurants. Mary spent her entire hospitality career in independent restaurants, in markets from Chicago to Los Angeles. She has spent countless hours balancing tills, writing training manuals, analyzing reports and reconciling inventories. Mary has been featured in the NY Post amongst other publications, and in podcasts such as Culinary Now where she discussed starting your first restaurant, how to leverage your community and avoiding technology traps.
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